Department of Anthropology Ph.D. candidate Kelsey Merreck Wagner’s artwork is currently featured in Warin Lab Contemporary, an arthouse in Bangkok, Thailand. The exhibit is titled “Threads of Change” and will be on display from April 6^th until May 25^th, 2024. Kelsey’s work utilizes plastics and other recycled material through the medium of weaving to bring new life to trash.

Per the exhibit description:

“Wagner’s art is shaped by the implementation of recomposing used plastics. Plastics have become increasingly indispensable for humans, from household products, sports gear, and medical equipment to the automotive and construction industries. Plastics are lauded for their durability, versatility in challenging conditions, and cost-effectiveness in manufacturing. In comparison to alternative materials such as glass or metal, plastics are more malleable and require less energy to produce, making them ideal for mass production, which began after the Second World War.

Since the advent of synthetic plastics in the late 1800s, they have supplanted natural materials that were scarcer and more costly to process. With abundant supplies of various plastics, manufacturers can keep pace with rapidly increasing consumption demand while also maintaining economical production costs. Moreover, the adaptability of plastics has allowed countless blueprints to materialize into reality. They have taken on different shapes and forms, finding their way into our daily lives. However, since their emergence, every fragment of plastic still persists on Earth, taking centuries, and thus generations, to decompose.

The textile work by Kelsey Merreck Wagner for the “Threads of Change” exhibition seeks to address the issue further. As an artist deeply engaged with the urgent discourse surrounding climate change, Wagner’s work delves into the visceral experience of environmental transformation through a prism of fiery hues – reds, oranges, and yellows. These colors, reminiscent of flames, are not merely aesthetic choices but symbolic representations of the escalating crisis we face.”

Kelsey’s Ph.D. dissertation involves the role Thai eco-activists play in environmental movements. “The work of these eco-artivists is especially salient in authoritarian contexts,” she says, “where negative discourse about the actions of the government and their corporate partners is heavily silenced and dissent is met with danger. During my fieldwork, I have not only interviewed many of these artists, but also built lifelong friendships and collaborations, including the co-founding of the ART WORMS Mekong Artist Collective. The collective engages in arts-based research along the Mekong River, allowing me the support and resources to continue my trash weaving project with an international team.”

For more information on Warin Lab Contemporary and this exhibit, click here.

To see the Bangkok Post’s coverage of the exhibit, click here.

To see more of Kelsey’s artwork on her website, click here.

Anthropology undergraduate student Sasha Franklin has been awarded the Andrew Undergraduate Fellowship and a Dean’s Assistantship from the MSU College of Social Science. Sasha’s proposal was titled “Online Learning and Digital Cultural Heritage in Belize”, and the project will begin in the fall 2024 semester.

It is an applied research project involving the creation of an ArcGIS StoryMap for archeology education in Belize. The project will be in partnership with the Belize Institute of Archaeology and the Belize Ministry of Education.

For more information about the Dean’s Assistantship, Andrew Undergraduate Fellowship, and other funding awards from the MSU College of Social Sciences, see this link.

Anthropology undergraduate student Allison Thomson has been awarded a Dean’s Assistantship from the MSU College of Social Science. The project is titled “Utilizing GIS to Visualize Bioarchaeological Data,” and funding will take place over the 2024-25 academic year.

This project aims to improve accessibility and visualization of archaeological data by using Microsoft Access to build a database comprising burial data from excavation records and past skeletal analyses from the Maya site of Chau Hiix, Belize. The data will be linked to a variety of contextual information, including specific geo-referenced locations at the site. This complex dataset eventually will be incorporated into a Geographic Information System (GIS), which will serve as a searchable digital database for researchers and facilitate comparative analyses.

For more information on the Dean’s Assistantship and other awards offered by the MSU College of Social Science, see this link.

Department of Anthropology Associate Professor Najib Hourani, along with fellow PI Dr. Rebecca Karam (Sociology) received the 2023-24 Creating Inclusive Excellence Grant from the Michigan State University Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion. The project, entitled “Counting MENA In,” also received funding from MSU’s Department of Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Muslim Studies Program, and the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program. The project’s research team also includes Dr. Salah Hassan (English) and Dr. Stephen Gasteyer ( Sociology).

This project explores MENA (Middle East and North African) communities and their experiences at MSU in their different roles as students, faculty, and employees. The United States government has recently added a MENA category to the new race and ethnicity question on the 2030 census form. Michigan is home to some of the largest, oldest, and most vibrant MENA communities in the nation and these communities have long-standing ties to MSU.

The study relies upon a large-scale survey, paired with focus groups with students, faculty and staff to collect basic demographic data on these groups, and to understand their place, roles and experiences on campus. “It took a bit of doing with the new Survey Committee,” Hourani said, “but we received permission in April to run the survey in the Fall 2024 semester. We are looking forward to the results, and to the opportunity to share them with the MENA communities and the University at large.”

Particular attention will be paid to MENA faculty students and staff understandings of their own identities (identification) and to their experience of having identities ascribed to them (ethnic or racial prejudices). To what extent do these communities feel welcome on campus, or experience exclusion based upon their actual or ascribed identities? How do these experiences manifest in different campus spaces, such as classrooms, dormitories, dining halls, administrative offices, or faculty meetings? How might an understanding of these experiences help the University develop a nuanced awareness of the contributions these communities make to MSU and develop effective strategies to help them overcome challenges they face, and improve their standing in terms of inclusion and equity?

For more information on the grant, see this link.

Department of Anthropology Ph.D. candidate John Boyd has been awarded a Dissertation Research Overseas Fellowship from the MSU African Studies Center. This funding is in support of fieldwork taking place in Morocco during the 2024-25 academic year.

During this fieldwork, John will be researching social and youth movements in Morocco through participant observation and interviews with ultras (soccer fan groups) inside and outside of stadiums to further understand how political, economic, and social marginality are embodied, addressed, and combatted publicly and performativity in urban Morocco.

For more information on this fellowship or the MSU African Studies Center, click here.

Department of Anthropology Ph.D. Student Priyanka Jayakodi has been awarded the 2024-25 Rose Graduate Fellowship in Water Research by the Michigan State University Graduate School. The Rose Graduate Fellowship is an annual award for graduate students at Michigan State University aimed at supporting research that addresses the looming global water crisis. 

In her doctoral research, Priyanka examines entanglements of ecological and bodily health and household water insecurity in communities where Chronic Kidney Disease of uncertain etiology (CKDu) is prevalent in Sri Lanka. Priyanka will use the fellowship funds to support her upcoming dissertation fieldwork in Sri Lanka.

Professor Emeritus Dr. William Lovis, in collaboration with Bolivian colleagues José M. Capriles (The Pennsylvania State University) and David Trigo Rodríguez (Universidad Mayor de San Simón, formerly of the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, or MUNARQ), coauthored the article “La Repatriación de una momia andina del Museo de la Universidad Estatal de Michigan al Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia” (The Repatriation of an Andean Mummy from Michigan State University Museum to the Plurinational State of Bolivia) in the Bolivian journal Textos Antropológicos. 

The article, in Spanish and accessible to the South American archaeological community, details the long and remarkable several year journey that led to the 2019 repatriation of the mummified human remains of a young Andean girl from Michigan State University to the Plurinational State of Bolivia.  She had arrived at MSU in 1890. This may have been the first such voluntary repatriation from a US institution of higher education under the terms of bilateral accords between the United States and Bolivia.  The coauthors, who were three of the principals in the repatriation, detail the various steps, stages, successes, and pitfalls of the extended repatriation process, and provide detailed information on the young lady’s material goods, as well as other pertinent data. 

Given the complexity of the negotiation procedures between a US institution and a nation state, numerous individuals from Michigan State University and various agencies of US and Bolivian government are mentioned in the text, and acknowledgements, for their roles in bringing the repatriation to fruition. The ceremony culminating the event took place at the Bolivian Embassy in Washington DC, on Bolivian Independence Day, in 2019; 129 years after the young lady’s arrival at MSU.

For more information, see this link for the article (Spanish).

Department of Anthropology Ph.D. student Alexis VanBaarle has been selected as the 2024 winner of the J. Lawrence Angel Student Award. The J. Lawrence Angel Student Award is given yearly for the best student paper presented at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference. Alexis’ advisor for this project was Dr. Heather Garvin of Des Moines University.

Alexis’ presentation was titled “The Use of Outline Analyses to Assess Kerf Floor Shape Patterns in Saw Marks.” As summarized by Alexis, “When presented with medicolegal cases of saw dismemberment, forensic anthropologists are asked to estimate information about the saw utilized (i.e., saw class characteristics) which can help narrow down possible tools or be used in legal proceedings. To estimate these characteristics, forensic anthropologists look to features left on the bony surfaces by the saw teeth during the sawing process and apply qualitative and quantitative methods. My work looked at one specific feature, called the kerf floor shape, which is thought to be an outline of the saw. Previously, the relationship between this outline and how well it described the utilized saw was qualitative (or relied on visual morphological observation). I took these bony outlines and applied elliptical Fourier and principal component analyses to quantify the relationship between kerf floor shape and the saw class characteristics, thus providing error rates for estimating the saw class characteristics from kerf floor shape.”

For more information on the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, see here.

Department of Anthropology Ph.D. candidate Kelsey Merreck Wagner’s artwork is currently featured in a two-person exhibit hosted by the Evanston Art Center in Evanston, Illinois. The exhibit is titled “You’re Not Really Seeing This” and will be on display through April 22, 2024. Kelsey’s work utilizes plastics and other recycled material through the medium of weaving to bring new life to trash.

Asked what inspired the project, Kelsey shared:

“I started weaving with plastic and recycled materials during the pandemic in 2019 which morphed into a large ethnographic art project wherein I collected materials from my community members, my household, family, friends, and river clean-ups. This has provided me the opportunity to engage in valuable discussions about the links between plastic pollution, waste management, capitalism and consumerism, and human impact on the environment. “

Kelsey’s Ph.D. dissertation involves the role Thai eco-activists play in environmental movements. “The work of these eco-artivists is especially salient in authoritarian contexts,” she says, “where negative discourse about the actions of the government and their corporate partners is heavily silenced and dissent is met with danger. During my fieldwork, I have not only interviewed many of these artists, but also built lifelong friendships and collaborations, including the co-founding of the ART WORMS Mekong Artist Collective. The collective engages in arts-based research along the Mekong River, allowing me the support and resources to continue my trash weaving project with an international team.”

The weavings are made with a cotton warp; and the weft is made from plastic and other recycled materials. The materials have been collected by the artist and her friends and family in the United States, Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia. The materials come from “corporate culprits” including companies like: Coca-Cola Company, Asia Golden Rice Company, Ulta, Hershey, Kroger, Walmart, Charmin, Amazon, Jockey, 7-Eleven, Procter & Gamble, Siam Golden Rice Company, Hanes, Sirinumma Company, Food Lion, Apple, Samsung, Hobby Lobby, Colgate-Palmolive, Nestlé, and Lays. Materials in these weavings will include things like: plastic shopping bags, flagging tape, plastic tablecloths, mesh produce bags, rice bags, feed bags, fertilizer bags, cables and wires, quilting waste, yarn waste, curtains, old clothing, holiday decorations, food packaging, rain ponchos, balloons, bubble wrap, packaging materials, and fishing nets.

Kelsey said, “My plastic weavings have been exhibited in a range of group shows, including at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum for Grand Rapids ArtPrize, and the 1.5 Degrees Celsius exhibit at the Michigan State University Museum. I have also had solo exhibits of these weavings at the Langley Arts Council in British Columbia, Canada; the Chenango Arts Council in Norwich, New York; the Marathon Center for the Performing Arts in Findlay, Ohio; and the East Lubbock Art House in Lubbock, Texas. These exhibits featured smaller weavings created on my rigid heddle loom, which has since been supplemented by a large tapestry loom and a 4-harness floor loom, allowing me to create plastic weavings that are over 40 feet long. I currently have a solo exhibit upcoming this April at Warin Lab Contemporary Gallery in Bangkok, Thailand that will feature 5 of the large-scale weavings in red/orange/yellow colors to connect plastic pollution to climate change.”

For more information, see the stories featured in The Evanston Art Center website or The Visualist, or see Kelsey’s website.

Department of Anthropology Ph.D. student Emily Nisch has been awarded an NCPE Internship through the National Park Service and the Indigenous America 250 initiative. Indigenous America 250 is a community-engaged, community-driven scholarly research project led by Indigenous scholars that is reexamining the Revolutionary War period and its aftermath from the perspectives of Indigenous communities and tribal nations.

The resulting study, produced for the National Park Service, Interior Region 1, will be a series of case studies that provide clearer understandings of tribal nations on their own terms and also develop new understandings about the significance of the Revolutionary War. The internship will give Emily experience working with historical archives in a community-engaged and collaborative environment in preparation for her dissertation research on Native American Boarding Schools.

For more information on the organization: https://www.indigenousamerica250.com