Department of Anthropology

  • Bill Derman Enjoys a Productive Retirement

    bill dermanDr. Bill Derman retired from MSU in 2006, but has hardly slowed down. In fact, since moving to Norway and joining the faculty at the Norwegian University of the Life Sciences (NMBU) in the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), his academic life has flourished. He’s started new collaborative projects and published prolifically thanks to funding from the Research Council of Norway. In 2010 he even “retired” a second time (from NMBU which has a forced retirement age), but continues to teach. His research since he left MSU has taken four tracks: land reform and land restitution in South Africa, the migration from Zimbabwe of Zimbabweans to Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia, Integrated Water Resources Management and water governance in Zimbabwe, and water, gender and human rights in southern Africa. This research has led to new international collaborations and new publications. One edited volume entitled In the Shadow of a Conflict: Crisis in Zimbabwe and its effects in Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia co-edited with Randi Kaarhus Harare, came out in 2013. Another volume co-edited by Dr. Derman came out that same year, this one called World of Human Rights: The Ambiguities of Rights Claiming in Africa. This latter book project began with a symposium honoring him on the occasion of his MSU retirement, and features MSU alumni such as Kari Bergstrom Henquinet, Andrea Friedus, and Natalie J. Bourdon.

    Dr. Derman’s most recent publication is a special issue of Water Alternatives. He is co-author on five of the articles as well as a guest editor. Additionally, he has co-authored a book with a PhD student at NMBU (Shai Divon) analyzing US development assistance policy in Africa since WWII (Routledge 2017). Their historical analysis demonstrates how the development policy was based upon US strategic interests rather than the needs of people in Africa. At NMBU, Dr. Derman continues to teach on the topics he’s always loved including International Development Studies, human rights and political ecology. He fondly recalls working with CASID and the African Studies Center to teach capstone and graduate courses at MSU. He enjoyed fruitful collaborations at MSU as well, with colleagues such as Anne Ferguson and David Wiley. While at MSU, Dr. Derman served on around 20 dissertation commit-tees and has been gratified to see most of his former students get tenure track jobs.

    Dr. Derman’s research has always been driven by a commitment to the rights and well being of poor and disenfranchised Africans, but his optimism about social change is tempered by his understanding of the complexities of their world. While he consistently works for social justice during his research, the results have been partial. In the 1980s, he and colleagues helped halt a dam project in the Gambian Basin which would have had a disastrous human impact, but he notes that it was largely the economic analysis that convinced officials. He also tried promoting a human rights based approach to water in Zimbabwe, and although human rights language was eventually incorporated into the constitution, he questions whether it will be implemented. The customary rights to water he documented remain unrecognized. “Over time you realize you can’t change the power relationships where you work; it’s their lives, connections, and networks.” But the privilege of entering the lives of people has allowed him to observe human resilience, even in oppressive conditions. “In the places I have worked, I see a highly problematic future. But when you scratch the surface and view the lives that people lead it’s always much richer, less bleak, and filled with hidden potentials.”

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  • Alumnae Feature: Dr. Sue Schneider

    Sue SchneiderDr. Sue Schneider’s career as an applied anthropologist has brought her new opportunities to learn and allowed her to impact the lives and well being of the communities in which she has lived and worked. Her interests have always included community health, prevention and health promotion, and her
    dissertation research at MSU reflected those interests: she examined women’s grassroots health organizing in Mexico, and the strategies of health promoters as they merged different healing traditions within their communities. She published a book on this research, titled “Mexican Community Health and the Politics of Health Reform” (2010). Now, she works as an applied anthropologist with Larimer County Extension at Colorado State University (CSU) where she promotes community health and well-being herself! (Although the circumstances are much different from what she studied in Mexico.)
    After graduating from MSU, Dr. Schneider held a teaching postdoc at Moravian College, but came to the decision that she really wanted to do applied work with communities. She took a position at Duke University in the Division of Community Health, running a program called Durham Health Innovations. The focus was on addressing health disparities, and she was able to put her community organizing skills into action conducting neighborhood-level interventions in chronic disease prevention. While at Duke, she also pursued training and certification as an integrative health coach and began a private consulting practice working with physicians within the medical center. After stepping into the throes of motherhood, she adjusted her career more towards her private coaching practice in order to better maintain her own wellness.

    In 2015 she moved to Fort Collins, Colorado with her family and began working for CSU Extension, where she builds community programming and provides education in Larimer County. After conducting a needs assessment, she has focused her work largely on healthy aging and age-friendly communities. One grant she helped write funded a program called Senior Access Points, which is creating a county-wide network and outreach strategies to better connect individuals and their families with aging-related resources. Another grant funds work to support the self-care of grandparents raising their grandchildren. She also draws on her certification as a health coach to provide community-based training on topics such as behavior change and mindfulness.

    Fort Collins is a community full of motivated people, so the impacts of her work are gratifyingly easy to see. Dr. Schneider especially enjoys bringing practical strategies and resources to people who are struggling with stress and everyday life challenges. “Grandparents are suffering because the conditions that cause them to need to step in and raise their grandkids tend to be devastating,” she says. “It is powerful to see them get support.”
    Dr. Schneider identifies herself as a lifelong learner, and her career has in many ways been a
    “winding road” full of interesting surprises. For new anthropology graduates, Dr. Schneider suggests keeping your curiosity alive and pursuing what you find interesting and what makes you happy. “We can create new spaces for Anthropologists, but we have to be a little bit fearless about it and trust the value that we bring.” Dr. Schneider credits Dr. Linda Hunt for helping her understand and appreciate the value of applied anthropology, although all of her mentors offered unique and helpful lessons and supported her throughout her studies. She also appreciates the solid foundation in anthropological theory and training that she got through the department.
    This summer, Dr. Schneider will be stepping in as Interim Director of Larimer County Extension, and looks forward to getting a chance to see a larger horizon from that position.

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  • Update from the Graduate Students of Anthropology

    The Graduate Students in Anthropology (GSA) is a student-run organization with the goal of fostering community and academic opportunity among graduate students in the department. Caitlin Vogelsberg, GSA treasurer, summarizes the past year’s accomplishments.

    The GSA has continued to focus on providing academic support for anthropology graduate students. We awarded two more $100 Academic Enhancement Scholarships in the Fall of 2016 and just recently selected the recipients of the Spring 2017 awards. These small but helpful scholarships provide financial support for students for such things as travel funding and academic necessities (i.e., books, equipment, etc.). This January, we held the Second Annual Graduate Research Symposium with great success. We were able to continue the one-day event with student-led sessions in the morning and faculty presentations in the afternoon. Students and faculty from each subfield created a diverse and interesting program that we look forward to continuing in the future.

    We continued our fundraising traditions in order to support the student scholarships and symposium. The Chili Cook-off and Cornbread Bake-off were once again a great success with several faculty and student participants, all vying for the coveted best chili and cornbread trophies. In conjunction with the Cook-off, we collected nonperishable food to donate to the Greater Lansing Foodbank. We held our Spring Raffle and Bake Sale fundraiser on March 15th to support our organizational needs and to donate to charitable groups in the area.

    To help balance the lives of our graduate students, the GSA also held several events to have some fun and support our community. We held a “Yule Ball” for students in December, where we provided free food and a space for students to enjoy good bites and bits as well as getting a little fancy. The GSA was happy to assist newly-minted Ph.D., Dr. Amy Michael, in her organization of several charitable events such as the collection of bras and donations for local women’s shelters in the Fall, and the Book Drive for Prisoners collection this Spring. Several GSA members represented MSU and the GSA by volunteering at the Refugee Development Center in Lansing this spring. We embrace these opportunities to give back and support our community, especially in our current political climate.

    The past year we have been glad to see new and returning students join our meetings and help us create a fulfilling experience, not only for us, but also the department. We hope that we can keep the momentum rolling in future years and expand our impact.

    For more information about the GSA, click here.

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  • Featured Graduate Student: Nerli Paredes Ruvalcaba

    Nerli Paredes Ruvalcaba is a second-year graduate student who received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship last year and is now preparing to conduct her pre-dissertation research. Nerli was awarded support to participate in the NSF diversity program, IDEAS, which she describes below.

    Nerli ParedesI first became interested in anthropology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Riverside. A class with Dr. Robin Nelson introduced me to topics related to parent-child interactions. I had recently become a mother and I was extremely interested in those topics. Dr. Nelson’s class also assured me that even though biological anthropology had a dark history of institutional racism, new scholars are actively changing the discipline to be more inclusive. Hence, pursuing a degree in anthropology would allow me to ask challenging questions that would be relevant for marginalized communities. Dr. Nelson also gave me the opportunity to discuss with her research articles I would find outside of class. After reading the work of Dr. Fujita, I was attracted to the idea of studying breast milk components from a biocultural perspective.

    I began working in Dr. Fujita’s Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research my first semester at MSU. I helped with literature search and writing for grants submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, both of which were successfully funded. This year my role expanded to include processing whole milk to milk serum, which is then used to run assays.
    During my first year I was awarded the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship. This was thanks to the advice of multiple mentors, but mainly thanks to the endless help of Dr. Fujita, who read multiple drafts and offered generous feedback. I stated that I am interested in assessing changes of iron levels in human milk from short-term to long-term breastfeeding. Research suggests that iron-deficiency is a predictor of child stunting, which is associated with impaired health and cognitive development.

    Having a supportive community is imperative; as Latina in a predominately White institution it
    is easy for me to feel excluded. Therefore, I try my best to make sure that I am involved in programs that are committed to working with marginalized communities. I have been involved with the Michigan Indigenous/Chicanx Community Alliance (MICCA), where I help organize culturally relevant events that bring together students, staff, and community. By creating events such as the celebration for ‘Dia De Los Muertos’, we hope to give students a sense of belonging and form a community at MSU. I have also participated in conferences and workshops targeted at emboldening students from underrepresented backgrounds to apply to graduate schools. I am also a mentor for the MSU Indigenous Youth Empowerment Program, where we help young students with academics and cultural activities.

    Fortunately, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Association of Physical Anthropology (AAPA) are also dedicated to increasing and supporting diversity within our discipline. This year, I have been selected to be part of a new program titled Increasing Diversity in Evolutionary Anthropology (IDEAS). This program aims to support underrepresented minority students who are committed to diversity with additional training and mentorship. The IDEAS Program provides students with a stipend to attend the 2017 AAPA meeting in New Orleans to attend a one-day workshop with mentoring groups. I will participate in discussions with other experts in the field of biological anthropology who are also interested in supporting diversity. I hope to learn to be a successful scholar while simultaneously advocating for underrepresented communities. I am also looking forward to conversations on how to become an ethical anthropologist within academia and the broader community. I am hopeful that the opportunity to learn from experts in the field of biological anthropology during my first years of graduate school will prepare me to reach my future goal of becoming a professor at a research institution.

    Overall, I feel incredibly honored to have supportive mentors and in the future I plan to give back to the community that continuously supports me, and to the students of color who will come after me.

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  • Message from the Chair: Dr. Jodie O’Gorman

    Dr. Jodie O'gormanWelcome to the Spring 2017 newsletter! As usual, there is a lot going on at this time of the year. I am happy to announce that we have hired Dr. Fredy Rodriguez as our new teaching professor. He will be an important link to new undergraduate majors, mentor teaching assistants, and bring a strong interest in cutting-edge pedagogies to our faculty. While serving as the interim undergraduate advisor this past year, Dr. Rodriguez initiated an Anthropology Showcase that will highlight work that undergraduates have produced in different anthropology classes and lab experiences. We will host our first showcase this coming fall, open to the public. This will be a great way to celebrate our students’ accomplishments and highlight Anthropology.

    In the last newsletter I indicated we were in the early stages of searching for a new archaeologist. We had many excellent applicants and we are now in the final stages of the hiring process – stay tuned! Also on the archaeology front, I am very pleased to announce establishment of The Alumni and Friends Expendable Fund for Archaeology (page 4).

    The department has always enjoyed a strong linkage with the MSU Museum, and we are looking forward to a new phase of that relationship. We welcome the new MSU Museum Director, Dr. Mark Auslander, to the department. Dr. Auslander joins the faculty this July as an Associate Professor in Anthropology and History. He is the author of “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family,” for which he received two national academic awards. His research intersects with many of our faculty and students across the sub-disciplines and we look forward to working with him.

    Finally, I want to thank Rowenn Kalman for all the great work she has done on the newsletter and in other aspects of her job as the department assistant. Nicole Raslich, a graduate student in archaeology, is taking up the job and has contributed to this newsletter. You’ll be hearing from Nicole on Facebook and other social media as we move forward. Be sure to check us out.

     

    This article appears in our Spring 2017 newsletter here.

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  • The Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research

    biomarker labIn 2011 Dr. Masako Fujita founded the Biomarker Laboratory for Anthropological Research, where she and her students could conduct cutting edge anthropology research using biomarkers: measurable biochemical substances in bodies that can indicate various aspects of health. Recent grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation are funding two separate projects that together will address how variations in the beneficial contents of human milk, like antibodies and vitamins, relate to maternal health and the sex of the infant. There are substantial disparities in child mortality related to household income and sex of the infant, particularly in places in the world where gender discrimination and malnutrition are common. One contributing factor may be the level of protection that children receive from their mothers’ milk. One of the components now being measured in the lab is milk sIgA, an antibody that helps with immune protection for infants.

    The study uses archived samples from rural communities in Kenya where the overwhelming majority of the mothers breastfeed their infants long-term. Dr. Fujita collected the samples as a doctoral student while investigating the link between the vitamin A levels of mothers and that of their breast milk. Vitamin A deficiency is one of the leading global health problems. It can cause night blindness and other serious complications such as compromised immune protection against infectious diseases. At the time of her dissertation research, the World Health Organization was recommending that all postpartum mothers be given a single high dose vitamin A supplement in the hopes of increasing infant vitamin A intake through breast milk and reducing child mortality. Dr. Fujita’s research, along with other studies, helped clarify that the vitamin A levels of breast milk depleted rapidly despite the supplementation, so the intervention was not significantly increasing vitamin A levels or reducing mortality in infants. The WHO has subsequently abandoned this recommendation based on the accumulating evidence that this pharmaceutical approach was not effective or sustainable.

    Dr. Fujita wanted to investigate how other milk components might further shed new light on maternal and infant health. In rural Kenya, mothers are living in difficult conditions. Droughts, famine and infections are common, straining women’s ability to maintain adequate nutrition. Her overarching research interest focuses on how women “make do” nutritionally under these harsh conditions. Mothers have to manage their own and their children’s nutrition through behaviors, diet, and food allocation, but their bodies also “manage” nutrients through lactation. She hopes to better understand the conditions that affect the transfer of biological resources, like antibodies and micronutrients, from mothers to infants through breastmilk.

    Graduate student Sabrina Perlman, Dr. Masako Fujita and undergraduate Savannah Sass

    The Biomarker Lab currently employs two graduate (Nerli Paredes and Sabrina Perlman) and four undergraduate students. With blood and milk samples from 220 individuals to assess for six different biomarkers (sIgA, protein, lactose, and folate binding protein in milk, and folate and prolactin in blood), there are over a thousand specimens to be processed for assays in the current projects. Students learn to make serum from milk, prep the assays, run the centrifuge, manage data, label samples, and keep the lab organized.

    This training opens new possibilities for the students. Savannah Sass is one undergraduate with an interest in forensic science. She’s considering a career as a medical examiner and is now getting first-hand lab experience and invaluable mentoring from Dr. Fujita. Grad student Nerli Paredes plans to conduct research on breast milk herself, and is designing a pilot study to assess milk iron levels from which she will build her dissertation project (see her article on page 6).

    Sabrina Perlman, another grad student, just returned from her own dissertation fieldwork studying self-management of diabetes in Ghana. Sabrina investigated how gender and poverty affects diabetes self-management. While poverty and gender roles are known to impact health outcomes, these two have not been examined together in the context of diabetes. While her research primarily applied sociocultural methodology (she conducted interviews and participant observation with patients, doctors, and nurses), her co-chair Dr. Fujita encouraged her to incorporate a biocultural approach. Sabrina collected fasting blood sugar, blood pressure, height and weight data on 60 patients at a hospital diabetes clinic, and will be working with Dr. Fujita to analyze how these health outcomes relate to the qualitative data on the experience of self-managing diabetes in Ghana. For Sabrina, learning to link biological and sociocultural data will help her speak across different disciplines in her work.

    Read the full newsletter here.

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