On January 22, 2010, four anthropology undergraduates were the guests of KEXP host Mike McCormick for a 30-minute live radio show. Alice Jacobson, Alex Ferrante, Paul Glantz, and Brock Malberg were invited to the community discussion forum to share student perspectives about the environmental health and public policy legacies their generation will inherit from the former plutonium production facility in Eastern Washington (Hanford). The radio show was the students' culminating project for an ANTH 469 class taught by Holly Barker; students were required to create public education projects to improve awareness about radiation-related issues at Hanford.
Current PhD students Stephanie Jolivette and Jake Deppen, withTom Minichillo (PhD, 2005), are in the final stages of the Maury Island Archaeology Project. The collaborative project between UW's Burke Museum, King County Roads Services Division, and the Puyallup Tribe of Indians has paired excavation of an archaeological site on Vashon-Maury Island with public collaboration and outreach activities in an effort to promote awareness and stewardship of the island's rich history.
UW junior anthropology major Kaitlin Banfill is spending the year in Shanghai studying at East China Normal University. She is also conducting research for her honors thesis on the life plans and mobility strategies of migrants from rural areas who become hairdressers, wait staff, and other service personnel in Shanghai. Kaitlin recently received a fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences that will enable travel to the migrants' hometowns to interview them and their families.
UW junior anthropology major Andrew McIver has become one of the first Americans to participate directly in archaeological excavations in China. Andrew, who studied faunal archaeology with Professor Don Grayson, was invited by Professors Li Yongxian and Lü Hongliang of Sichuan University to analyze faunal collections and excavate new faunal material from their important site at Jiuzhaigou National Park in northern Sichuan. Andrew's findings will be instrumental in filling out the deep history of this area, and may also influence strategies for environmental management.
Robertson Allen received the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies award for Best Graduate Student Paper in 2010-11. The paper, a version of which will appear later this year as a chapter in an edited book entitled Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Terror and Killing (Duke University Press), is available to read here.
Benjamin Chabot-Hanowell is drafting a project proposal for Kickstarter.com, a new way to market innovative projects in art, journalism, publishing, technology, and design. The proposal adds a journalistic component to his dissertation on transnational families and migrant remittances in the Caribbean. The project, "My N of 3: A natural experiment in field anthropology and fatherhood," will be visible here once it is approved for distribution.
Ismael Vaccaro (PhD 2005) and Eric Smith (faculty) have co-edited the book Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. Several UW Anthropology PhDs, including Denise Glover,Emily Jones, Jennifer Sepez, and Laura Zanotti, are chapter authors in the book.
Jacob Fisher (PhD 2010) has joined the anthropology faculty atCalifornia State University, Sacramento as an Assistant Professor and NAGPRA Director. The first two years of the job is dedicated to bringing the department's extensive archaeological collections up to compliance with federal and state repatriation requirements and creating positive relationships with native communities.
David Nolin (PhD 2008) is continuing his third year as a post-doctoral scholar at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina. He spent the fall of 2010 as a visiting Taft Scholar at the University of Cincinnati. This spring he is teaching at both Duke University and UNC–Chapel Hill.
Benjamin Gertsen (BA 2009) is now director of the UW office in Beijing. Ben first went to China as a student in the UW Worldwide Sichuan University Exchange Program, directed by anthropology Professor Stevan Harrell, and lived in Sichuan for over a year. He also spent time in Xinjiang, where he studied Uyghur to complement his fluency in Chinese. As director of the Beijing Office, he is responsible for liaising between the UW and Chinese universities and research institutes, as well as developing UW Alumni organizations in China.
Siobhan Mattison (PhD 2010) is headed to New Zealand in July to take a faculty position at the University of Auckland. She and her husband Peter also just welcomed their son, Leif Moir Mattison, into the world on January 9th.
Kathryn Libal (PhD 2001) has been an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut since 2007, and this year is serving as acting associate director of the UConn Human Rights Institute. She recently co-edited a book with her colleague Shareen Hertel titled Human Rights in the United States: Beyond Exceptionalism (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in May 2011). She also has been researching and publishing on the politics of NGO advocacy for Iraqi refugees with her colleague Scott Harding.
Antonio Sánchez (PhD 1983) established a goodwill mission to Spain with members of the Makah Nation Tribal government, on behalf of the Consul of Spain Luis Fernando Esteban. The purpose of this historic mission was to establish a formal relationship between the Makah Nation and the Museo de las Americas, and for the Makah visitors to view their artifacts that had been traded to the Spanish, drawings of their ancestors, and the first European maps of their lands and shorelines (1774-1819). Sánchez is collaborating on an upcoming lecture series about this shared history that features renowned Spanish Anthropologist Leoncio Carretero Collado.
The next issue of Human Nature will focus on evolutionary perspectives on kinship, edited by alumni Mary Shenk (Assistant Professor, University of Missouri), Dawn Neill (Assistant Professor, California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo) and Siobhan Mattison (post-doc, Stanford University and soon to be Lecturer, University of Auckland). It includes articles by them as well as by alumna Brook Scelza (Assistant Professor, UCLA), faculty member Donna Leonetti and graduate student Benjamin Chabot-Hanowell.
David Givens (PhD 1976) happily announces his latest book on nonverbal communication, Your Body at Work: A Guide to Sight-reading the Body Language of Business, Bosses, and Boardrooms(St. Martin's). His online Nonverbal Dictionary is alive and well in 2011. Dave is also alive and well at the Center for Nonverbal Studies in Spokane, WA.
Carol Anita Ryan (BA 1970) just published Right Now Is Perfect, a memoir about sailing through the South Pacific and much more.
Tapoja Chadhuri (PhD 2009) directed the UW study abroad program “Environment and Development in the Indian Himalayas” as an affiliate faculty of International Studies during fall quarter, 2010. The program in the North Indian state of Uttarakhand involved both formal courses and field-based internships on various rural livelihood and health projects with the host non-profit organization,Central Himalayan Rural Action Group.
Judy Pine (PhD 2002) is teaching at Western Washington University, and is in the second year of a three-year NSF grant studying the flows and uses of Lahu language media in Thailand and China.
This past summer Cheryl Carrier Spasojevic (BA 1972) translated the extensive chapter by M. Bogdanovic on the Bronze Age Vatin culture for the forthcoming book Zablude i predrasude u rekonstrukcije praistorije u Srbiji (Errors and prejudices in the reconstruction of prehistory in Serbia). She reports being fascinated upon finding out about the wealth of Bronze Age sites right in her own neighborhood in central Serbia.
Colleen Boyd (PhD 2001) was just promoted and tenured at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She co-edited the soon-to-appear volume, Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History, and a reader, Explorations in Cultural Anthropology. She also received a National Park Service grant to develop a preservation plan for the Fort Recovery battlefield site in Ohio.
Larkin Hood (PhD 2007) became a research associate and instructional consultant at Pennsylvania State’s Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence in 2010. She works with social science, natural science, and math faculty on teaching and learning issues in the college classroom, and serves as the point of contact for new faculty at the twenty-four Commonwealth Campuses.
Millie Creighton (PhD 1988), Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of British Columbia, has recently released three articles on Japan and the Japanese diaspora. Two of these articles have Seattle-area content, including one on Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) networking throughout the Americas, and one on taiko drumming.
The Statues That Walked by archaeology alumni Terry Hunt (PhD 1989) and Carl Lipo (PhD 2000)—both advisees of Professor Robert Dunnell—will be published this coming June. Professor Don Grayson notes: “The Statues that Walked is an important book. Finally, a fair and balanced account of the deeper human and environmental histories of Easter Island by people who not only know the records intimately but also helped produce them.”