AnthropoLog — Spring 2018

The University comes together each spring to celebrate the achievements of our students as many of them graduate and leave our immediate community. With this newsletter, we attempt to do something of the same — share with you, our larger community, the accomplishments of the current members of the Department of Anthropology and our many and far-flung alumni. Our purpose as a department is to create and disseminate knowledge about people — across diverse populations extant today, through the… Read more
In archaeological and paleoecological circles around the nation and the world, to mention the UW Department of Anthropology is to invite the response, Oh, do you work with Don Grayson? Author, innovator, systematist, and synthesizer, Don has written prolifically (and continues to do so) on archaeology, zooarchaeology, paleontology, behavioral ecology, prehistory and history. Throughout his career he has specialized in the archaeology and natural history of the Great… Read more
One of our great joys is to see how our students apply their anthropology training in so many amazing, creative, important ways. In this issue of AnthropoLog we are delighted to share one such story. When Yasmin Habib (UW 2014) began in the Department of Anthropology's Medical Anthropology and Global Health option, she embarked on a journey of community involvement that has now developed into her life’s work and passion. She enrolled in a service learning course focused on research on… Read more
“What do you do with that?” Anthropology majors get this question a hundred times during their academic career. The subject of anthropology is broad, and its public perception can be vague. People often assume that an anthropology student’s choice of work is limited to teaching, museums, or “Indiana Jones” films. These are stereotypes, of course. But even students of anthropology sometimes find themselves asking: What am I going to do with this degree? On Thursday, April 12th, approximately 60… Read more
By Anna Zogas At universities, spring brings graduation. I graduated this spring with a PhD in sociocultural anthropology, marking the end of nearly a decade of graduate school. When I graduated, I lost my remote access to the University of Washington’s collection of e-books and journals. In the grand scheme of things, not having access to scholarly journals from the comfort of my home is no crisis. But this interruption in my access to university libraries did make me pause to consider how I… Read more
The biological anthropology subdiscipline welcomes Assistant Professor Melanie Martin to campus this summer. Martin received her BA in anthropology from the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras and a MA/PhD in Integrative Anthropological Sciences and Certificate in College and University Teaching from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is joining the UW after two years as a post-doctoral associate in the… Read more
SARS. Swine flu. Ebola. Zika virus. Every few years seems to bring yet another scary outbreak to the world’s attention. Countless lives are cut short, communities struggle to cope, governments and public health agencies spring into action, and the cycle repeats. Yet as awful as these epidemics are, they pale in comparison to those that have plagued our species through history — smallpox, the Bubonic Plague, the 1918 flu, and most recently HIV/AIDS, all killed millions within a few years in… Read more
Over Winter Quarter 2018, anthropology faculty member Sven Haakanson, offered his ARCHY 345: Global Ethnoarchaeology course for the fourth time, and his largest class to date. Almost 40 students enrolled, mainly junior and senior anthropology students. The class is not restricted to archaeology majors, so students across the department can enroll. The course is framed around an awareness that material culture plays an important role in the understanding of archaeology. The main assignment of… Read more
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FACULTY Sareeta Amrute received the Diana Forsythe Prize from the American Anthropological Association for her book, Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin (Duke University Press, 2016). The annual prize recognizes published articles or books in the spirit of Diana Forsythe’s feminist anthropological research on work, science, and/or technology, including biomedicine.  Laada Bilaniuk received a… Read more
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GRADUATE STUDENTS Darren Byler received a 2017-18 Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a Society of Scholars Fellowship from the Simpson Center for his dissertation entitled, "The Art of Life in Ürümchi: Precariousness, Aesthetics and Minority Politics in Chinese Central Asia." Juan Luo received a 2018 Thomas Francis Jr. Global Health Fellowship Award from the UW Department of Global Health for travel and project expenses while conducting preliminary fieldwork in… Read more
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We would like to take this opportunity to thank those generous donors who contributed to our efforts this past year. We believe that anthropology makes a world of difference and we want you to know that you make a world of difference to us! Dr. David AgoadaProfessor Ann Anagnost & Mr. John BurgeDrs. G. Carter Bentley & Lynda EmelProfessors Laada Bilaniuk & Ben J. FitzhughDr. Robert BoydDr. Ruth BryanCurtis Wienker TrustDr. William & Ms. Kathleen DanceyEmersonDr.… Read more
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