The Department of Anthropology is offering a new graduate focus with training and research opportunities
in the integrated areas of paleoanthropology and behavioral biology.
Continue reading "New Graduate Focus in Evolutionary Anthropology" »
As John Soderberg, Director of the Evolutionary Anthropology lab, showed me around their lab space, I couldn’t help but contemplate going back to school for a degree in anthropology. There were fascinating objects such as giraffe bones, stone tools, chimpanzee teeth, and fossil casts. I looked through drawers full of comparative anatomical materials that are used by students each semester in the Human Evolution class—which enrolled nearly one thousand students this past year!
Faculty and Staff Awards for 2008
Speakers to the 2007–2008 colloquia series were asked to respond to the broad thematic call of the notion “creativity."
"Humans through Deep Time: Archaeology and the Pace of Change" was the title of a two-day symposium organized by the Department of Anthropology and held in the Cowles Auditorium in the Humphrey Center, March 13–14, 2008.
I am Mentor C. Addicks, Jr., better known as Duke. I received my B.A. in anthropology in 1963, and especially remember enjoying classes with my adviser, department chair E. Adamson Hoebel, and professors Elden Johnson, Rupert Murrill, James Gibbs, and Jesse Jennings.
Hans Johnson co-founded the Maasai Cultural Foundation, a nonprofit organization, with his Maasai friend
Simon Saitoti in 2005 after having traveled to Kenya over the previous five years documenting Maasai music and oral histories.
Chris Winger undertook a project to conserve, document, and research a collection of about thirty iron artifacts held by the department. The collection consists of swords, spear points, belt fittings, and other utilitarian objects. The department acquired these artifacts in the early 1930s through an expedition conducted by Professor Albert Jenks. The artifacts were inadequately documented by Jenks and sat in
storage for over seventy years in a very poor state of conservation. In 2006, the artifacts were brought out of storage and Winger began a project to properly conserve and catalog these objects.
Continue reading "Undergraduate Student Profiles: Chris Winger" »
We sat down with Peter Harle, the Department of Anthropology’s undergraduate adviser, to learn more about the undergraduate program, resources available to students, and a little about the man behind-the-scenes.
The Undergraduate Anthropology Club seeks to provide undergraduates at the University of Minnesota with the opportunity to explore the fields of anthropology beyond the classroom setting. The club also serves as a resource for anthropology students, who can find information about classes, help with homework, and meet other students who share similar interests.
Matt Hunstiger
June 19, 2008
This summer’s fieldwork has taken me to France and the Czech Republic. In Carsac-Aillac, in France’s Dordogne region, where I am writing this, I am working with a small group of people re-analyzing the lithics from Combe Grenal housed at the Musée National de Préhistoire in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, an important Middle Paleolithic cave site dug by François Bordes, in anticipation of possible future excavations at the site by Harold Dibble, Shannon McPherron, and Dennis Sandgathe, the principal investigators of the Middle Paleolithic cave site of Roc de Marsal. Roc de Marsal is currently being excavated by Dibble, McPherron, and Sandgathe, and I am also assisting in analyzing the new lithic materials that have come from the site. This work is providing me with a great opportunity to work with, and be trained by, leaders in the field of paleoanthropology, and especially lithics.
Lisa Anderson-Levy
My dissertation titled “‘Hiding in the Open’: Whiteness and Citizenship in the (Re)production of Difference in Jamaica" is based on research conducted primarily in Kingston, Jamaica beginning in July 2000 through June 2003. This work is part of an ongoing dialogue about the production of difference.
Through an analysis of the reproduction of whiteness(es) and citizenships in Jamaica, I argue against notions of difference as rooted in simplistic binaries that are often naturalized and seen as independently produced. Through nuanced explications of ethnographic details, this project demonstrates the complexities of the mutually productive relationships among the classed, gendered, and sexual components of whiteness and citizenship and documents how these operate in the daily
experiences of Jamaicans. While this is not a comparative work, it has implications for the ways in which whiteness is conceived and theorized in the United States (as well as in other countries) because it fundamentally de-centers whiteness by recognizing other whitenesses, by questioning the social/political investments in whiteness, and by analyzing the ways in which color, class, gender, and
sexuality operate in the production of subjects and the historically and culturally specific forms of those subjectivities.
Continue reading "Recent Graduate Students Write about their Doctoral Research" »
Daphne Berdahl was born on June 14, 1964, in Freiburg, Germany, to Robert and Margaret Berdahl. She
graduated from Oberlin College, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1995, and was a James Bryant Conant Fellow in German and European Studies at Harvard University. She joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota as an assistant professor of anthropology in 1997 and was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor in 2000. She was also a faculty member in the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Anthropology professor Martha Tappen investigates human evolution in Eurasia.
by David Valentine
David Valentine has had a busy year. His book, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category was finally published in August of 2007, and it has been awarded the Ruth Benedict book prize (SOLGA/AAA), and honorable mention for the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Memorial Prize for the Critical Study of North America (SANA/AAA). Imagining Transgender was also nominated in the nonfiction category for the Lambda Literary Awards, but sadly failed to win. David has continued to write on this topic, including a paper he presented at the first Transsomatechnics conference this past May titled “Sue E. Generous: Toward a Theory of Non-Transexuality." True to form, the main title is a bad pun with good intentions. In this paper, which David told us is his favorite thing he has ever written, he asks us to consider the politics of being non-transexual, which may sound counter-intuitive, but he believes that it is a key question in highlighting how gendered power works out in contemporary society.
Honors, awards, and fellowships: Fall 2007 to Summer 2008.
Each year the department hosts the Paleo picnic in conjunction with Dr. Martha Tappen’s Skeletal Materials for Archaeologists course. The picnic is a chance for students interested in Paleolithic lifeways to experience, first hand, animal butchery with stone tools much the way our Paleolithic ancestors did. After butchery, the meat is cooked and shared amongst the participants and the animal bones cleaned and incorporated into the department’s zooarchaeological teaching collection.
In April, the EAL provided a behind the scenes tour of our three-dimensional modeling equipment. The Institute for New Media Studies invited anthropology faculty to discuss their research as part of Emerging Digerati Week, a series showcasing high-tech research at the University.
Students use ground-penetrating radar to map the 1010 Park site on the first day of the 2007 Elliot Park Neighborhood Archaeology Project in downtown Minneapolis. Volunteers shovel testing in the background found a late 19th century trash pit and a mid-20th century pair of hand-sewn pants.
Continue reading "Elliot Park Neighborhood Archaeology Project" »
As an anthropologist from Germany and a German Studies scholar, it is my heartfelt concern to honor Daphne Berdahl. On my personal academic map, she became the star of the University’s Department of Anthropology. I am desolate knowing that when I come to the University of Minnesota I will not be seeing Daphne again. I not only enjoyed her warmth; my own research and teaching activities have benefited from
her scholarship. I will hence join your department with an acute sense of loss, but also with joy and a feeling of honor. I will do my best to support Daphne Berdahl’s students in their future scholarly endeavors.
Continue reading "Visiting Faculty Spotlight: Barbara Wolbert" »
I am thrilled to be joining the faculty of the Department of Anthropology. Many of you are already familiar with my work and my teaching—I have been a lecturer and researcher in the department for several years. Most of you also know my husband, Gil Tostevin. It is with great enthusiasm that I accept my new responsibilities as assistant professor. One of the aspects of my new job I look forward to the most is meeting more students—I hope you will stop by my office to say hello!
Continue reading "New Faculty Spotlight: Gilliane Monnier" »
Katherine Hayes,
I am very pleased to be joining the anthropology faculty at the University of Minnesota. Up until now, I had only known the department, the University, and the region by reputation, so it is exciting to be given the chance to learn them first-hand instead. As an archaeologist, it’s like starting a new site.
Dear Friends,
Our 2007–2008 academic year was saddened by the loss of our esteemed colleague, Professor Daphne Berdahl, whom we feature in this issue of World Views. Professor Berdahl was an inspiration to us all in her multi-year bout with cancer. She was a tower of strength to the end. We commemorated her at a wonderful symposium and dinner held at the University of Minnesota McNamara Alumni Center on
February 28, 2008. Thanks to the generosity of the Berdahl family, the Daphne Berdahl Memorial Lecture will be an annual event. Please see pages 10 and 11 for more information about the Daphne Berdahl Memorial Lecture.