SMU ANTHROPOLOGY NEWS
VOLUME 9, JUNE 2004
It has been a very good year in the department. Perhaps most important is that we hired Torben Rick, a young archaeologist who is receiving his Ph.D. degree this May from Oregon. Torrey will join the faculty in August as Assistant Professor of Anthropology. His main areas of research are coastal archaeology, zooarchaeology, environmental archaeology and North American archaeology. The title of his dissertation is “Daily Activities, Community Dynamics, and Historical Ecology on California’s Northern Channel Islands. We will be carrying out another search in 2004-05 for a second archaeologist. This time we will be looking for a Mesoamericanist or a South American archaeologist.
The exciting faculty news comes in the form of the new archaeological discoveries that Professor David Freidel has made at the Waka’ (El Peru) site in Guatemala. He unearthed a royal tomb (with a good deal of jade jewelry) from the Early Classic period this field season. Not only did his discovery make the front page of the Dallas Morning News, but he also was in Washington DC in late April to make the announcement and to try to raise money to support not only the field research but also the preservation of the site which includes a natural forest and a wealth of wildlife. The story was picked up by media around the country, including CNN.
The 2004 George and Mary Foster Lecture in Cultural Anthropology was delivered by Professor June Nash (Emeritus-CUNY). Quite appropriately, the title of her talk was “The Vision of the Limited Good and the Specter of the Unlimited Good.” Professor Nash is a distinguished anthropologist is perhaps best known for her book on Bolivian tin miners, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines. She has worked on problems of women workers in the international division of labor, on the impact of globalization on local communities, and on indigenous rights, most recently in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas where peasants have been engaged in a new social and political movement to air their grievances. Her most recent book, published in 2001 by Routledge, is titled Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization.
This year, a generous gift from the Boshell Family Foundation has made it possible to establish an endowed annual lecture in archaeology to honor Emeritus Professor Fred Wendorf. The first Fred Wendorf Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology is scheduled for Thursday, October 14th at 5:30 pm. The lecturer is Professor Pat Kirch, an archaeologist best known for his work in Polynesia.
Seed money has also been raised to launch a program in undergraduate research. These funds will be available on a competitive basis to faculty and a single undergraduate student who wants to engage in primary field research (using the model of the REU—Research Experience for Undergraduates—sponsored by the National Science Foundation). We would welcome other contributions to this program to enlarge the pot and allow more students to participate in this program.
Finally, I close by noting that after ten years as Chair of the Department of Anthropology I will be stepping down to refocus my energies on research and teaching. Professor Robert V. Kemper will assume the Chairmanship on August 1, 2004.
FACULTY NEWS
Carolyn Sargent continued her service on the senior NSF panel for the Cultural Anthropology Program—an appointment that takes her to Washington twice a year. She was in Paris last summer and will be again this summer to continue her research on reproduction among Malian immigrant women in France. Professor Sargent and her coeditor Robbie Davis Floyd were awarded the 2003 “Enduring Edited Collection Book Prize” by the Society for Medical Anthropology for the book Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge.
Van Kemper received an Instructional Technology grant for Phase II of the “Sim-tzuntzan Project.” During phase one he created an impressive website for ANTH 3311. You can find it at http://faculty.smu.edu/rkemper. Professor Kemper also delivered the Ellwyn Stoddard Borderlands Lecture at UT-El Paso in October of 2003.
Ben Wallace recently received a grant from The Plum Foundation to explore the establishment of a Philippine Good Agroforestry Project in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia.
Garth Sampson launched his new graduate course on Paleolithic archaeology in the fall of 2003. He continues to publish broadly on his research in South African archaeology including two papers in the Journal of Archaeological Science that came out in 2003. This year the survey data for 14,0000 sites was mounted on GIS platform. Professor Sampson was also a recipient of ISEM’s Downey Family Award for Faculty Excellence.
Mike Adler was one of five faculty members named as a Ford Research Fellows for 2004. This is a competitive SMU program that recognizes faculty members for their contributions to research. Professor Adler was also the 2003 Cary Maguire Public Scholar. He delivered a lecture titled “Who is the Past? Ethics and Archaeology of Cultural Identity” in October of 2003. He also gave a lecture at the School of American Research about his work building an archaeological model of cultural affiliation at the Chaves-Hummingbird site in central New Mexico.
David Freidel returned to the Waka’ site in Peten with several graduate students and within a few weeks of launching the season unearthed a royal tomb. For this project he has forged a collaboration of scientists, conservationists, residents and the government.
David Meltzer holds the publication record for 2003 in the department—7 items came out including papers in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Geoarchaeology and the Journal of World Prehistory. A number of other papers are in press or submitted. This year Professor Meltzer served on the Staley Book Prize Committee for the School of American Research. He was interviewed for articles in the Dallas Morning News, Science and Nova among other media venues. For the 15th consecutive year he received funding for his research from the Potts & Sibley Foundation. Professor Meltzer and Professor Adler were both recognized by American Antiquity for reviewing three or more articles in the last four years for this key journal in the field of archaeology
Ron Wetherington continued as the Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence. He was keeping eight Altshuler Fellows busy with a range of programs. He had a paper “Cantonment Burgwin’s Final Years” accepted by the New Mexico Historical Review. Ron also launched our semester-long Teaching Seminar for graduate students in the spring of 2004.
David Wilson launched his new course “Warfare and Violence” with more than 100 students. For much of the semester he was just a few steps ahead of them but now the course is developed and we expect it to be a big enrollment staple for years to come. He is working on the second edition of Indigenous South Americans of the Past and Present.
Victoria Lockwood published her book Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands is in production. She served as the advisor for Lambda Alpha and as Chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women at SMU.
Carolyn Smith-Morris received
a President’s Partners grant for equipment to help with her research on the Pima. She was also the recipient of a University Research Council Grant for summer research at Gila River. She designed a new course “Good Eats and Forbidden Flesh” that will be taught for the first time in the fall of 2004 and already has an enrollment of 90.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS
Amy Anne Dominguez was the 2004 recipient of the Edward I. and Peggy C. Fry Award in Anthropology. Amy was in fact showered with awards on honors day—the Women’s Studies Award, the Bromberg Award for Outstanding Work in the Humanities given by the Department of Religious Studies, and the Robert and Nancy Dedman Outstanding Senior Student award given by Dedman College. This may be the first time that an anthropology major has received this many awards. Amy has made us all proud.
This year, with the creative energy Professor Lockwood and of one of our graduate students, Kris Alstatt, behind it, the Department became a member of Lambda Alpha, the national undergraduate honor society for anthropology. Nine students became charter members and their names are listed on a framed certificate that is now hanging on the wall on the 4th floor of the Heroy Building.
J.J. Thomas and Adele Caruth, graduating senior anthropology majors, and McKenzie Osborne (a graduating anthropology minor) were elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Kris Alstatt won a Graduate Student Research Award sponsored by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies at the annual Research Day on February 10, 2004. He presented his work “Continuity and Change in the Human Skull Ritual of Guatemala.”
Susan Bruning won the departmental award at the same event for her poster on NAGPRA and the legal implications of the Kennewick Man dispute. Susan also won a Paul Steed Travel Award to present her paper “Encouraging Law Students to Consider Foundational Ethical Perspectives in Cultural Property Disputes” at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. She has been approached to be an active participant in the Law and Ethnics initiatives of the Society for American Archaeology.
The other recipients of the Paul Steed Travel Award were Matthew Turner and Portia Belo who delivered a paper titled “Translating Experience into Action: Participatory Research on Disability in Urban Ecuador” at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology.
Jason Labelle has been promoted to head the entire Archaeology branch for Western Land Services, a CRM firm in Sheridan, Wyoming. He plans to defend his dissertation soon. Susan Harper-Bisso received a grant from the Clements Center for Southwest Studies to continue her research on Wiccans in Texas. Samantha Martin was a Maguire Public Service Intern in the summer of 2003. She volunteered at Native Images, Inc. in Tucson, Arizona and conducted surveys on HIV/AIDS and drug abuse among Native Americans in the area. Samantha also received a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services to support her research on HIV and hepatitis C among the Pascua Yaqui of Tuscon, Arizona. Daisy Morales was our second Maguire Center intern. She spent last summer working with the Girl Talk-2 project sponsored by the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. This project is an STD and HIV prevention research program.
Ben Passmore and Susan Racine Passmore (Ph.D. 2000) published “Taste and Transformation: Ethnographic Encounters with Food in the Czech Republic” in The Anthropology of East Europe Review. Ben defended his dissertation in May and has a job in Institutional Research at the University of Maryland.
Several of our students presented papers at the Applied Anthropology meetings —among them Peggy Varghese, Samantha Martin, Kyra Kramer, Robert Graff, Julie Adkins, Melissa Nibungco, and Cheryl Crichley. Sally Pattison-Cisna presented a paper titled “Working Towards an Anthropological Theory of the Healing Process” at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.
Two students, Portia Belo and Joanna Roberson, received NSF dissertation improvement grants. Portia will be working on disabled children in Ecuador. Joanna is using techniques from isotope geochemistry to "fingerprint" different stone sources on the southern Plains, in an effort to more precisely identify which sources were used by various Paleoindian groups, thereby shedding light on the scale of their mobility on the landscape. Michelle Amoruso received a Fulbright grant to support her work on dengue fever in Trinidad.
The recipients of the 2004 NSF Ethnographic Training Grant Awards for pre-dissertation research are: Matthew Turner (“Depression in Victims of Domestic Violence in Three Andean Cities”); Kris Alstatt (“Rituals of the State: Constructing Nationalism in Laos”); Stephanie Larchanche-Kim (“Strategies for Social Support: West African Immigrant Women in Paris”); and Tim Baltimore-Shelp (“Stress and Diabetes among the Pima”);
Jose Leonardo Santos was the 2004 winner of the Mary Moore Free Award for his project “Evangelicalism in El Salvador.”
And finally there has been a population explosion in the Department. Catrina Whitely, Brian Andrews, Lisa Greenman, Tara Bond Freeman and staff member Stephanie Carroll all had babies this year.
Let us know where you are and send us news. Join the Anthropology Alumni E-mail Directory. We hope this listing of alumni and email addresses will encourage communication between members of the SMU community. To have your information posted, please send an e-mail message to scarroll@mail.smu.edu and give us your name (maiden name if applicable), class year, degree and email address.
Sydney Perutz (PhD 2003) presented a paper titled “Transacting Tourism” at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Josephine Caldwell-Ryan (PhD 1996), Lecturer in Women’s Studies at SMU was also on the SfAA program. Her paper was titled “Ethnical Dilemmas of Advocacy in Researching Alternative Health in the US.” Arushi Sinha (PhD 2003) was interviewed by the Dallas Morning News for their employment section. At the time she was a content developer for a web marketing company. Previously she worked in medical writing/publishing. Arushi has now moved with her husband to Seattle.
Susan Racine Passmore (PhD 2000) took a job with James Bell Associations, a consulting firm in Arlington, VA that mostly does evaluation of government health and human service projects. She presented a paper at the SfAA meetings and is expecting a baby in July. Tara Skipper (PhD 2001) is currently in Thailand with her husband and daughter. Mohsen Mobasher (PhD 1996) recently published (with co-editor Mahmood Sadri) Migration, Globalization and Ethnic Relations: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Prentice Hall 2004). He continues in his position as Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. Rose Jones (PhD 1994) is currently a Medical Anthropologist and Consultant with the Texas/Oklahoma AIDS Education and Training Center. Michael Bever (PhD 2000) has been appointed to a position as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Kat Brown (PhD 2003) has been appointed to a position as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Kit Nelson (PhD 2002) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. Paul Thacker (PhD 1996) has been appointed to a tenure-track position at Wake Forest.
Clarissa Huang (BA 1994) welcomed baby Brandon into her home. James D. Nations (PhD 1979), Vice President for State of the Parks at the National Parks Conservation Association in Washington, DC., writes that he has “spent the past two decades working for the conservation of natural ecosystems and cultural resources in the tropics and the United States.” He is the author of Tropical Rainforests (1988) and Thirteen Ways of Looking at Tropical Rainforests (2000) and is completing a book entitled People, Parks and Ancient Cities; The Maya Tropical Rainforest.
Laurie Taylor (BA 2001) has been working in CRM since she left SMU. In the fall of 2003 she entered the graduate program in biological anthropology at UC-Riverside with a very generous fellowship. She will be working on the origins of human/hominid evolution and migration with Dr. Sang-Hee Lee.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BY FACULTY, 2003-04
Adler, Michael, "Building Consensus: Tribes, Architecture, and typology in the American Southwest, in The Archaeology of Tribal Societies. International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological Series #15 edited by William Parkinson. Ann Arbor, MI..
Brettell, Caroline, Anthropology and Migration: Essays on Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Identity. Altamira Press. Freidel, David, “Bearers of War & Creation: A Site Q monument in the Dallas museum of Art is changing our view of ancient Maya royal women.” (senior author with Stanley Guenter) Archaeology Magazine Online Feature, January 23, 2003. www.Archaeology.org/magazine.
Lockwood, Victoria, Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:Pearson/Prentice-Hall.
Meltzer, David, Lessons in landscape learning. In Colonization of unfamiliar landscapes: the archaeology of adaptation, edited by M. Rockman and J. Steele, pp. 222-241. Routledge, London.
Sampson, Garth, " Amphibians from an Acheulian site at Duinefontein 2, (Western Cape, South Africa). Journal of Archaeological Science 30:547-557.
Sargent, Carolyn, “Polygamy, Disrupted Reproduction and the State: The Case of Malian Migrants in France." Social Science and Medicine
Smith Morris, Carolyn “Reducing Diabetes in Indian Countryu: Lessons from the Three Domains Influencing Pima Diabetes,” Human Organization (spring 2004).
Thanks to the following individuals for their donations to the Department or its faculty in the past year: Edward Boshell, Jim Zurn, Claude Albritton, Jennifer Lynn Szaro, Bill Clements, Elizabeth Boeckman, Jerome Glick, Janet Huntley, and Michael Howell. We are of course always grateful to Dr. Mary Moore Free, Paul Steed, Dr. Robert Kemper, and Garry Weber for the endowments they have set up in the Department. We use these funds to support student programs, faculty research and for teaching enhancement. Indeed one gift this year allowed us to purchase an LCD projector for classroom use as well as valuable slide sets from Pictures of Record. Donations (for any amount) should be sent to the attention of the Chair, Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275-0336.