The Department of Anthropology at Temple University

Upcoming events

Thursday 9 February

Dr. Damien Stankiewicz (Temple University) will present and discuss his film Mamun's Hot Dogs (2006). 4:30-5:30 in the Fishbowl (Gladfelter Hall room 212).

Friday 10 February

Dr. Damien Stankiewicz (Temple University) will present "Mediating Postnational Belonging: Lessons from a Trans-border Television Channel." 3:00-4:15 in the Fishbowl (Gladfelter Hall room 212); a reception will follow.

Wednesday 29 February

The members of the 2011-2012 Temple University Social, Spatial, and Bioarchaeological Histories of Ancient Oman (SOBO) research team will give presentations on their recent fieldwork experiences and ongoing research projects. 2:30-4:30 in the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) lounge, Gladfelter Hall, 10th floor; a reception will follow in the Fishbowl (Gladfelter Hall room 212).

Thursday 1 March

Dr. Lesley Gregoricka (Ohio State University) will present "Mobility and Spheres of Interaction in Southeastern Arabia: A Biogeochemical Assessment of Third and Second Millennia BC Human Remains." 4:00 in the Fishbowl (Gladfelter Hall room 212); a reception will follow.

Notices

Alumni Dr. Carolyn B. Fluehr-Lobban and Dr. Richard A. Lobban, Jr. have very generously established the Dr. Richard A. Lobban, Jr. and Dr. Carolyn B. Fluehr-Lobban Pre-Dissertation Research Award
in Anthropology. This annual award will make it possible for graduate students in the Department to conduct preliminary or exploratory research and to lay groundwork for their dissertation research.

The Anthropology Graduate Student Association meets monthly to discuss ongoing developments in the Department, to plan events, and to share questions, concerns, and current work. We also get together for social events, to attend talks and exhibits, to discuss our research and other work, and to organize visitors to the department. We are open to suggestions and ideas, so if you are a graduate student in the Department, please stop by our next meeting! Meeting information will be disseminated through the Department's graduate student listserv. The association was established "to assist its members in all endeavors related to their success in the graduate division of Temple University's Anthropology Department; this includes educational, peer, and faculty support." For further information, contact our president, Deirdre Kelleher, dkelleher@temple.edu, or our communications director and social chair, Sam Spies, szspies@temple.edu.

Meetings of the Undergraduate Anthropology Association are generally held on the second and fourth Thursday of each month at 5:00 in the Fishbowl (Gladfelter Hall room 212). For further information, contact the association's president, Laura Walsh, laura.walsh@temple.edu, or the vice-president, Rachel Jardini, rachel.jardini@temple.edu; or you can contact us at the association's email address, templeuaa@gmail.com. "The Undergraduate Anthropology Association is a forum in which anthropology majors and minors can meet one another as well as interact with professors and graduate students. We include all areas of anthropological study: archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, and anthropology of visual communication. We hold bi-monthly meetings where professors discuss their areas of specialization and we organize trips to museums and events, a graduate student panel, fundraisers, ethnic food nights, and other fun events! It's a great organization to become involved in, especially if you seek guidance in continuing your studies in anthropology at the graduate level."

Accolades, accomplishments, and awards

Faculty member Dr. David Orr has been awarded an extension to his grant from the McFeely-Rogers Foundation to support archaeological excavation at an American Revolutionary War encampment site dating from 1777-1778. The excavation is on the site of Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge. Temple students as well as volunteers from surrounding communities are involved in the project. [14 December 2011]

During the 2011-2012 winter break, Dr. Kimberly Williams and a team of students from the Department traveled to northern Oman, where they conducted the second annual field season of the "Social, Spatial, and Bioarchaeological Histories of Ancient Oman" project. [5 December 2011]

Dr. Kimberly Williams has been selected as one of six participants from the College of Liberal Arts in the inaugural cohort of Temple University's Faculty Research Development Program. [1 December 2011]

Undergraduate anthropology majors Patrick Beckhorn (faculty mentor: Dr. Juris Milestone) and Alyson Caine (faculty mentor: Dr. Kimberly Williams) have been chosen to receive Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) awards. They are two of only three CARAS award recipients in the College of Liberal Arts. Beckhorn will travel to India to conduct his research project "Bicycle Culture and Sustainable Development in Delhi, India" and Caine will travel to Oman for her project "Biodistance Analyses of Several Near Eastern Populations." [8 November 2011]

Alumni Dr. Carolyn B. Fluehr-Lobban and Dr. Richard A. Lobban, Jr. have been chosen from among the alumni of the College of Liberal Arts for Temple University's 2011 Gallery of Success. [1 October 2011]

Alumnus Dr. P. Kerim Friedman and partner Shashwati Talukdar have been chosen to receive the Society for Visual Anthropology's Jean Rouch Award (the society's highest honor) for their documentary film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir! The award will be conferred at the SVA's annual business meeting in Montreal, part of the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association. [14 September 2011]

Alumnus Dr. P. Kerim Friedman and partner Shashwati Talukdar have completed the documentary film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, which has been selected to have its world premiere at the 2011 Busan International Film Festival. It has also been selected for the 2011 Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival. [15 August 2011]

Doctoral student Gregory Lattanzi has been awarded a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant to support his research project "The Value of Reciprocity: Copper, Exchange, and Social Interaction in the Middle Atlantic Region of the Eastern Woodlands." [11 August 2011]

Doctoral student Jesse West-Rosenthal has been awarded a Battlefield Restoration & Archaeological Volunteer Organization (BRAVO) Military Studies Grant in support of his research project at Valley Forge. [9 August 2011]

Doctoral student Chelsea Voytek and two co-authors have published the article "Selectively Willing and Conditionally Able: HIV Vaccine Trial Participation among Women at High Risk of HIV Infection" in the journal Vaccine. [28 July 2011]

Doctoral student Lou Farrell was interviewed on "Comcast Newsmakers" about his and his colleagues' archaeological work on a redware kiln site at the Henry Muhlenberg House in Trappe, Pennsylvania. [11 June 2011]

Undergraduate anthropology major Camilo Ramirez has been chosen to receive the Greater Philadelphia Latin American Studies Consortium's Summer Travel Award, which will support his field research on social class and tourism in Colombia. [8 May 2011]

Undergraduate anthropology major Sierra Gladfelter has been awarded a Udall Scholarship. [6 May 2011]

Doctoral student Brooke Bocast has been awarded a Boren Fellowship to support her field research in Uganda. [4 May 2011]

Alumnus Dr. Timothy Messner has published the book Acorns and Bitter Roots: Starch Grain Research in the Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands (University of Alabama Press, 2011). [27 April 2011]

Doctoral student Margaux Keller has been selected for an Intramural Research and Training Award through the Graduate Partnerships Program of the National Institutes of Health. She will spend a year working with alumnus Dr. Michael Nalls (Staff Scientist) in the National Institute on Aging's Laboratory of Neurogenetics. [25 April 2011]

Alumnus Dr. Glen Muschio is at work on a cell-phone-based multimedia tour of Philadelphia's history and culture. The project has attracted the support of various local and national organizations. [14 January 2011]

Faculty member Dr. Anthony Ranere and alumna Dr. Ruth Dickau (Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Exeter) have been awarded a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to support their research project "The Role of the Middle Cauca River Valley, Colombia, in the Early Domestication and Dispersal of New World Crops." Also involved in the project are faculty member Dr. Patricia Hansell, doctoral student Nicolás Loaiza-Díaz, alumnus Carlos López (Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira), and former graduate student Martha Cano (Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira). [1 January 2011]

Doctoral student Christopher Barton has become Co-Editor of the African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter. [16 December 2010]

Doctoral student Kevin Donaghy has been awarded a Battlefield Restoration & Archaeological Volunteer Organization (BRAVO) Military Studies Grant in support of his ongoing research projects. [10 December 2010]

Alumnus Dr. Bill Schindler's research and teaching on prehistoric technology and hunted and foraged foods have been featured in articles in The Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Danish publication Weekendavisen (about which more information is available here), as well as on National Public Radio. [8 December 2010]

Undergraduate anthropology major Keith Marchiafava won the First Place Award for his exhibit "The Saga of Rayasinhji" at the 2010 Global Temple Conference. [3 December 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Inmaculada García Sánchez has been selected for a 2011-2012 Faculty Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT). Her fellowship project is titled "Growing up Moroccan in Spain: Language and the Politics of Belonging and Difference." [24 November 2010]

Undergraduate biology major Li Ching He has received a Temple University Undergraduate Research Incentive Fund (URIF) award for Fall 2011 to work with Dr. Christie Rockwell on a project titled "DNA Barcoding for Species Identification of Primate Biomaterials from the Cashinahua Collection." The Cashinahua are an indigenous people of the Amazonian region. The Department of Anthropology houses an ethnographic collection (circa 1965) of Cashinahua items, many of which incorporate plant and animal materials such as gourds, cotton, bird feathers, and monkey teeth and skins. Ms. He will extract DNA from the non-human primate remains in order to determine the species from which they originate. [2 November 2010]

Doctoral student Brooke Bocast has been awarded a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant for her project "If books fail, try beauty": Gender, Consumption and Higher Education in Uganda. [27 October 2010]

Alumnus Dr. Sigurjón Hafsteinsson has published (with Marian Bredin) the co-edited volume Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada (University of Manitoba Press, 2010). [20 October 2010]

Alumna Dr. Hoa Tran, who works in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, is featured in an interview published on the America.gov website. [22 September 2010]

Doctoral student Joe Blondino and colleagues' archaeological work in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania is featured in the Delaware County Daily Times. [16 August 2010]

Doctoral student Lou Farrell's archaeological work at the Henry Muhlenberg House in Trappe, Pennsylvania is featured in the Times Herald of Norristown and Montgomery County. [25 July 2010]

Doctoral students Joe Blondino, Carin Boone, Katie Cavallo, and Jesse West-Rosenthal's archaeological work on the site of George Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge is featured in the Times Herald of Norristown and Montgomery County and in the Philadelphia Daily News. [6 July 2010]

Alumna Dr. Dolores Piperno and her groundbreaking work on the earliest cultivation of maize are featured in Science magazine. [2 July 2010]

Faculty member Dr. David Orr has been awarded a grant from the McFeely-Rogers Foundation to support archaeological excavations at an American Revolutionary War encampment site dating from 1777-1778. The excavation is on the site of Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge. Temple students as well as volunteers from surrounding communities are involved in the project. [30 June 2010]

Faculty member Dr. David Orr, doctoral student Christopher Barton, undergraduate alumna Patricia Markert, and colleagues are getting attention in print, radio, and television news for their archaeological work on Timbuctoo, a nineteenth-century African-American community in Westampton, New Jersey. The project has been covered by the Burlington County Times; the Burlington County Times again; the Philadelphia Inquirer; the Philadelphia Daily News; "All Things Considered" on WHYY National Public Radio; WPVI Action News 6; CBS Philly Eyewitness News 3; and the Washington Post (in a front-page article). Temple's Office of University Communications has created a brief video about the project. [25 June 2010]

Doctoral student Lou Farrell, who is also a social studies teacher at Upper Perkiomen High School, was interviewed on "Comcast Newsmakers" about his and his colleagues' archaeological work at the Henry Muhlenberg House in Trappe, Pennsylvania. [23 June 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Kimberly Williams is a member of a team of researchers whose archaeological work in Oman is featured in Science magazine. [28 May 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Michael Stewart and doctoral student Jeremy Koch are featured in
"This Week in Pennsylvania Archaeology," which describes their work at the Nesquehoning site in Lehigh Gorge State Park. [28 May 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Anthony Ranere and alumna Dr. Dolores Piperno's collaborative research on the early domestication of maize is featured in a science article in The New York Times. [24 May 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Paul Garrett has been appointed as Associate Editor of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology for a three-year term, 2011-2013. The journal is the flagship publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. [15 May 2010]

Alumna Dr. Laura Scheinfeldt and two colleagues have published a colloquium paper in the
5 May 2010 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: "Working toward a Synthesis of Archaeological, Linguistic, and Genetic Data for Inferring African Population History," PNAS 107(Supplement 2):8931-8938. [5 May 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Kimberly Williams has been awarded a Temple University Faculty Senate Seed Money Grant in support of her project "Bioarchaeology of 3rd Millennium B.C. Tombs in Dhofar, Oman" in academic year 2010-2011. [4 May 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Kimberly Williams is featured in the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center's news bulletin. [3 May 2010]

Doctoral student Marta Cuciurean-Zapan has been selected as the graduate summer intern for the Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly (CARIE). The internship is supported by the Samuel S. Fels Fund, which provides funding for community service organizations in the Philadelphia area. At CARIE, she will develop and implement a needs assessment to inform the development of a new section of the CARIE Caregiver Cyberschool website, a decision-making resource for caregivers of elderly persons. [1 May 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Kimberly Williams has been selected by the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) to receive an Iris and Gene Rotberg Undergraduate Humanities Research Award for Fall 2010. The award provides funds to support her as well as an undergraduate research assistant in their work on "The Jiri Growth and Bone Strength Study." [28 April 2010]

Doctoral student Diane Garbow has been chosen by the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) as a Graduate Associate Fellow for academic year 2010-2011. [23 April 2010]

Faculty member Dr. Naomi Schiller has been chosen to receive the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award for the social sciences. Her dissertation is titled "Don't watch television, make it!" Community Media, the State, and Popular Politics in Caracas, Venezuela. [21 April 2010]

Doctoral student Jessica Rowe's curated exhibit "Excavating Desire: Tastes and Tablewares in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia," hosted by the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT), is on display on the tenth floor of Gladfelter Hall from 5 April through 18 December 2010, Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. [15 April 2010]

Two of our undergraduate anthropology majors, Travis Gerhardt and Layla Schade, are among the thirteen students selected for the inaugural cohort of the ProRanger Philadelphia program. This new program, a partnership between Temple University and the National Park Service, provides a paid summer internship in a national park, professional training, and a guaranteed job as a National Park Service ranger upon graduation. [5 April 2010]

Alumna Dr. Sandhya Ganapathy has been awarded a 2010-2011 University of Wisconsin System Fellowship by the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. [19 March 2010]

Ethnographic Terminalia, the anthropologically informed group exhibition to which doctoral student Anabelle Rodriguez, alumna Stephanie Takaragawa, and faculty member Dr. Jayasinhji Jhala contributed (see three items below), has been selected to be the focus of a roundtable discussion at "The Task of the Curator: Translation, Intervention, and Innovation in Exhibitionary Practice." The conference is scheduled for 14 May 2010 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. [11 February 2010]

Alumnus Dr. Bill Schindler is featured in the Winter 2009 issue of Washington College Magazine. [21 January 2010]

Doctoral student Hülya Hamide Sakarya, in collaboration with Maia Kutateli, has curated an exhibition titled "Holiday Moments: Photographic Essays on the City of Tbilisi." On display at the Georgian National Museum's Ioseb Grishashvili Tbilisi History Museum during the month of January, the exhibition features photographic essays and installations by students of Tbilisi State University. [8 January 2010]

During the month of December 2009, The Ice Box at Crane Arts was the site of an innovative, anthropologically informed group exhibition titled Ethnographic Terminalia. Doctoral student Anabelle Rodriguez was one of the three curators, alumna Stephanie Takaragawa was one of the two organizers, and faculty member Dr. Jayasinhji Jhala was among the artists whose work was featured. [December 2009]

Alumna Dr. Athena McLean has received the Society for Medical Anthropology's New Millennium Book Award for The Person in Dementia: A Study of Nursing Home Care in the US (University of Toronto Press, 2006). The award "recognizes an author whose work is judged to be the most significant and potentially influential contribution to medical anthropology in recent years." [9 December 2009]

Faculty member Dr. Gordon Gray has published his book Cinema: A Visual Anthropology (Berg, 2010). The book is part of the series Key Texts in the Anthropology of Visual and Material Culture (Series Editor: Marcus Banks). [December 2009]

Alumna Dr. Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon's play SHOT! has been selected for the highly competitive Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival 2010. [7 December 2009]

Professor Emeritus Dr. Richard Chalfen has received the Society for Visual Anthropology's Lifetime Achievement Award. The honor is conferred upon individuals whose work is "recognized for its exemplary impact on the field of anthropology." [4 December 2009]

Faculty member Dr. Naomi Schiller has been selected for a 2010-2011 Faculty Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT). Her fellowship project is titled "Spectacular Venezuela: Community Media, the State and Popular Politics." [11 November 2009]

Doctoral student Stas Shectman is the author of a chapter in a recently published volume. "A Celebration of Masterstvo: Professional Cooking, Culinary Art, and the Production of Culture in Russia" appears in Melissa Caldwell (ed.), Food and Everyday Life in the Postsocialist World (Indiana University Press, 2009). [4 November 2009]

Undergraduate anthropology major Sierra Gladfelter and faculty mentor Dr. Jayasinhji Jhala have been awarded funding from Temple's Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) program in support of the project "A Culture of Tourism: The Relationship between Tourists and Natives in Cusco, Peru." This research and ethnographic film project will document the impacts, both positive and negative, that tourism has on the lives of native Peruvians. [2 November 2009]

Professor Emeritus Dr. Jonathan Friedlaender, in collaboration with historian of science Joanna Radin (University of Pennsylvania), has published the book From Anthropometry to Genomics: Reflections of a Pacific Fieldworker (iUniverse, 2009). [November 2009]

Faculty member Dr. Inmaculada García Sánchez has received the Council on Anthropology and Education’s Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her 2009 dissertation from the University of California, Los Angeles is titled Moroccan Immigrant Children in a Time of Surveillance: Navigating Sameness and Difference in Contemporary Spain. According to the award committee, the dissertation "represents excellence in educational ethnographic scholarship on a topic of great significance to the field." [23 October 2009]

Doctoral student Shu-Fan Wen has been awarded a Dissertation Fellowship for Republic of China Students Abroad from Taiwan's Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. The fellowship will support her project "Chinese Medical Research Professionals in the Western Suburban Metropolitan Philadelphia Area and their Return Migration to China: Transnational Citizenships in an Era of Globalization." [15 October 2009]

"Trying to unearth a piece of Timbuctoo history," an article in the Burlington County Times, features the work of faculty member Dr. David Orr and doctoral student Christopher Barton. [4 October 2009]

Faculty member Dr. Paul Garrett's proposal for a new Study Group has been selected for support by the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT). The theme is "Social and Cultural Dynamics of Language Contact: Humanistic Perspectives on Communication across Group Boundaries." This interdisciplinary project, which has both intellectual and programmatic goals, brings together the department’s linguistic anthropologists as well as faculty members from several other departments in three of Temple’s colleges. [2 October 2009]

The Last Rites of the Honourable Mr. Rai, an ethnographic video by faculty member Dr. Jayasinhji Jhala and students Alethea Carbaugh and Lauren Semmel, has been selected for the "International Competition" category of the Astra Film Festival, an international documentary film festival. [31 July 2009]

Faculty member Dr. Raquel Romberg has published her second book: Healing Dramas: Divination and Magic in Modern Puerto Rico (University of Texas Press, 2009). [June 2009]

Doctoral student Beth Uzwiak has been awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in support of her project "Mediating Violence: 'Witnessing Publics,' Nationalism, Gender, and the Ethics of Human Rights Claim-Making in Belize." [6 April 2009]

Faculty member Dr. Anthony Ranere and four colleagues, including alumnae Dr. Dolores Piperno and Dr. Ruth Dickau, have published two important articles in the 31 March 2009 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: "The Cultural and Chronological Context of Early Holocene Maize and Squash Domestication in the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico," PNAS 106(13):5014-5018; and "Starch Grain and Phytolith Evidence for Early Ninth Millennium B.P. Maize from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico," PNAS 106(13):5019-5024. [April 2009]

Alumnus Dr. Timothy Messner is the 2009 recipient of the Society for American Archaeology's annual Dissertation Award. His dissertation is titled Woodland Period People and Plant Interactions: New Insights from Starch Grain Analysis. [16 February 2009]

Doctoral student Elizabeth Rowe has been awarded a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant by the Wenner-Gren Foundation in support of her project "The Role of the Progesterone Receptor in the Menstrual Cycle." [21 October 2008]

Faculty member Dr. Heather Levi has published her book The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity (Duke University Press, 2008). The book has been the subject of favorable reviews in the Latin American Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, and the Stranger. [October 2008]

Department of Anthropology | Gladfelter Hall, second floor | 1115 West Berks Street | Philadelphia, PA 19122
Voice mail: 215-204-7577 Fax: 215-204-1410