Student and Alumni News:
Publications, Conferences, Other Activities
Jose Vasquez is a student in the PhD Program in Anthropology and an adjunct lecturer at John College of Criminal Justice. His dissertation research will focus on the politics of veteran status in contemporary American society. Currently, he is working with Iraq Veterans Against the War on a campaign called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, collecting veteran and civilian testimony. His work is featured in the Washington Independent. A conference held on March 13-16, 2008 at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, MD will highlight these testimonies and illustrate how government and military policies are creating the realities on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers, veterans, and civilians will testify to atrocities they witnessed and/or participated in. Vasquez is heading up the verification team of the Winter Soldier organizing committee.
Anthropology student Adrienne Lotson's sermon
"The Moment of Truth: Leaving the Garden" has been published
in The African American Pulpit’s 10th anniversary
special edition issue (Summer 2007) celebrating the best works
published over the past ten years. She shares this honor
with, among others, Harvard theologian Peter J. Gomes and renowned
sociologist Dr. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes. The African American Pulpit
is a quarterly journal that serves as a repository for the very
best of African American preaching.
Anthropology students Banu Karaca and Ceren
Özgül co-organized an interdisciplinary Graduate
Student Conference entitled “Historical Continuities, Political
Responsibilities: Unsettling Conceptual Blind-Spots in Ottoman
and Turkish Studies” together with other students from the
Graduate Center, Columbia University, and NYU. Addressing the
scholarly and political legacies of Ottoman and national historiographies
in studies of Turkey, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, this
two-day conference featured over 30 presentations by participants
from the U.S., Canada, Turkey and Germany. It was sponsored by
a professional development grant from the Graduate Center’s
Provost’s Office, the Department of Anthropology, the Middle
East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC), the Doctoral
Student Council (DCS), the Middle East Studies Organization (MESO).
Co-hosted by the Wilf Department of Politics (MA Program) at New
York University the conference received additional support from
the Center for International History at Columbia University. For
more information please visit http://unsettlingblindspots.info.
Anthropology student Martha Lincoln has published
an article entitled, "Black Hole, Gulag, Country Club: A
Map of Guantanamo Bay," as well as a review of Mike Davis's
Planet of Slums in the journal Socialism & Democracy.
Anthropology student Chris Caruso has published
a review of Anthony Marcus's Where Have All the Homeless Gone?
in the current issue of Anthropological Quarterly.
David Vine, Anthropology Program alum, published
an article in the Washington Post titled "Island
Of Injustice".
Anthropology Program alum Sylvia Atsalis' research
on menopause in captive gorillas has been in the news recently.
It was in the New
York Times Science section (1/3/06) and was also written
up on the National
Geographic news website.
PhD Program in Anthropology alumni/ae have authored a key study
which shows that Neanderthals were not the ancestors of modern
humans. Katerina Harvati (PhD 2001), Stephen Frost
(PhD 2001), and Kieran P. McNulty (PhD 2003) "combined
their separately-collected data in order to solve a long-held
question in paleoanthropology," writes Professor Eric Delson.
"Are Neanderthals best considered a subspecies of our own species...or
members of a separate species? Their study, based on advanced
methods in statistical analysis of three-dimensional data (geometric
morphometrics) argues forcefully for the latter result." Dr. Harvarti
is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at NYU, Dr. Frost
is a Postdoctoral Associate in Anatomy at the New York College
of Osteopathic Medicine in Old Westbury, and Dr. McNulty is Assistant
Professor of Anthropology at Baylor University in Texas. Their
research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences and has garnered press coverage from The New
York Times and elsewhere.
Be sure to check the March 2004 issue [24(1)] of Critique
of Anthropology, composed entirely of essays by PhD Program
in Anthropology graduate students and graduate students from Teacher's
College. Our writers include Julian Brash and Molly
Hurley and James Trimarco (co-authors), with an opening essay
by Professor Ida Susser.
Telma Camargo da Silva (PhD 2002) and Hugo Benavides
(PhD 1999) were the organizers of the panel "A Pesquisa Antropológica
e o Futuro das Populações com quem se Trabalha:
Uma Reflexão Crítica" at the June 2004 meeting of
the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (ABA),
"Nação e Cicadania." Both presented papers as well:
"Envolvimento, Representação e Poder: o Trabalho
de Campo em Contexto de Sofrimento Social" (da Silva) and "Los
Placeres del Poder: El Pasado y su Visión Hegemónica"
(Benavides). The panel included two other Anthropology Program
alums, Yvonne LaSalle (PhD 1996) and Bernice Kurchin
(1999).
Roberto Abadie is the author of the book Historias
de Picos: Narrativas sobre el consumo de drogas intravenosas en
los tiempos del SIDA, published in 2003 by Frontera Editorial,
Uruguay.
First-year student Alessandro Angelini published "Spaces
of Good Hope: Inscribing Memory, Territory and Urbanity in District
Six, Cape Town" in the Dark Roast Occasional Paper Series
no. 13. Cape Town: Isandla Institute, 2003. His translation from
the French first draft of Between East and West by Luce
Irigary was published by Columbia University Press in 2001.
Ana Aparicio (PhD 2004) is the editor of Living in
the Interim: Immigrants and Welfare Reform in North America,
forthcoming from Greenwood Press. A book, based on her dissertation
on Dominican youth organizing, has been accepted for publication
by the University of Florida Press.
Hugo Benavides (PhD 1999) has had a book published by
Texas University Press.
Julian Brash published "Invoking Fiscal Crisis: Moral
Discourse and Politics in New York City" in Social Text 76,
pp 59-84, 2003, and "The Work of 9-11: Myth, History, and the
Contradictions of the Post-Fiscal Crisis Consensus" in Critique
of Anthropology 24(1), pp 75-99, 2004.
Melanie Bush (PhD 2002) is the author of the book Breaking
the Code of Whiteness, published by Rowan and Littlefield.
She is Associate Editor of the Newsletter of the Section on
Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association.
Gus Carbonella (PhD 1998) is completing work on a book
entitled "Fierce Localism: The Politics of Ethnicity, Class and
Locality in a New England Town."
Arlene Dávila's (PhD 1996) most recent book is
Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City,
published in Spring 2004 by the University of California Press.
Dr. Dávila is Associate Professor of American Studies and
Anthropology at NYU.
Dana Davis (PhD 2001) has had her book, tentatively titled
"Surviving Welfare Reform: The Struggles of Battered Black Women,"
accepted for publication by SUNY Press.
Rebecca de Guzman is co-author of "'Hormones is not Magic
Wands': Ethnography of a Transgender Scene in Oakland, CA" (S.
Eyre, R. de Guzman, A. Donovan, and C. Boissiere) in Ethnography
5(2), 2004.
Susan Falls chaired a panel, "You've Either Got It or
You Don't: Gender, Sexuality, and Flexible Institutions," at the
April 2004 SANA Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. She also presented
a paper, "Bling! The Meaning of Diamonds." Susan was one of two
students to present a talk ("Meaning and Deanger in Postmodern
America") at The Graduate Center's American Studies Certificate
Program Dissertation Colloquium in May 2004.
Nancy Flowers (PhD 1983) and her book, The Xavante
in Transition, were recipients of the 2003 General Anthropology
Award for exemplary cross-field scholarship. The award was presented
at the General Anthropology Division Business Meeting at the annual
meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago,
November 2003.
Kenneth Guest (PhD 2001) is the author of God in Chinatown:
Religion and Survival in New York's Immigrant Community. New
York: NYU Press, 2003.
Rebecca Jabbour co-authored the monograph "Medial mandibular
ramus: ontogenetic, idiosyncratic, and geographic variation in
recent Homo, great apes, and fossil hominids" (GR Richards,
RS Jabbour, JY Anderson). Oxford: British Archaeological Reports,
International Series, 2003.
Nathan Jones is the author of "From Order to Oblast: The
German Presence in Kaliningrad," published in Schatzkammer
27:173-90, 2001.
Marlene Linville is co-editor with Raymundo A.C.F. Dijkhoff
of the book The Archaeology of Aruba: The Marine Shell Heritage.
Oranjstad, Aruba: The Archaeological Museum of Aruba, September
2004.
Adrienne Lotson was selected to present a paper at the
African Studies Association conference, November 11-14, 2004,
in New Orleans. Her paper is "OSWENKA: Fashion Competition as
Protest."
Samuel Marquez (PhD 2002) has an entry in the four-volume
encyclopedia set Countries and Their Cultures (The Gale
Group). Dr. Marquez's contribution was for Colombia, his parents'
country of birth.
Kate McCaffrey (PhD 1999) is the author of Military
Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico,
Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Shannon McFarlin, Johanna Warshaw, graduate Haviva
Goldman (PhD 2001), and Timothy Bromage published "Circularly
polarized light standards for investigations of collagen fiber
orientation in bone" in The Anatomical Record: The New Anatomist
274B:157-168 2003.
Cameron McNeil was featured in the article "Before Kisses
and Snickers, It Was the Treat of Royalty" (The New York Times,
6/10/03), for her work on the Chocolate exhibit at the American
Museum of Natural History. "It is a piece of chocolate the size
of a nickel and more than 1,500 years old, scraped from the bottom
of a pot from an ancient Maya tomb in Honduras," the article begins.
"Cameron L. McNeil...has collected residues, including the one
at the museum, from ceramics found in the tombs of the first rulers
of Copán, a Maya city-state in Honduras founded in the
fifth century." Cameron organized a public seminar on the topic
at the AMNH in June 2003.
Maureen O'Dougherty (PhD 1997) is the author of Consumption
Intensified: The Politics of Middle-Class Life in Brazil,
Duke University Press, 2002.
Warren Perry (PhD 1996), Associate Director for Archaeology
for the African Burial Ground Project, played an integral role
in the African Burial Ground Reinterment Tribute held on October
3rd, 2003, at the Wall Street Pier and African Burial Ground Memorial
Site in New York. The event was the culmination of years of research
studying the remains of individuals from the burial ground. Dr.
Perry is on the Anthropology faculty at Central Connecticut State
University.
2000 graduate Sabyiha Prince's book on Harlem's middle
class has been published by Routledge.
Gerald Sawyer was a featured participant on Connecticut
Public Television's broadcast, "Slavery & Freedom in New England."
The 90-minute program, which aired February 9, 2003, featured
six historians and educators, including Gerald, whose work explores
the transatlantic slave trade and Connecticut's role in it. On
the CPTV show, Gerald discussed his research on a large plantation
worked by slaves in 18th Century southeastern Connecticut. An
article based on work he presented at a conference at the University
of Michigan was included in the 2003 volume on African Diaspora
Archaeology by the University of Michigan Press.
Katrina Scott was an organizer of the Black Feminisms
conference, sponsored by the Africana Studies Group, at The Graduate
Center on March 12, 2004.
Gerald Scharfenberger has published extensively in 2004.
Articles in print or forthcoming are: "A Needle in a Haystack:
A Late Woodland Site in a Cell Tower Footprint" in Bulletin
of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey, Vol. 56; "People
Who Work in Glass Houses: The Eighteenth-Century Stanger Glassworks"
in Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey,
Vol. 57; "Recent Evidence for Broad Window Glass in 17th and 18th-Century
America" in Historical Archaeology, 2004, Vol. 38, no.
4, pp 58-71; "Stoneware Vessels on the Iowa Frontier: The Early
19th-Century Frazier-Hiatt Site" in Journal of the Iowa Archaeological
Society, 2004; "Archaeology, Compliance and the Section 106
Process" (co-authored with Robert Jacoby) in Environmental
Law in New York, September 2004, Vol. 15, no. 9, pp 179-183;
and "Remnants of Testing at the Sandy Hook Proving Grounds, Sandy
Hook, New Jersey" in Scientific Instruments and Warfare,
edited by Steven A. Walton. Boston: Brill Academic Publishing.
In press.
Cosimo Sgarlata published an article about his field research
in Hamden, Connecticut, in the Connecticut Historical Preservation
Commission Newsletter. The field work included the discovery
of a previously unidentified Middle Archaic site (7,000-8,000
years old).
First-year student Matthew Sharpe presented a paper at
the conference "Trading Cultures: Migration and Multiculturalism
in Contemporary Europe" held at Rutgers University in December
2004. His paper was entitled "Transnational North Africans and
the Liminal Imaginary."
Rob Siebert is the student representative to the New York
Academy of Sciences' Anthropology Section.
Nandini Sikand has a review of Media Worlds (Ginsburg,
Abu-Lughod, Larkin, eds) in the Fall 2004 edition of Visual
Anthropology Review.
Aysecan Terzioglu co-edited an issue (titled "Istanbul's
Health") of the semi-academic journal Istanbul. In addition,
her article "Conception of Anatolia by the Doctors who Studied
Medicine in Istanbul" appeared in the journal in January 2004.
Aysecan taught a session, "Qualitative Research Methods," at a
seminar in April 2004 at the Florence Nightingale College for
Nurses in Istanbul and moderated a panel in January 2004 titled
"Health Issues in Today's Istanbul."
Bea Vidacs (PhD 2002) has an article, "The Image of France
in the Cameroonian Football Imagination" scheduled for publication
in Football in Africa, Giulianotti and Armstrong, eds.
Another article, "Postcolonialism and the Level Playing Field
in the 1998 World Cup," will appear in Postcolonialism and
Sport, John Bale and Mike Cronin, eds., Oxford.
David Vine received a 3rd Place award from the Independent
Press Association / New York Ethnic and Community Press Awards
for his article "Billions for Brooklyn—No Questions Asked:
The Borough's New Power Brokers" in the Winter 2003 issue of Brooklyn
Rail.
Danielle Whittaker, Susan Lappan of NYU, and graduate
Elena Cunningham (PhD 2003) co-organized the symposium
"Wild Gibbons as Members of Populations: New Perspectives on Small
Ape Socioecology, Population Genetics, Phylogeography, and Conservation"
at the International Primatological Society's biennial meeting
in Turin, Italy, in August 2004.