The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce the 2018 student award winners!  Undergraduate awards were distributed at the Honors and Awards Luncheon on Friday, April 27. Full award descriptions are included below. We are so proud of our many impressive and engaged students!

Left to right: Becky Lebeaux, Diana Cagliero, Klamath Henry, Aditi Majoe, Amelia Howell

2018 Anthropology Student Awards

Undergraduate

• Outstanding Senior Award: Diana Cagliero
• Outstanding Junior Award: Klamath Henry and Aditi Majoe
• Trevor E. Stokol Award for Outstanding Research: Rebecca Lebeaux for her honors thesis project “100 Years Later: Modeling Why a Modern-Day Influenza Pandemic Would Still Disproportionately Affect Low and Middle-Income Countries”
• Marjorie Shostak Prize for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnographic Writing: Amelia Howell for her honors thesis project “Booty Hop and the Snake: Race, Gender, and Identity in an Atlanta Strip Club”

Graduate

Left to Right: Ioulia Fenton, Bisan Salhi, Syndey Silverstein

• Marjorie Shostak Prize for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnographic Writing: Bisan Salhi, for her dissertation “Diagnosis Homeless: Emergency department ‘super-utilizers’ and urban poverty in Atlanta, Georgia”, and Sydney Silverstein, for her dissertation “What Comes Between Coca and Cocaine: Haunted Boundaries and Troubled Transformations in the Peruvian Amazon”.
• George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student: Bisan Salhi and Ioulia Fenton

Award Descriptions:

Outstanding Senior

For an Anthropology senior who has shown significant achievement in their undergraduate career, both academically as well as through extraordinary engagement and/or service relevant to their study in Anthropology.

Outstanding Junior

For an Anthropology junior who shows great promise at this stage in their undergraduate career, both academically as well as through extraordinary engagement and/or service relevant to their study in Anthropology. 

Trevor E. Stokol Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research

Funded by multiple donors, the Trevor E. Stokol award honors the life of Trevor Stokol, an Emory anthropology undergraduate who was preparing to enter medical school when he went missing on Mt. Everest in July 2005. The Stokol award is made annually to an Emory undergraduate student with the best senior research project that may include a Senior Honors Thesis. A memorial for Trevor stated: “Trevor Eric Stokol died “living his dream” with camera in hand near Mt. Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Tenacious and resilient, strong physically, emotionally and in truth, he lived an impassioned and full life. Trevor was a graduate of RMA and Emory University and was about to start medical school, no doubt to serve the disadvantaged. He lived his 25 years with gusto, knew no stranger and died at peace with himself and the world around him.”

Marjorie Shostak Prize for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnographic Writing

In 1999 The Department of Anthropology announced the establishment of the “Marjorie Shostak Prize” to be awarded each year to an Emory student whose paper reflects original research on some aspect of human life experience.  The prize commemorates the life and work of Marjorie Shostak, author of Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981, republished 2000) and the sequel Return to Nisa (Harvard, 2000). These works were highly praised for the immediacy of the writing, the personal character of the ethnographic encounters, and the complete absence of jargon, without any sacrifice of anthropological accuracy or validity. The presence of the ethnographer as an individual in these writings gave the reader an opportunity to take her perspective and biases into account in evaluating the descriptions and interviews.

The award is bestowed on papers/theses that take a direct, personal approach to ethnography, without sacrificing validity or analysis, in keeping with the spirit of Shostak’s work. In the best submissions, human beings will come alive on the page, giving the reader a strong experience of the culture those people belong to. The writer will also attempt to analyze or interpret the experience, but with a minimum of jargon.

George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

This annual award is to recognize graduate students in Anthropology who have demonstrated excellence in undergraduate teaching during their time at Emory. One goal of our graduate program is to develop the teaching skills of all doctoral students.  This is part of our requirements for the PhD and is actualized through the LGS TATOO program, required teaching assistantships and the teaching roundtables.  This award is given based on a student’s record in teaching and contributions to the undergraduate program over the entire span of their career at Emory.  The award is funded through an endowment set up by the late Professor George Armelagos – a distinguished scholar, teacher, and mentor.  It was his desire that the department recognize graduate students who are exceptional teachers, and that this recognition might help them on the job market.