Category: Alumni

Anthropology PhD Student Sasha Tycko unveils her exhibition of photographs, “Ways of the Atlanta Forest” to the public.

The Anthropology department just celebrated the opening of “Ways of the Atlanta Forest,” an exhibition of photographs by one of our PhD candidates, Sasha Tycko (C’19). The exhibition is based on Tycko’s dissertation research, which focuses on the life of the “Atlanta forest,” the site of intense conflict over the City of Atlanta’s plan to build a police training complex known as “Cop City.” Over two years, Tycko lived and worked in the forest, using a range of media, including analogue photography, to explore how the abandoned forest landscape—formerly the site of a city prison farm and a slave plantation—motivates new articulations of history, nature, and ethics. Working with the visual language of landscape photography, Tycko’s photographs cast the landscape as a layered repository of history and imagination.

This exhibition inaugurates the Department of Anthropology’s new exhibition space, which is meant to foster dialogue across campus and stimulate debate about what might constitute an engaged anthropology.

There will be a public discussion about “Ways of the Atlanta Forest” between Sasha Tycko and Jason Francisco (Film & Media, Visual Arts) on March 19th, from 1:00pm – 2:30pm in Anthropology building room 206. All photographs are gelatin silver prints handmade by Tycko in Emory’s chemical darkroom.

Sasha Tycko also recently published an essay based on her dissertation research, “Not One Tree,” in n+1 magazine.

Emory Anthropology Alumnae Joanna Davidson ’07 and Dinah Hannaford ’14 edit volume publication, Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World.

Emory Anthropology alumnae Joanna Davidson ’07 and Dinah Hannaford ’14 joined forces to publish an edited volume, Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World (Rutgers University Press 2022). The book gathers ethnographic accounts of women moving away from conventional marital arrangements in countries all over the world. From Brazil to Botswana, the contributors examine the conditions that make this widespread – although locally variable – phenomenon possible and consider what the implications of opting out might be, both for marriage itself and for the anthropological study of it.

Postdoctoral Graduate Scott Schnur published in Nature Energy for co-authored article, A Framework to Centre Justice in Energy Transition Innovations.

Postdoctoral Graduate, Scott Schnur collaborated with researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other universities published an article in Nature Energy titled A Framework to Centre Justice in Energy. In the article, Scott and his colleagues discuss the important role of community engagement as a tool to promote equity in the green Energy Transition. They propose a framework that developers, planners, government officials, and other stakeholders can use in order to promote energy justice and inclusivity in the critical work that lies ahead in transforming our grid and combating climate change. Scott says, “The article continues my interest in exploring ways to promote equity and justice in relation to emergent climate futures.”

Check out the write up from NREL here!

PhD Student Will Boose has First Peer-reviewed Article Published in Top Social Sciences and Humanities Journal, Histórica.

“Will Boose‘s article offers an ambitious, though still fragmented, history of motorcycle taxis in Peru. It offers three central arguments. First, it highlights that motorcycle taxi drivers have played a fundamental role in the production of urban space. Second, it argues that state, elite, and popular discourses about “informality” and the “modern city” stigmatize motorcycle taxi drivers in ways that are classist and racialized, targeting them for strict policing. Finally, it suggests that if we think with motorcycle taxi drivers and the materiality of motorcycle taxis, we can reveal the contradictions inherent to the “formal”-“informal”, and “modern”-“non-modern” binaries and thus more lucidly analyze urban space and relations.”

Histórica, based in Peru, is aimed at researchers and a specialized public and publishes works evaluated by peers that constitute an original contribution to the knowledge of Peruvian, Andean, and Amazonian history, as well as Latin American history and global history directly related to the history of the Andean region. In addition to works on history and ethnohistory, the journal includes works on art history, historical anthropology, historical linguistics, historical geography, historical demography, memory studies, and every other discipline, subdiscipline, and field of study in the Humanities and Sciences.

Check out the article here!

Emory Anthropology senior Gracie Wilson wins Lambda Alpha Senior Scholarship

Anthropology BA graduate Gracie Wilson (Ox’21, C’23) is the national first place recipient of the Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society Senior Scholarship, including $5,000 to help fund her graduate study in anthropology. Each Lambda Alpha chapter may put forward one nominee for the senior scholarship each year. Nominees must be Anthropology majors, Lambda Alpha members, and plan to attend graduate school in Anthropology. The last time Emory’s chapter nominee was selected as the national winner was in 2002.

Gracie was selected as the nominee for Emory’s Lambda Alpha chapter (Beta of Georgia) based on her excellence and leadership in anthropology research. Her senior honors thesis, “The Culture of College Mental Health”, supervised by Oxford professor Alicia DeNicola and ECAS professor Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, began as a research project at Emory’s Oxford College with the goal of better understanding student mental health from an ethnographic approach. The project expanded as Gracie led a team of fellow undergraduate students, and continued across Emory’s two campuses once Gracie transitioned to Emory College and joined the honors program. The team’s findings provide insight into student mental health cultures and how student mental health is created through a series of shared values, narratives, and identities. The work has been presented at the Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference at Valdosta State University and is currently being developed for publication.  

As a graduate student at the University of Chicago pursuing a PhD in Comparative Human Development, Gracie will continue to use anthropological inquiry to explore the ways in which we understand and support college students as they navigate disability, illness, and managed care across educational settings. She is also passionate about the ways anthropology can collaborate with other disciplines– namely with social work, counseling, and the clinical space.

Gracie graduated from Emory this May with Highest Honors in Anthropology, with a concentration in Power, Identity, and Social Justice.

Laney Graduate School PhD Candidate, William Boose, Wins a Fulbright

William Boose, Laney Graduate School PhD candidate in Anthropology, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for the 2023-2024 academic year to study in Peru.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program and is supported by the U.S. and partner countries around the world. More than 2,000 diverse U.S. students, artists, and early career professionals in more than 100 different fields of study receive Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards annually to study, teach English, and conduct research overseas.

In his Fulbright-funded dissertation research in Peru, titled “Motorcycle Taxis and Urban Modernity: A Comparative Study in Lima and Iquitos,” Boose will critically study the governance of mototaxis (motorcycle taxis) as situated within broader notions of urban “modernity” and “development” in two cities.

Read the full article here!

Anthropology Honors Students 2023

Congratulations to our 2023 Anthropology honors students! We wish you all the absolute best in your future endeavors!

You can read more about this year’s honors students and their projects on our 2023 Honor Students page.

Hunter Akridge
Thesis Title: Contesting the Cultural Politics of Care: How Equitable Digital Care Platforms Reimagine the Future of Work

Rachel Broun
Thesis Title: Enacting Solidarity and Negotiating Fictive Kinship: The Legal Consciousness of Black Women Working in the Criminal Legal System

Pamela Chopra Beniwal
Thesis Title: The Effect of Commercialization, Militarization, and Stigmatization of the Breast Cancer Awareness Movement on Breast Cancer Patients

Lucia Buscemi
Thesis Title: Footprints of the Roof of the World: Navigating the Impacts of Anthropogenic Activities in the Everest Region

Naomi Gonzalez-Garcia
Thesis Title: Constellations of Un-Matter(ing) & Matter(ing) through Atlanta’s Black Spaces: Anthropological Perspectives on Housing and Relationality

Ruth Korder
Thesis Title: Detecting Human Adaptations in Populations of the Andean Highlands

Danielle Mangabat
Thesis Title: Confronting Colonial Legacies: Imagining a Decolonial Future in the Philippines through Reproductive Health

Natalie McGrath
Thesis Title: Recentering the Voices of Pregnant-People and Birth Workers; Narratives of Childbirth

Atlas Moss
Thesis Title: Vocal Recognition and Social Knowledge in captive Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus apella)

Alvaro Perez Daisson
Thesis Title: Race-related Health Disparities in the Context of COVID-19

Tanvi Shah
Thesis Title: (Re)constructing Postpartum Depression (PPD) via Cross-Specialty Analysis and an Anthropological Lens of Subjectivity 

Krithika Shrinivas
Thesis Title: Stone Tools and Sociality: Potential Effects of Conversation and Hobbies on Lithic Quality

Lizzy Wagman
Thesis Title: Genome-wide patterns of selection in pre- and post-European contact Caribbean populations

Amy Wang
Thesis Title: The Impacts of Social Media on Young Adults’ Body Images in the United States

Sam Weinstein
Thesis Title: Vocal Clues to Diabetes Mellitus: Exploring the Ethics and Tech of AI in Clinical Practice

Gracie Wilson
Thesis Title: The Culture of College Mental Health: Narratives of Stress, Value, and Belonging 

Christopher Zeuthen
Thesis Title: Qualitative Examination of Veteran Perspectives on Moral Injury

Anthropology Student Awards 2023

2023 Undergraduate Student Awards

The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce our 2023 student award winners! For award descriptions and past winners, visit our Departmental Awards webpage. We are so proud of our many impressive students!

Outstanding Senior Award: Hunter Akridge, Rachel Broun

Outstanding Junior Award: Elizabeth Whiteside

Marjorie Shostak Award for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnography:

  • Pamela Beniwal  for her honors thesis “The Effect of Commercialization, Militarization, and Stigmatization of the Breast Cancer Awareness Movement on Breast Cancer Patients”, advised by Mel Konner.
  • Audrey Lu for her ANT 372W class project “The Lives of Charting: An Emergency Room Scribe’s Perspective (ANT 372W project)”, advised by Anna Grimshaw.
  • Alvaro Perez Daisson for his honors thesis “Race-related Health Disparities in Cuba in the Context of COVID-19”, advised by Mel Konner and Kristin Phillips.
  • Christopher Zeuthen for his honors thesis “Veteran Perspectives on Moral Injury”, advised by Mel Konner.

Photo from left to right: Professor Robert Paul, Christopher Zeuthen, Professor Melvin Konner, Audrey Lu, Alvaro Perez Daisson, and Pamela Beniwal.

Trevor E. Stokol Scholarship for Undergraduate Research:

  • 1st Place: Eric Li
  • Maddie Hasson
  • Raya Islam (not pictured)

2023 Graduate Student Awards

The George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student: AJ Jones, Caroline Owens

Delores P. Aldridge Award: Adrian Cato

Graduate Sophie Joseph and Professor John Lindo reveal results of genomic study of ancient Andeans.

The Lindo lab specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas. 

Previously published research found evidence of the tuberculosis bacterium in the skeletal material of 1,400-year-old Andean mummies, contradicting some theories that TB did not exist in South America until the arrival of Europeans 500 years ago. 

The current paper provides the first evidence for a human immune-system response to TB in ancient Andeans and gives clues to when and how their genomes may have adapted to that exposure.

Among the strongest signals detected were for biomarkers that are switched on in modern humans during an active TB infection. The researchers modeled the timing of selection for several of the genes involved in the TB-response pathways. Although they were not as strong as for exposure to TB, some signals were also detected for biomarkers related to adaptation to hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen in the blood that result from living at high altitude.

“Human-pathogen co-evolution is an understudied area that has a huge bearing on modern-day public health,” Sophie Joseph says. “Understanding how pathogens and humans have been linked and affecting each other over time may give insights into novel treatments for any number of infectious diseases.”

Read the full article here.

Alumni Moyukh Chatterjee publishes book, Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities

In 2002, armed Hindu mobs attacked Muslims in broad daylight in the west Indian state of Gujarat. The pogrom, which was widely seen over television, left over one thousand dead. In Composing Violence, Moyukh Chatterjee examines how highly visible political violence against minorities acts as a catalyst for radical changes in law, public culture, and power. He shows that, far from being quashed through its exposure by activists, media and politicians, state-sanctioned anti-Muslim violence set the stage for transforming India into a Hindu supremacist state. The state and civil society’s responses to the violence, Chatterjee contends, reveal the constitutive features of modern democracy in which riots and pogroms are techniques to produce a form of society based on a killable minority and a triumphant majority. Focusing on courtroom procedures, police archives, legal activism, and mainstream media coverage, Chatterjee theorizes violence as a form of governance that creates minority populations. By tracing the composition of anti-Muslim violence and the legal structures that transform that violence into the making of minorities and majorities, Chatterjee demonstrates that violence is intrinsic to liberal democracy.

“In this powerful book, Moyukh Chatterjee gives us a brief, elegant, and novel way of thinking about violence.” – Nancy Rose Hunt, author of Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo.

Available here! Use coupon code E23CHTTR to save 30% when you order from www.dukeupress.edu.