Category: Alumni

Alexa Dietrich (PhD, 2007) publishes article on Puerto Rico

Dietrich and her co-authors, Adriana María Garriga-López and Claudia Sofía Garriga-López, point out in the article that the state Puerto Rico is currenlty in after the recent hurricanes cannot be seen without taking into account the history of this US territory. They cite mismanagement such as “extractivism, monoculture, and poor waste management”, as well as the so called Jones Act as unnatural disaster that strike the island.

The authors offer a vision for the future: “What vulnerable communities need is an infrastructure of sustainable economic development and reliable everyday public services so their existing adaptive capacities can be strengthened and supported.”

Dietrich wrote her dissertation on “The Corporation Next Door: Pharmaceutical Companies in Community, Health and the Environment in Puerto Rico”.

Isabella Alexander (2016, PhD) publishes article on migrant crisis

African asylum seekers - Alphonse Ngiaba shows the author official papers stating that his application for asylum was still under consideration in Spain. Despite these documents, he had been picked up and deported.
Alexander with Alphonse Ngiaba, Morocco.

Dr. Isabella Alexander, anthropologist and filmmaker, published an article on the Wenner-Gren Foundation website Sapiens. She describes some of her experiences during her research on the migrant crisis. She has traveled extensively while working on her documentary The Burning: An Untold Story from the Other Side of the Migrant Crisis.

African asylum seekers - Sprawling, makeshift camps in the mountains of northern Morocco are home to large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans who await their chance to cross into Spain.
Makeshift camps in the mountains of Morocco.

Riche Barnes (PhD, 2009) is named dean of Yale’s Pierson College

Barnes is currently the assistant dean of social sciences and a professor of sociocultural anthropology at Endicott College. She wrote her dissertation on “Still Uplifting the Race: Black Professional Wives and the Career and Family Debate.” Her most recent book “Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood and Community” won the 2017 Race, Gender, and Class Section Book Award from the American Sociological Association.

 

 

Alumni Spotlight: Molly Zuckerman’s Research on a Forgotten Cemetery

Dr. Molly Zuckerman (PhD, 2010), Associate Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University, has been making the news lately. After 7,000 bodies were found buried under the University of Mississippi Medical Center, she has been involved in exhuming and studying the skeletal remains and the asylum’s health records.

lead_960The cemetery was part of the Mississippi State Asylum, which was operational from 1855 to 1935, an era in which psychiatric asylums were common throughout the United States. Dr. Zuckerman has drawn conclusions about the health of the asylum patients from the archives of the asylum’s discharge records. These records are allowing Zuckerman and other historians and anthropologists in the Asylum Hill Research Consortium to form a database of individuals who were buried there. They have received many inquiries from family members about ancestors whom they think died at the asylum, and the Consortium’s hope is that people will be able to readily access the information.

Zuckerman also hopes to exhume more of the bodies in order to learn more about health and the diagnosis of madness in the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries. The bones could provide information about the diseases, malnutrition, or living conditions of the patients. Zuckerman’s research focuses on the bio-social determinants of health inequalities. Her dissertation at Emory was an evolutionary, social, and ecological history of syphilis in England. Since syphilis was a common cause of insanity, Zuckerman’s expertise positions her well to conduct research at this site.

Several master’s students at Mississippi State have already analyzed the exhumed bones to make conclusions about health. One student used genetic sequencing to reconstruct oral bacteria from skeletons. Another student studied tooth enamel to make conclusions about nutritional deprivation and severe stress. Yet another student found evidence of pellagra, a disease caused by Vitamin B deficiency, in both asylum records and skeletons.

The stories of the patients buried at the Mississippi State Asylum are sure to unfold in the next few years, and we look forward to Dr. Zuckerman’s contributions.

Alumni Spotlight: Dinah Hannaford on Migration and Marriage

Dinah Hannaford (PhD, 2014), Assistant Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University, has two major accomplishments coming up this year. Her first book, Marriage Without Borders: Transnational Spouses in Neoliberal Senegal, will be published in July, and she will be embarking on a Humboldt Fellowship in Germany in the Fall.

Hannaford_book cover

Dr. Hannaford’s book, Marriage Without Borders, is based on ten years of ethnographic research in Senegal and Europe. She examines the dynamics of transnational marriages: Senegalese men living in Europe who are married to Senegalese women back home. Her ethnographic study of these marital relationships shows how they reshape kinship, Islamic piety, and family care. Hannaford argues that “neoliberal globalization and its imperative for mobility extend deep into the family and the heart and stretch relationships across borders.” The book is a revised version of the dissertation research that she conducted while at Emory.

Dr. Hannaford has also been awarded the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the 2017-18 academic year. She will be hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and will work on a new research project about international development, domestic work, and return migration. We are excited to see her new contribution to these topics!

Dr. Vicki Bentley-Condit qualifies as 4-star member of the Boston 50 Running Club

MtCharlestonApr17.jpg
Dr. Vicki Bentley-Condit, Mt. Charleston Marathon, April 2017

One of Emory Anthropology’s first alumna, Dr. Vicki Bentley-Condit (’95PhD), qualified as a 4-star member of the Boston 50 Running Club. She is currently serving as Department Chair of Anthropology at Grinnell College and is a passionate runner. She gave us an update on her running:

“My first race – ever – was the Peachtree 10k on July 4, 1995. Two days later, I defended my dissertation and three weeks after that, I moved to Iowa. All these years later, I have completed 70 marathons/ultras and an unknown quantity of other distances. I finished my 50 States + DC pursuit in January at the Maui Oceanfront Marathon with my family in attendance. I am currently working on a 50 < 4 (marathons in all 50 states with a finish time of less than 4 hrs) and a 50 BQ (a marathon with a Boston qualifying time in all 50 states) with 12 and 9 states, respectively, remaining on those two goals. I hope to complete those by the end of 2018 and my concurrent goal of 100 marathons/ultras maybe by the end of 2020. After that, who knows? I might branch out to run internationally, perhaps finishing the World Majors or even the seven continents. We’ll see.”

Emory Anthropology offers her best wishes in her many races!

Capture.PNG
Dr. Vicki Bentley-Condit, celebrating with her family after her Marathon in Hawaii, January 2017

Jennifer Mascaro finds that a toddler’s gender influences the brain responses and behavior of fathers

Jennifer Mascaro (PhD, Emory Anthropology) published a study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience based on work she did as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor James Rilling.

The study found differences in behavior fathers showed their children, depending on the child’s gender, from response time to commonly used terminology. The split between fathers of sons and fathers of daughters was also present during brain scans employed in the study. Faced with different pictures, fathers of daughters reacted strongly to pictures of their daughters with happy expressions, while fathers of sons’ strongest reactions were to pictures of their child showing a neutral expression. (eScienceCommons)

Anthropology graduate Jessica Bertram receives Alan Rackoff Prize

story_main.jpg

Anthropology graduate Jessica Bertram (BA, Anthropology and Human Biology/Dance & Movement Studies) receives Alan Rackoff Prize for her dance project “She fell, but felt no fear.”

Bertram based her project on research done in the Rose Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory. “I collected a lot of African American materials such as photos, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, books, poems, obituaries and music selections ranging from the late 1800s to the late 1900s.”

She was also selected to perform at the American College Dance Association Conference with Cherry Fung. For more, visit the Emory News Center.

(Photo by Lauren Lindeen)