Category: Cultural Anthropology

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!

Dr. Elizabeth Lonsdorf Elected as a 2023 Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society.

Dr. Elizabeth Lonsdorf has been elected as a 2023 Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society. The Animal Behavior Society (ABS) is a non-partisan, non-profit, professional organization dedicated to promoting and advancing the scientific study of animal behavior, and to creating an inclusive scientific environment that supports a diverse membership. Fellows are members who have engaged in research in animal behavior for at least ten years and who in the opinion of the elected officers and current Fellows of the society have made distinguished contributions to the field.

Congratulations Dr. Lonsdorf!

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.

Professor Chikako Ozawa-de Silva awarded 2023 Stirling Book Prize for her book The Anatomy of Loneliness.

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva was honored with the 2023 Stirling Book Prize from the Society for Psychological Anthropology for her most recent book, The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan during the Biennial Society for Psychological Anthropology Conference in San Diego. This is her third book prize this academic year for The Anatomy of Loneliness.

One of the two nominators for this book referred to it aptly as a “beautiful and haunting look at the human need for connection, purpose and the consequences of living in a society that increasingly silos us from each other.” The committee found her book theoretically and empirically rich, carefully analyzed, and beautifully written. The contribution to psychological anthropology is clear and profound, and it also touches on a highly relevant subject of our time with cross-disciplinary implications and implications for society at large: namely, young adults’ experiences of loneliness. Professor Ozawa-De Silva explores the concept of the “lonely society” to analyze and convey the power that societies can have in making “people feel uncared for, unseen, and unimportant” – an issue of global relevance and an innovative contribution to contemporary studies in psychological anthropology on the loss of self and suicide.

Despite the book’s focus on a particular field and particular actors (young adults in Japan), the book’s major asset is to link the analysis of this particular case to wider discourses about the interconnections between inter/subjectivity, empathy, and society. The book thus has a huge potential to help us think through interlinkages between societies in general and the phenomenon of loneliness. The last chapter “What loneliness can teach us” is masterful: the author uses her ethnographic knowledge in a critical and socially committed way to shows what might be taken from this study to improve the well-being of people in general who severely suffer from the current and rising “lonely society”.

Congratulations to Chikako for this outstanding contribution!

Obtain your copy of The Anatomy of Loneliness here!

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

New Center for Native and Indigenous Studies set to launch in Fall 2023

Emory College of Arts and Sciences is set to launch a new Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies this fall to advance and inspire research, scholarship, teaching and learning rooted in and related to Indigenous studies.

In conjunction with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and through seven years of ongoing work by an interdisciplinary group involving dozens of faculty, students and staff including Dr. Craig Womack (emeritus, English), Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery (History), Associate Dean Beth Michel (OUA), Anthropology alumna Klamath Henry (C19), current Anthropology seniors Iliyah Bruffett (C23) and Sierra Talavera Brown (C23), and Anthropology faculty member Dr. Debra Vidali, Emory University is launching a Center for Native and Indigenous Studies in Fall 2023.  

Check out the full article here!

Anthropology major Maddie Hasson, along with three Emory juniors win elite Goldwater Scholarships.

Four extraordinary Emory College juniors — Jojo Liu, Yingrong “Momo” Chen, Maddie Hasson, and Tamecka Marcheau-Miller — have won the Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s top scholarship for undergraduates studying math, natural sciences and engineering. This year’s winners, who have made major contributions in labs and authored or co-authored papers on their research, all plan to pursue doctoral degrees in their respective fields. They join 45 previous Emory recipients of the award, which was endowed by Congress in 1986 to honor the late Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Maddie Hasson is an Anthropology major and rising senior honors student who also won the Trevor E. Stokol scholarship for her undergraduate research.

Congratulations Maddie and to everyone on outstanding academic achievements!

Read the full article and winners’ biographies here!

Anthropology major Andrea Lopez and classmates create The Emory 1836 Project, highlighting Emory origins and history of the deportation of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples.

The Emory 1836 Project is a dynamic digital humanities website, created by students in the Reparative History at Emory course, that re-centers the university’s origins within the historical context of the forced deportation of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples from Georgia and the national expansion of slavery. Student archival research, place-based study, ethnographic research, and community storytelling for the Emory 1836 Project investigate how the legacies of slavery and dispossession structured institutional culture and practices from the university’s founding through the present-day. This reparative history project recognizes the active presence and contributions of Black and Indigenous peoples throughout Emory University’s history. The project is a living document that will expand as other students add to it in future semesters.

Check out the website for stories, archival documents, interview clips, and maps of significant events in the history of Emory’s main campus and Oxford campus.

This project was a product of the HIST-488RW/AMST-489: Reparative History at Emory course taught in Spring 2023 by Dr. Michael Mortimer.

Klamath Henry featured in Carlos Museum wing for Art of the Americas: 3/SISTERS/RESILIENCY/PROJECT

One of our undergraduate students, Klamath Henry, has her work featured in the wing for Art of the Americas within the Carlos Museum. A touch screen there connects to 3 / S I S T E R S / R E S I L I E N C Y / P R O J E C T which was developed in Fall 2017 as part of an project for an independent research course taught by Dr. Debra Vidali. This project presents photography, poetry, and ethnographic documentation of Tuscarora Nation resiliency and relations to land.

Please take the time to visit this outstanding project and congratulations to Klamath Henry!

Chikako and Brendan Ozawa-de Silva’s piece “A Vaccine for the Loneliness Epidemic” was featured in the Special Issue of Diplomatic Courier for the World Economic Forum

In 2018, then UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “Loneliness is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time,” and appointed the country’s first minister for loneliness. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness a “growing health epidemic,” stating that social isolation is “associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

What do the following have in common? Rising rates of social anxiety and social withdrawal, alarming rates of suicide (up 51% among teenage girls in the U.S. in just a two-year period from 2019-2021, and up over 300% over a ten-year period), the increasing number of mass shootings, the epidemic of burnout in healthcare and other sectors, eating disorders. All too often, at the heart of each of these is a lack of social connection and the feeling of being loved, accepted, and understood. This is loneliness. Education is the most powerful tool we have for bringing about this change. Recent research in psychology and neuroscience shows that young children and even infants have a natural orientation towards kindness and helping over cruelty.

Read the full article here!

Check out Chikako’s interview about her book, The Anatomy of Loneliness.