Category: Cultural Anthropology

Kristen Kaufman (19C) is recognized as student employee of the year

Emory-7264.jpgKristen graduated in May with highest honors in Anthropology and also minored in Sustainability. She has worked with the Office of Sustainability Initiative on the zero waste policies.

“I have learned so much about how to make change happen thanks to the sustainability initiatives at Emory. Through collaborating with administrators, faculty, staff, and student peers in the process of working towards a sustainable Emory, I have met inspiring people across the University and forged connections that contribute not only to my sense of place but also to my professional development.

Through working as a student employee with the Office, I have also been able to understand the links between my education in the classroom and real-world translation and application. I think people are so fundamental to understanding sustainability and sustainable outcomes, so studying anthropology has been as necessary supplement to my sustainability work and a fundamental influence in my thinking. Both working with OSI and studying anthropology were invaluable for my skills development, my understanding of people and the world around me, and the evolution of my sustainable vision for the future.”

Congratulations Kristen!

Anthropology Major Farah Al Chammas receives prestigious 2019 Bobby Jones Scholarship

Al_Chammas_Farah (1)Anthropology and Human Biology Major Farah Al Chammas is one of four outstanding Emory seniors who will be attending the University of St. Andrews in Scotland on the Bobby Jones Scholarship.

“Emory has changed my life in every possible way and the Bobby Jones Scholarship is ensuring that that continues beyond my time at Emory. [At the University of St. Andrews] I will be pursuing a Masters in International Development Practice, which is an interdisciplinary degree that allows me to enjoy the taste of Emory’s liberal arts nature that I so loved and capitalized on as an undergraduate. It is an honor to be a representative for this institution that has opened my world so I can grow and give back to Emory itself and beyond.”

Congratulation Farah!

Bruce Knauft’s research on dream yoga has been featured on Psychology Today

Dr. Knauft presented his work at the biennial conference of the The Society for Psychological Anthropology (SPA)  in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico in early April. He  explored how the practices of dream yoga and deity-identification among practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism produce qualities of consciousness that Western psychologists have recently recognized as “lucid dreaming.” (Psychology Today)

Klamath Henry (19C) receives Brittain Award

Unknown.jpegThe Department of Anthropology is thrilled to report that Klamath Henry (19C) is the recipient of the prestigious Marion Luther Brittain undergraduate student award at Emory University.  The Brittain Award, generally acknowledged to be the highest honor bestowed on a student by Emory University, is presented each year to two graduating students – one graduate and one undergraduate – from any of the nine academic divisions of the university. These students are considered to have performed the most “significant, meritorious and devoted service to Emory University, with no expectations of recognition or reward.” The award is made under provisions of a gift by the late Dr. M. L. Brittain, former President of Georgia Institute of Technology and an alumnus of Emory.

Klamath’s awards and accomplishments are numerous.  This Spring, Klamath was recognized as a “100 Senior Honorary” by the Emory University Alumni Association and as a “2019 Graduating Women of Excellence” by the Center for Women at Emory.  Last year she was awarded “Junior Student of the Year,” by the Department of Anthropology.    She received a full scholarship for graduate study in Anthropology at the University of California at Fullerton, which she will pursue starting this Fall.

Klamath’s academic research, public scholarship, community work, and personal mission in life is centrally concerned with issues of diversity, inclusion, and representation.  Klamath’s own background as a Shasta and Tuscarora woman guides her in this work.  The Brittain award serves as a wonderful affirmation that Klamath is making – and has made — a significant and lasting impact on Emory University at many levels, including student life, academic life, our relation to space, and our future as a more engaged ethical community. Her work has been essential in shifting the Emory landscape towards increased representation of Indigenous peoples at Emory.  This includes recognition of the Cherokee and Muscogee Creek people who flourished in this region and who took care of this land before the land dispossession and forced removals by the US government in the 1830s.

Just recently, Klamath’s experimental ethnography project – entitled Three Sisters Resiliency — was selected through juried review for inclusion in the annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival at the University of Pennsylvania.  The project examines contemporary Indigenous sovereignty in relation to Indigenous food ways.

Klamath is also an accomplished softball player and coach.  She has held leadership positions in Residence Life and in liaison with the Dean of Campus Life.  In addition, she is the creator of an extensive website and blogspace, entitled “Dancing with Synthetic Moccasins, Native American Engagement at Emory University“, the first website of its kind at Emory University.

Emory News Center article on Klamath Henry.

Please join us in congratulating Klamath Henry (Anthropology B.A., Environmental Science minor) as the 2019 undergraduate recipient of Emory’s prestigious Brittain award!

Douglas Falen (92C) publishes new book on African Science

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Douglas Falen (C’92) is a cultural anthropologist at nearby Agnes Scott College in Decatur. His new ethnography, African Science: Witchcraft, Vodun, and Healing in Southern Benin (University of Wisconsin Press) examines the ways that Benin’s occult world blends notions of magic, science, and religion. In emphasizing the moral ambivalence of human acts, Beninois people compare African witchcraft to western technology, known as “white people’s witchcraft.” The books explains how “witchcraft”  becomes a universal, all-encompassing term that allows Beninois people to incorporate foreign religions and esoteric traditions, including Hindu mysticism and Freemasonry, into a single category.Falen.AfricanScience.c.jpg

Peter Little’s research is spotlighted in the Chronicle

Dr. Little participated in the Happiness and Well-being Project based at Saint Luis University along with over 150 other researchers from 20 nation and spanning multiple fields. The Chronicle Article spotlighted the work done by Dr. Little in collaboration with Workneh Negatu (Agricultural Economics, Addis Ababa University) and Mark Risjord (Philosophy, Emory University), which focused on life satisfaction and well-being in northern Kenya and Ethiopia.

 

 

 

Shreyas Sreenath reflects on his fieldwork in a piece titled “Sharing, tasting, and wasting food in our mother tongue”

Shreyas Sreenath reflects on his fieldwork in a piece titled “Sharing, tasting, and wasting food in our mother tongue”

His contribution published on the Culture and Agriculture section of the American Anthropological Association explores the role our mother tongues play in wasting and sharing food. It reflects on morning municipal sweeping routes and daily garbage hauls in Bangalore, India, occasions when residents interact with sanitation workers by discarding food and sharing leftovers.

“How do our tongues–organs of speech and taste–weave charity into promiscuous expenditure? How might they archive the embodiment and routinization of power?”

Shreyas Sreenath is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology.