Emory’s Critical Juncture Conference is an international conference spanning different disciplines involved in social justice. For the 2017 conference, themed “The Work of Art,” participants explored how works of art challenge injustices created by social constructions of gender, disability, race, and sexuality.
With Ken Hornbeck, Dr. Debra Vidali served as keynote speaker in the workshop “Constructing Realties: Theatre and Representation.”
Dr. Liv Nilsson Stutz (Emory Anthropology) and Dr. Aaron Stutz (Emory Anthropology at Oxford), along with Chantel White (Penn Museum) and a team of graduate and undergraduate students are preparing for their second round of excavations at the Mughr el-Hamamah site in Jordan. Dr. Nilsson Stutz talks about the well-preserved paleolithic plant remains at the site and describes the possibilities:
“We hope that the careful recovery of these unique remains and the following analysis of them will allow us to better understand how palaeolithic hunters and gatherers used plants for food, shelter and tool making during the period that coincides with the replacement of neanderthals by Anatomically Modern Humans in Western Eurasia. This is a very rare site, and we really think our work will be able to fill in some gaps in our understanding of palaeolithic hunter gatherer ecology, subsistence, and the demographic changes at this crucial point in human evolution.”
The project is entering its final stages of fundraising. For more information or to help crowd fund, please visit this website.
Listen to Dr. Jenny Chio’s recent lecture on ethnographic portraiture and filmmaking online.
As a Morphomata Fellow at the University of Cologne, Germany, Dr. Chio gave a public lecture on one of her current ethnographic film and research projects. The talk was titled “These Days, These Homes: An Ethnographic Portrait Film in Progress.” Dr. Chio addressed the question: What are the possibilities of portraiture in filmmaking, and how can biographical and ethnographic approaches be integrated in film practice and humanistic cultural research? Her talk discussed possibilities in the ethnographic and biographical representation of life experiences by rethinking the methods and theories of documentary film-making, biography, life history, and ethnography.
Emory’s eScience Commons reported on Dr. James Rilling’s research at the Laboratory for Darwinian Neuroscience. In order to study the neurological reasons for differing care-giving behaviors, Dr. Rilling administered either oxytocin or a placebo to fathers of toddlers. When shown photos of their child, those fathers who had received the oxytocin showed increased neural activity in areas of the brain that are associated with reward and empathy.
The AJC published an article featuring Emory’s accomplishments in food sustainability in the hospitals as well as Emory Dining. Our own Dr. Peggy Barlett, Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Emory University’s Sustainable Food Committee, is quoted. She has been a trailblazer for sustainability for the Emory community and beyond. A co-founder of the Piedmont Project to expand Emory’s sustainability Curriculum, Dr. Barlett has worked with a dozen faculty since 2012 to create and support the Sustainability Minor at Emory University.
Dr. David Nugent received the Creekmore Award for Internationalization for advancing the university’s commitment to internationalization.
He is the founding director Emory’s Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) program, which combines cross-disciplinary academic study with field experience in global settings. In this role, he has expanded Emory’s network of strategic partnerships with leading international development organizations, including CARE, Oxfam, and Heifer International, as well as federal agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. Last summer the program sent students abroad for 10-week field practicums with 21 organizations in 25 countries.
Dr. Adrian Jaeggi’s work studying the relationship between male social status and reproductive success in non-industrial societies has been featured in Emory’s eScience Commons.
“We were surprised to learn that the correlation held up for a range of societies and their different measures for status,” says Adrian Jaeggi, an anthropologist at Emory University focused on primate and human behavioral ecology. “It doesn’t matter whether a man is a better hunter, owns more land or more livestock – men with high social status had more children compared to men with low status.”
Dr. Jenny Chio’s book, A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China, has been reviewed in American Anthropologist!
In addition to the Krotovo film festival in Macedonia, Dr. Anna Grimshaw’s film “At Low Tide” will be screened at the 2016 American Anthropological Association meetings in Minneapolis, the Days of Ethnographic Cinema Festival in Moscow, and the Greek Ethnographic Film Festival in Athens!
This film was supported by an Emory University Research Council grant. Check out the trailer at https://vimeo.com/172429715.
Isabella Alexander, Visiting Assistant Professor and Alumna of Emory Anthropology, wrote an article for Public Radio International (PRI) on the migrant crisis at the Moroccan border.
You can also listen to the accompanying radio special on PRI’s The World at http://www.pri.org/node/154322/popout (starting at minute 6.25).
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