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)
Category: Research
Klamath Henry (19C) receives Brittain Award
The 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!
Grace Veatch continues her research in Liang Bua, Indonesia and is features on National Geographic
Veatch, a graduate student who researches the environmental context of the Late Pleistocene archaeological site Liang Bua in Indonesia, specifically focuses on the rodent remains found in the cave. She remarks on their diversity as a group of mammals helped by the continuity of bones in the cave sequence, which persist over the 190,000-year stretch preserved in the cave.
Read more about the work of Veatch and other researchers in the National Geographic article.
Carol Worthman suggests a more comprehensive approach to research on youth development
In her recent Journal on Research in Adolescence review paper Worthman argues that puberty and adolescences should not be split up into bio and cultural but seen as a whole. She emphasizes the importance of improving research in this area due to the large numbers, 17% of the worlds population is aged 10-19 right now, and emphasizes the impact of youth development on mental and physical health.
Read more on eScience Commons.
Read more on eScience Commons.
Sharing, Wasting, and Tasting in Our Mother Tongue, an essay published by Shreyas Sreenath
In this short piece on tasting and speaking with the mother tongue, PhD candidate Shreyas Sreenath explores how organs of social power might inhabit spaces more intimate than we would like to acknowledge. Published in Anthropology news.
Mel Konner named 2019 honoree for the John F. Morgan, Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture
From Emory News: Melvin J. Konner, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and Behavioral Biology at Emory, will present this year’s John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture.
Konner will speak on “Believers: Faith in Human Nature,” which is also the title of his forthcoming book, on Tuesday, March 26, at 5 p.m. in the Presentation Room of the Oxford Road Building. RSVP here.
Carol Worthman’s research on sleep is cited in Aeon article
“Here’s to naps and snoozes.” In his article Todd Pitock summarizes the American culture of sleep and its perceptions of what is considered acceptable and contextualizes it with international examples. He quotes Dr. Worthman who’s research on sleep around the world has shown it as “more flexible and more social” then sleep is considered in the West. Communal sleeping arrangement are more common and can be based on an array of reasons such as comfort or safety, while the West has a tendency to judge sleep by its number of hours spend not being productive.
Mel Konner publishes book review essay in The Atlantic
In “A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves” Dr. Konner contextualizes the research published by in “ The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution”.
Give it a read here.
Douglas Falen (92C) publishes new book on African Science
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.
Dr. Justin Pargeter publishes research on prehistoric toolmaking
In a recent publication in the journal Antiquity, Justin Pargeter (a Postdoctoral researcher with Emory University’s Anthropology Department) argues the motivations of prehistoric hunter-gatherers for selecting particular rocks for toolmaking are often explained in too rigidly functional or symbolic terms. By examining the exploitation of crystal quartz at two archaeological sites (Ntloana Tšoana and Sehonghong) in Lesotho, southern Africa, he and his co-author Jamie Hampson (University of Exeter) reveal that stone tool production required a form of engagement unique to crystal quartz’s specific properties (including possibly quartz crystal’s piezoelectric effects). The prefered use of quartz crystals—irrespective of the availability of other rocks for tool production—demonstrates agency and variability in the prehistoric technologies.
EMORY ANTHROPOLOGY 