Good News...Departmental Announcements

Alumni Reunion and Endowed ChairFor decades, the Department of Anthropology has taken pride in being a small department with a global impact. Faculty, staff, students, and alumni reunited on April 4 to celebrate the Anthropology Department’s 40th anniversary at a special event in McKeldin Library.

In addition to honoring the department’s past, alumni and distinguished guests were given good news for the department’s future. At the event the Dr. Ellis R. Kerley Chair in Anthropology was announced. The endowed Chair will honor the life and legacy of the founding chair of the department, providing crucial support to ensure faculty excellence.

CommencementThe Department of Anthropology is excited to have awarded its third and fourth PhDs to Kristin Marie Sullivan for her dissertation, “Chincoteague in Transition: Vernacular Art and Adaptation in Community Heritage,” and to Adam Fracchia for his dissertation, “Laboring in Stone: The Urbanization of Capital in the Quarry Town of Texas, Maryland, and its Effects, 1840-1940.”

The department also celebrated the graduation of five Masters of Applied Anthropology candidates, Caitlin Cromer, Heidi Fishpaw, Amelia Jamison, Tracy Jenkins, and Gavin Mičulká.The department also awarded forty-one Bachelor of Arts degrees to undergraduate students.

Spring 2014

Professor Tony Whitehead uses his Retirement Celebration to Launch the “UMD-HBCU Graduate Mentoring Scholarship Fund in Anthropological and Community Health Sciences”On May 2, 2014 in the Colony Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union, the Department of Anthropology and its Cultural Systems Analysis Group (CuSAG) hosted the retirement celebration of Dr. Tony Whitehead. This event was a full day event with a public forum on mass incarceration and community re-entry during the day, and an evening dinner program organized around the anthropological themes of rites of passage and expressive culture. Dr. Whitehead plans to use this full day format in the future to organize an annual donor event in support of his new scholarship fund, the UMD-HBCU Graduate Mentoring Scholarship Fund in Anthropological and Community Health Services. This fund will be used to provide research, travel, and scholarship support to HBCU graduates currently enrolled within a graduate program in Anthropology and Public Health at the University of Maryland. Other donor activities in support of this fund will include a “Rapid Cultural Learning” tour of Jamaica in January. Stay tuned for details later this summer on the CuSAG website (www.cusag.umd.edu). To donate to the UMD-HBCU Graduate Mentoring Scholarship Fund in Anthropological and Community Health Services, visit http://ter.ps/HBCUgradfund.

Archeology in AnnapolisArchaeology in Annapolis is beginning a partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s Environmental Research Center (SERC), along with independent archaeological consultants Dr. Laura Cripps of Howard Community College and Dr. James Gibb. SERC is in Anne Arundel County and contains plantation lands typical of the Chesapeake, including homesteads and farms of free African Americans after 1865. Work at SERC will involve graduate students Beth Pruitt, Ben Skolnik, and Patricia Markert.Wye House excavations will continue for a 9th season and will involve slave quarters and an eighteenth century hothouse. Excavations on the Eastern Shore will also occur in a large community of free African Americans in Easton at a locale called The Hill. The Hill was founded early in the nineteenth century and continues as an African American community today. Partners include Morgan State University and Historic Easton, Incorporated. Digging at Wye House is supervised by graduate students Beth Pruitt and Ben Skolnik. Digging in Easton will be supervised by graduate students Tracy Jenkins and Stefan Woehlke.This summer, Archaeology in Annapolis will run a separate field school devoted to public interpretation at Montpelier Mansion in Orange County, Virginia from June 2 to June 20 and on The Hill in Easton, Maryland from June 22 to July 11. Graduate students Stefan Woehlke, Tracy Jenkins, and Janna Napoli will be working on this project.

Awards,Honors,and GrantsAssistant Professor Jen Shaffer received the BSOS Teaching and Mentoring Award.

Professor Michael Paolisso received the BSOS Graduate Advisor Award. He was also awarded a Dean’s Research Initiative for Collaborative Research for his project “Integrating Cultural Knowledge, Social Networks, Livelihood Strategies, and Environmental Science to Foster Coastal Resilience to Climate Change at Multiple Scales.”

PhD candidate Courtney Hofman was awarded a grant from Amazon for Amazon Cloud Computing in January.

Anthropologyworks.com listed Alumna Tina Zarpour’s dissertation as one of the top 50 for Best Cultural Anthropology Dissertations in 2013.

Alumna and Adjunct Lecturer Tanya Icaza was selected as an Inspiring Adjunct Faculty at Howard Community College for 2013-2014.

Professor Janet Chernela was awarded the 2014 Global Classroom Initative grant from the University of Maryland Office of International Affairs for her proposal “Indigenous People and Conservation,” which will be implemented in collaboration with Universidade do Estado do Amazoas (UEA) and Universidade de Basilia (UnB).

MAA Graduate Gavin Jerome Mičulká received the Valene Smith Tourism Poster Competition award at the SfAA conference for his poster, “Niche Heritage Tourism: The Applications of Ethnographic Research in the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area.”

Professor Emeritus Suheil Bushrui was awarded the Winston Family Best Honors 2014 Faculty Mentor Award, and Priya Krishan, a student in his Fall 2013 Spiritual Heritage course, was awarded the Winston Family Best Honors Student Paper Award.

PhD candidate Michael Roller was awarded the inaugural Lee Thornton Dissertation Fellowship.

Affiliate Professor A. Lynn Bolles was named “Mentor” for the American Anthropological Association Executive Board’s “Leadership Fellow” program. She was awarded the Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year.

PhD candidate Megan Springate was awarded the University of Maryland Graduate Summer Research Fellowship. She was also awarded the Philanthropy Grant from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute.

Associate Professor Stephen Brighton was awarded a Tier 1 Seed Grant by the University of Maryland for his project “The Archeology of the Irish Diaspora, Labor, and Heritage.”

Awards,Honors,and Grants,continued

Scholarship and ServicePhD candidate Megan Springate was selected for the 2014 Spring Archaeology Park Break. PhD candidate Elizabeth Van Dolah was accepted into the NSF Summer Institute for Research Design in Cultural Anthropology in Beaufort, NC.

Associate Professor Stephen Brighton was invited to be the Distinguished Professor/Scholar for St. Mary’s College’s lecture series.

Assistant Professor Thurka Sangaramoorthy gave several talks over the spring. They included:

MAA candidate Jordon Tompkins was awarded a Masters Research Grant by the BSOS Dean’s Research Initiative.

Assistant Professor Thurka Sangaramoorthy was awarded the ADVANCE Interdisciplinary and Engaged Research Seed Grant for her study “Stigma, Engagement in Care, and Antiretroviral Adherence among Older Black Women with HIV/AIDS.” She was also awarded the BSOS Dean’s Research Initiative for her study “Health-related Deservingness and Illegality on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”

PhD candidate Katherine (Jo) Johnson was awarded a grant from the Dean’s Research Initiative for Doctoral Dissertation Research related to building resilience to climate change in the Deal Island Peninsula area.

Archaeology in Annapolis was awarded a grant from the Future of Information Alliance to use Geographical Information Systems to take the spatial information contained within two historic maps of Talbot County, MD, dating to the mid-nineteenth-century, and embed within it the demographic information contained within two corresponding historic United States censuses for the county. In the context of the ongoing research in Talbot County, this work is important because it allows researchers to put back onto the landscape the enslaved and newly-freed African Americans who have largly been left out of traditional histories. In order to make this work available and useful to others, Archeaology in Annapolis has created a website along with an interactive online map, which can be found at: aia.umd.edu/locate.

Professor Judith Freidenberg received a RASA award and a grant from the Prince George’s County Council.

“Mobile Technology, Global Health, and Maryland Day.” Teaching with New Technologies, Center for Teaching Excellence, May 1, 2014.

“Im/migrants and HIV/AIDS Prevention: Using Ethnography to Document Experiences of Mobile Populations in the US Southeast.” Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM, March 18-22, 2014.

“Risky Individuals, Risky Communities: Culture and the Paradox of HIV/AIDS Prevention.” Population Studies and Training Center Colloquia, Brown University, March 20, 2014.

“Im/migrant Health During Anti-Immigration Times: Using Ethnography to Document Experiences of Mobile Populations in the US Southeast.” Brown Bag Discussion, Center for the History of the New America, UMD, February 24, 2014.

“Treating Difference: Race, Risk, and the Politics of HIV/AIDS Prevention.” Advancing Health Through a Racial Lens Symposium, UMD, February 20, 2014.

Assistant Professor Sean Downey was selected to participate in the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Project.

Lecturer Marilyn London gave two presentations in Fallsburg, NY, as part of a Smithsonian Associates program on Teaching American History: “The History of Disasters in the United States” and “The Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.” London is also heading a new subcommittee of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ Committee on Diversity, Anthropologists outside of Anthropology, Contingent, and Teaching-Focused Faculty (AACT). The group addresses the needs and rights of adjunct, non-tenure track, community college, on-line, and other faculty and professionals who do not fit into the traditional research-focused, tenure-track faculty description.

Assistant Professor Jen Shaffer is teaching a week-long interdisciplinary workshop on “Climate Change, Conservation, & Sustainable Human Communities” at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique. MAA candidate Jordan Tompkins will be assisting with the workshop.

Alumna Ennis Barbery has accepted a position as Executive Director of the Museum of Chincoteague Island.

During the winter term, Professor Mark Leone taught a course on Frederick Douglass, “Landscapes of slavery and freedom,” with University College Cork, Ireland (UCC). Lectures from the course were streamed live and a Skype discussion with UCC followed. In the fall, graduate students from UMCP will travel to UCC for a conference. Students from UCC will then travel to UMCP for a follow-up conference, which will lead to a published book.

Scholarship and Service,continued

Publications Incoming Assistant Professor Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels’s article, “Mapping a Concept, Integrating Fields,” was published on the website Anthropology News.

Affiliate Professor A. Lynn Bolles’s article, “What is Left Out and What is Recorded,” was published in the March/April Women’s Review of Books, Vol. 31, Iss.2:26-27.

Professor Paul Shackel published three encyclopedia entries:

2014. “Labor Archaeology.” Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology: Historical Archaeology, Vol. 7. Edited Claire Smith, pp. 4356-4362. Springer, New York.

2014. “Stakeholders and Community in Archaeology.” Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology: World Heritage, Vol. 10. Edited by Claire Smith, pp. 6994-6998. Springer, New York.

2014. “Paul Shackel.” Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology: World Heritage, Vol. 10. Edited by Claire Smith, pp. 6594-6595. Springer, New York.

Professor Paul Shackel and Affiliate Barbara Little published their book, Archeology, Heritage and Civic Engagement: Working Toward the Public Good. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

Professor Janet Chernela’s article “Fire and Ice: Talking about Carbon in the Brazilian Amazon” was accepted for publication by Practicing Anthropology. Also accepted for publication was “Limits of Knowledge: Indigenous Peoples, NGOs, and the Moral Economy in the Northwest Amazon,” which was co-authored with with Laura Zanotti. Conservation

PhD candidate Christy Miller Hesed was invited to give a talk as part of the Biological Sciences Department Science Speaker Series at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. She gave her talk, “Social-Ecological Resilience to Sea-Level Rise on Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” on March 28.

Professor Judith Freidenberg co-chaired a SfAA program and started her term as the director of Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Certificate.

Postdoctoral Research Associate Thao Pham has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at California University of Pennsylvania, to begin in August 2014.

Professor Sean Downey and Undergraduate Researcher Matt Gabb have received the BSOS Summer Scholars Award from the BSOS Dean’s Research Initiative and MCUR. This award will support their research project “Explaining the Resilience of Q’eqchi’ Mayan Swidden Agriculture.”

Scholarship and Service,continued

Publications,continued& Society. Further spring publications include:

2012. “Amazonia and the Origin of the State: An Interview with Robert L. Carneiro (1927- ).” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, Vol. 10 Is. 1, Article 4, 65-70.

2014. “Direções da existência: o trabalho de mulheres indígenas como domésticas na Paris dos Trópicos.” Ensaios em Interculturalidade: Literatura, Cultura, e Direitos de Indígenas em Época de Globalização 1:71-102.

2014. “Atividade missionária e trabalho indígena no Alto Rio Negro, 1680-1980: Uma Abordagem Histórico-Ecológica.” Ensaios em Interculturalidade: Literatura, Cultura, e Direitos de Indígenas em Época de Globalização 1:103-131.

An article Assistant Professor Jen Shaffer collaborated on, “Learning and envisioning under climatic uncertainty: an African experience,” was published in Environment and Planning A, Vol. 46:1049-1068. Her paper, “Making sense of local climate change in rural Tanzania through knowledge co-production,” is in press with the Journal of Ethnobiology. It will be part of a special issue on indigenous knowledge and climate change. She also has a book review that was accepted for publication in Ecology & Society.

PhD candidate Megan Springate published a book, Coffin Hardware in Nineteenth-century America (Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA), and a blog post entitled “The Next Chapter for LGBTQ Heritage” on the National Trust for Historic Preservation Leadership Forum website.

Assistant Professor Thurka Sangaramoorthy published her book, Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press.

Affiliate Robert Winthrop has four recent publications, three co-authored and one solo:

Bagstad, Kenneth J., Darius J. Semmens, Sissel Waage, and Robert Winthrop. 2013. “A Comparative Assessment of Decision-Support Tools for Ecosystem Services Quantification and Valuation.” Ecosystem Services 5 (September): 27–39. doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2013.07.004.

Bagstad, Kenneth J., Darius J. Semmens, and Robert Winthrop. 2013. “Comparing Approaches to Spatially Explicit Ecosystem Service Modeling: A Case Study from the San Pedro River, Arizona.” Ecosystem Services 5 (September): 40–50. doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2013.07.007.

Suranovic, Steven, and Robert Winthrop. “Trade Liberalization and Culture.” Global Economy Journal (in press) (published online 2-13-2014). doi:10.1515/gej-2013-0047.

Publications,continuedWinthrop, Robert. 2013. “Environment and Resources.” In A Handbook of Practicing Anthropology, edited by Riall Nolan, 266–77. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.

PhD candidates Kathryn Deeley and Stefan Woehlke, Professor Mark Leone, and Matthew Cochran published “West Central African Spirit Practices in Annapolis, Maryland” in Kongo Across the Waters, edited by Susan Cooksey, Robin Poynor, and Hein Vanhee, pp. 240-251. 2013. University Press of Florida. This catalog accompanies a traveling exhibit, which was moved from the University of Florida to Atlanta, GA, and will be moving to Princeton in October.

PhD candidate Elizabeth Van Dolah’s manuscript was accepted for publication in the International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae ICHA 15 Proceedings.

Professor Judith Freidenberg wrote a book review for Anthropos. She is also writing a book on immigration in Prince George’s County and has a contract with Lexington Books.

PhD candidate Kevin Gibbons’ report, “Animal Remains from La Pointe-Krebs Plantation,” will be published this summer in Archaeology at La Pointe-Krebs Plantation in Old Spanish Fort Park (22JA526), Pascagoula, Jackson County, Mississippi, edited by Gums, Bonnie L. and Gregory A. Waselkov. Center for Archaeological Studies at the University of South Alabama. Report prepared for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson County.

PhD candidate Courtney Hofman’s co-authored article, “The Dogs of CA-SRI-2: Osteometry of Canis familiaris from Santa Rosa Island, California,” was published in Ethnobiology Letters, Vol. 5.