Upcoming Anthropology Events

Anthropology Honors Thesis Presentation 2022

June 3rd 10am-12pm

Registration: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/91356729615

Colloquium Guest Speaker: Maria A. Nieves-Colon

Using Ancient DNA to revisit the Historical Record of Latin America

Monday May 23 3pm-4:30pm

SSB 107 & Zoom

Zoom Link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/93812506080#success

Linguistic Anthropology Workshop

Rihan Yeh will workshop the introduction to her book manuscript

Scopic Subjectivities: Spectacle and Surveillance in a Mexican Border City

Friday, May 20, 1pm-2:40pm

Zoom Link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/98927334300

Meeting ID: 989 2733 4300

SCMA Lecture Series: Dr. Crystal El Safadi

Assessing threats and disturbances to maritime cultural heritage in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MarEA project)

May 27, 12pm-1pm

Zoom Link HERE

Meeting ID: 993 2394 7858
Password: 464476

SCMA Lecture Series: John Foster from California State Parks

Touching the Taino Coabay: Underwater Archaeology at Manantial de la Aleta in the Dominican Republic

May 13, 3pm-4pm

Zoom LInk: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/92473120645?pwd=eCtQK3hoa2MzcXU4azNndEtIbU51dz09

Meeting ID: 924 7312 0645

Password: 389901

Colloquium Guest Speaker: Jessica Lopez-Espino

Finding Excuses, Detemrining Risk: Latinx Parent Expeirnces in a California Child Welfare Court

May 13, 1pm-2:30pm

Zoom Link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/97948306462

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar: Dr. Carlisle, Ph.D, CSU San Marcos

Ghosts, Love, Karma, and the Narrative Construction of Reality

May 16, 10am-11:30am

Zoom Link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/97184539377?pwd=SzVLdXRoZUUwRVRhbFdxTnlxajZoUT09

Skill Share: CItation Managers and Tools for the Writing Process

Monday May 16 10am-11:30am

Hybrid Meeting in SSB 269 and via zoom:  https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/97344130703

Colloquium Guest Speaker: Mark Everett

The Fortress Atop and The Fortress Beneath: Geophysical Prospection at D-Day and Alactras 

May 16 3pm-4:30pm

SSB 107 & Zoom

Zoom Link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/97948306462#success

Colloquium Guest Speaker: Sherina Feliciano-Santos

Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and Contestation within Puerto Rican Inidgenous Linguistic and Cultural Reclamation Movements 

May 9, 3pm-4:30pm

Hybrid Meeting in PEB 721 & Zoom

Zoom LInk: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/93611074799#success

Linguistic Anthropology Workshop Presents: Drew Kerr

Feeling (in) the Indian Public Sphere: Circulations of Urdu Poetry and Emotions

Friday, May 6, 1pm-2:40pm

Zoom Link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/98927334300

Anthropology Talk with Charles Hirschkind:

Thoughts on the Interscetions of Embodiment, Theology and Anthropology

Program for the Study of Religion, Cosponsored with Anthropology 

April 27, 11-12:30pm

The Critical Anthropology Workshop presents:

Jesica Lopez-Espino: UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow- UC Irvine

Giving and Taking Voice: Metapragrmatic Dismissals of Parents in Child Welfare Cases

Discussant: Nancy Postero (Anthropology, UCSD)

Monday, April 18, 12-1:30pm

Zoom ID: 929 5534 1926

South Asia Initiative and the Linquistic Anthropology Workshop Present: Francis Cody

April 8, 2022 @ 1pm-2:40pm PST

Work That Anthropology Degree: Career Talk

World Anthropology Day Research Talk with Professor Keolu Fox

Thursday February 17: 5:30pm-7pm through zoom

Critical Anthropology Workshop Presentation

Becoming successful primates: The development of social competence in infant olive baboons

Monday, February 24 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building 107  

Speaker: Dr. Corinna A. Most, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University

Among primates, olive baboons (P. anubis) are second only to humans in numbers and geographical distribution. They live in large groups structured by complex rank and kin relationships, which can be cooperative and affiliative as well as competitive and aggressive. These relationships affect every single aspect of a baboon’s daily life, and developing the sophisticated social skills necessary to navigate them is a key requirement to becoming a ‘successful’ baboon. To understand the ontogeny of social competence in infant olive baboons, my research focused on the effects of maternal responsiveness and secondary attachments. I was also able to situate this process within the long-term ecological data available from the field site, the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project (UNBP) in Laikipia, Kenya. In particular, I examined the effects on maternal behavior and infant development of the spread of an invasive plant food species, the prickly-pear cactus Opuntia stricta. In this talk, I will present the results of my research, as well as the results of two follow-up studies. The first one looked at infant coat-color transition as a marker of physiological development. The second examined grooming behavior in the same study subjects once they became juveniles, to investigate whether the differences in social competency I had observed in infancy persisted at a later life stage. I will also introduce several new collaborative projects that we will pursue over the next few years at the UNBP.

Social Life with Limited Shared Language: Exclusion and Inclusion in a Mainstream Classroom with Three Deaf Students in Iquitos, Peru

Monday, February 10 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building 107  

Speaker: Sara A. Goico, UC President’s and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology and Department of Anthropology, UCLA

Language is a pervasive part of our everyday lives. Yet around the world, there are many deaf individuals who live without access to an established language. These individuals have not been exposed to an existing sign language, and their deafness and the unavailability of hearing assistive technology precludes access to spoken language. Research with this population has focused on the manual communication systems that these deaf individuals develop in an effort to identify the biological underpinnings of linguistic structure. However, little is published on the communicative competency of these deaf individuals (i.e. their ability to use their communication systems for social aims). In this presentation, I explore the constitution of social groups in a mainstream classroom with three deaf students. From 2013-2015, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the homes and schools of deaf youth without access to an established language in Iquitos, Peru. Despite the deaf students being generally excluded from the academic content taught in the classroom, I find that they are engaged in reinforcing bonds of solidarity with peers through explicit acts of classmate exclusion. These processes of exclusion and inclusion are carried out in moments of situated interaction through the deaf children laminating their utterances with a range of semiotic resources to express forms of stance towards the target assessable object or event. In examining the moment-by-moment achievement of the classroom social order, I illustrate how deaf youth without access to an established language are able to accomplish complex social work with limited shared language.

Fall Religion Forum Lecture

Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology, Department of Anthropology, and Third World Studies, Jose Casanova, from Georgetown University, will give the Fall Religion Forum Lecture with his talk titled "25 Years of Religions in the Public Sphere: Retrospective and Prospective Reflections." This will be held on Tuesday, November 26th from 11am-1pm in Atkinson Hall.

PANEL DISCUSSION AND CRITICAL DIALOGUE ABOUT CARE AND MENTAL HEALTH

Panel Discussion and Critical Dialogue about Care and Mental health with Alexia Arani and Ramsey Ismail.

Click the link for more information!

Please RSVP Here

Friday, November 1 | 12:15pm | Social Sciences Building 107   Speaker: Angela Leocata, Graduate Student  Anthropology Department, Standford University

When the Trial Ends: Moral Experiences of Caregiving in a Randomized Controlled Trial in Goa, India

In this presentation, I engage experiences of peer counselors in the Thinking Healthy Program Peerdelivered (THPP), a randomized controlled trial of a psychological intervention for perinatal depression in Goa, India. I explore how caregiving is experienced by peer counselors in an RCT, a context in which care is given for a finite period and is removed at the study’s end. I ask how the THPP trial affects its delivery agents, with attention to how caregiving impacts its caregivers. I suggest that moral aspects of caregiving are particularly relevant for peers, and that the context of an RCT is central to these moral experiences, particularly at a trial’s end, when peer counselors are asked to end care that, in many cases, remains needed.

Monday, October 21 | 10:00 am | Social Sciences Building 107   Speaker: Bridget Haas, PhD, NIHT32 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Case Western Reserve University

Therapeutic Interventions Amid Immigration Limbo

This presentation will explore emergent themes concerning the intersection of US immigration policies and mental health care, using research data on the therapeutic experiences of two different groups: Cameroonian asylum claimants seeking legal status and newly resettled Congolese refugees.

The talk will investigate the psychic toll of a growing backlog of pending immigration cases (asylum claims and family reunification cases, respectively) among those caught within it. How do situations of protracted uncertainty regarding the outcome of their cases inform the use, meaning, and experience of therapeutic interventions? What are the perceived limitations and possibilities of various mental health treatments in the face of ongoing existential and familial rupture? Through these ethnographic examples, the presentation will also consider the shape and meaning of resilience in these contexts.

Monday, October 21 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building 107   Speaker: Bridget Haas, PhD, NIHT32 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Case Western Reserve University

Enduring Limbo: Seeking Asylum in the American Midwest

Asylum claimants in the United States—those who seek protection due to a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their countries of origin—often live for years in a state of limbo, as they may ultimately be granted the right to remain in the US or be forcibly expelled. They are subjected to myriad institutional practices that cast them as criminal or morally suspect. This talk investigates how the system to which vulnerable asylum seekers appeal for protection emerges as one that inflicts new forms of violence and suffering upon them. Drawing on ethnographic research with asylum claimants in the American Midwest, I trace the lived consequences of being embedded in this complex and onerous political-legal system. I discuss how a sense of existential limbo generated by the asylum process evoked particular subjective and affective states, transforming the ways in which asylum claimants inhabited their bodies and social worlds. I also address the inter and intrapersonal strategies that asylum claimants drew upon to actively endure this painful state of being “stuck.”

Monday, October 7 | 10am-12pm | Social Sciences Building 107 - Dean's Conference Room  Speaker: Katie Rose Hejtmanek, PhD, Associate Professor at Brooklyn College

Training for Life: The Promise of Branded Functional Fitness

Her research investigates self transformative processes, affect, and racial formations in a variety of cultural contexts, from adolescent mental institutions in the US to CrossFit gyms on six continents. Currently, she researches branded functional fitness as a space for salvation and survival in contemporary America. Dr. Hejtmanek has a forthcoming article in American Anthropologist titled, "Fitness Fanatics: Exercise as Answer to Pending Zombie Apocalypse in Contemporary America”. She is also co-editing a volume on strength sports titled Strong A(s) F(eminist)!: Power in Strength Sports. 

MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY WORKSHOP: MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY IN ISRAEL & CALIFORNIA AND NEW METHODS & TECHNOLOGIES   Time: Tuesday, June 11, 8:30am-4:30pm Location: Martin Johnson House, Scripps Institute of Oceanography  Description: Please Click here.

Friday, June 7 | 5:00 pm | Great Hall Speaker: Dr. Lucy Blue, Senior lecturer at the Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Southampton and Maritime Archaeological Director of the HonorFrost Foundation, UK

Honor Frost, Pioneer Marine Archaeologist: Her Vision and Her Legacy 

The world of maritime archaeology has changed significantly since Honor Frost began her archaeological career in the 1950s. Join us as Dr. Lucy Blue recountsthe remarkable life journey of Honor Frost and her groundbreaking investigations of ancient shipwrecks and harbours. Frost’s legacy lives on not only in terms of her research but also in her creation of the Honor Frost Foundation.

2018 UCSD-UCLA Graduate Student Conference on Culture, Health, and Mind 

Date: May 19, 2018

Location: University of California San Diego

This one-day meeting will bring together faculty and graduate students interested in the intersections of culture, mind, and health. Please register for the conference here. Submission deadline for abstracts is April 15, 2018.

We enthusiastically invite paper proposals for the annual UCSD-UCLA Graduate Student Conference on Culture, Mind, and Health. This conference is designed as a forum for graduate students at all stages to continue conversations and open new discussions on emerging perspectives in psychological and medical anthropology. We hope to further establish this conference as a space to share intellectual resources from two of the leading centers in the field, and as a sounding board for graduate students to think through their ideas and receive productive feedback.

Presentations: We encourage participants to submit traditional conference papers as well as project proposals and works in progress. This is a supportive environment that seeks to provide constructive feedback for those at all stages. Presentations will be 10-15 minutes followed by Q & A.

Please send 200-word abstracts to UCMerBear@gmail.com

Submission deadline is April 15, 2018.

Whether or not you plan to present, please also register for the conference here. 

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Mental Health and Healing
• Illness and Suffering
• Morality and Ethics
• Subjectivity / Intersubjectivity
• Clinical Encounters
• Religious Experience
• Intersections of Linguistic and Psychological and Medical Anthropology
• Biopolitics and Biological Citizenship
• Gender and Sexuality
• Dreams and the Imagination
• Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Encounter
• New Media, Technology, and Mediated Experience
• Phenomenological Approaches
• Affect and/or Emotion

Monday, May 13 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Erin Debenport, University of California, Los Angeles

The Language of Secrecy and Exposure in the Pueblo Borderlands

This talk examines how Indigenous Pueblo people living in the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico and Texas use strategic concealments and revelations to constitute community and enact morality, subjectivity, and sovereignty. Drawing on long-term ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork with three Pueblo nations, I move from examples where cultural and linguistic information is tightly controlled to situations where visibility is self-consciously produced to discuss how indigeneity is performed and politics are practiced in this region and in the contemporary U.S. more broadly.

Wednesday, May 1 | 3:30 pm | Nierenberg Hall 101, Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO)  Speaker: Dr. Deborah Carlson, Associate Professor at Texas A&M   University and President of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology

Excavation of an Ancient Marble Column Shipwrecked off the Aegean Coast of Turkey

Between 2005 and 2011 researchers from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A&M University excavated the remains of a marble carrier that sank off the Aegean coast of Turkey at Kizilburun very probably in the first century B.C. The ship was transporting the components of a newly-quarried monumental column. Isotopic, stylistic, and metrological analysis of the column pieces has enabled researchers to identify with some certainty the ancient temple for which the column was intended. In addition, excavation of the Kizilburun column wreck provides a unique snapshot of quarrying processes, long-distance transport by sea, and monumental construction in marble in Late Hellenistic Asia Minor.

Monday, April 22 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Dorian Fuller, University College London

Beyond the bread frontier: Sticky rice, millet porridge and grain wines in the definition of a civilizational area

My predominant research focus has been the origins of agriculture and its social and ecological, but I have interests in how we understand later agricultural systems in early states and empires, as well as the plant use systems in hunter-gatherers systems that precede any agriculture. I have a wider interest in human-environment interactions both in terms of climatic constraints but also human modification of environments. I have been actively engaged in fieldwork projects in India, starting from South India. I have subsequently carried out fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarnchal, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, as well as Sri Lanka and have studied materials from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, Nepal and NWFP, Pakistan. My fieldwork has focused on systematic archaeobotanical sampling of archaeological sites aimed to fill in some of the many regional and temporal gaps in direct evidence for past agriculture. While filling gaps in the archaeobotanical record of South Asia has been a particular focus (since my Master’s dissertation in 1996), I take as my mission the larger task of helping to fill the major gaps in knowledge of early agriculture in the Old World throughout Asia and Africa. In this regard, I have always been ready to take on archaeobotanical projects in Africa, either directly or through supervision of students. In this capacity I have worked/ am working on archaeobotanical from Libya, Mali, Mauretania, Morocco, Senegal, Niger, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Sudan. I began research in China in 2004, and have had a particular focus on understanding rice domestication and the evolution of rice cultivation systems in the Lower Yangtze region—especially as part of a NERC-funded Early Rice Project (2009-2012), but also in studies of agriculture in Later Neolithic to Bronze Age China more widely. In recent years I have also become involved is the study of archaeobotany in Thailand. As the integration of archaeology and historical linguistics has become increasingly discussed, I became interested in how the details of archaeology and archaeobotany of South India could be confronted with the details of linguistics in the region, especially of the Dravidian language family. I have contributed a number of paper on this topic, and have recently given some thought to how historical linguistic hypotheses in East and Southeast Asia more broadly might match up with our revised evidence for the origins and spread of rice agriculture

Monday, April 1 | 1:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Dr. Acabado directs the Ifugao Archaeological Project, a collaborative research program between the University of the Philippines-Archaeological Studies Program, the National Museum of the Philippines, the University of California-Los Angeles, and the Save the Ifugao Terraces Movement, Inc (SITMo).

Rice, Feasts, and Rituals: Resisting conquest and colonialism in northern highland Philippines

The Ifugao of the northern Philippines constructed their monumental terraced rice fields about 350 years ago and as a response to the pressures exerted by the Spanish conquest of the lowland Philippines. Previously thought to be at least 2,000 years old, archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric information suggest that the shift to wet-rice cultivation was more recent and was a structuring mechanism to defend against conquest. Indeed, the production and consumption of rice is central to Ifugao culture, where every aspect of the rice cycle requires a particular ritual. However, ethnographic investigations suggest that wet-rice is reserved for the elite. This is supported by spatial analysis that indicate that rice produced in the terraced fields are less than 10% of the required carbohydrate intake of Ifugao communities. This presentation highlights the varied responses of indigenous groups to colonialism, particularly, the Ifugao, who appear to have resisted and/or endured Spanish cooptation. The archaeological record suggests that economic intensification and political consolidation occurred in Ifugao soon after the appearance of the Spanish in the northern Philippines. The foremost indication of this shift is the adoption of wet-rice agriculture in the highlands. Excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village (Kiangan, Ifugao) also imply that the settlement had continuous contact/interaction with lowland groups and other highland groups between ca. AD 1600 and late AD 1800, refuting the idea of isolation. This work on pericolonial archaeology shows that the effects of colonialism extended far beyond the areas actually colonized

Wednesday, April 3 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Associate Professor and Director of the Luminescence Lab at Utah State University

A Million Years of Coastal Dunes and Linkages to Sea-level Change on the Sunshine Coast, Australia

The Sunshine Coast of southeast Queensland, Australia is home to an extensive system of coastal dune fields
and barrier islands that contain an archive of sea level and climate change. Fraser Island, the world’s largest
sand island, and the adjacent Cooloola Dune Field form the northern part of these extensive sand barriers.
Samples for Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating were collected from cores and coastal bluffs to
investigate the age of these parabolic dune sequences. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and stratigraphic
descriptions of buried mega-podzols provide additional framework to reconstruct the histories of the dune
fields. Results indicate 1 Myr of dune emplacement and suggest linkages to rising sea levels, with increased
dune activity following the mid-Pleistocene transition and a switch to 100-kyr eccentricity-driven global
glaciation and sea-level variability.

Monday, March 11 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Thomas E. Levy is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego and co-directs the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology. Levy is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology Transdisciplinary Research Approach –Geophysics, Environmental Science, Cyber and Underwater Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean

To help establish the new Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology (SCMA) within world maritime archaeology studies, SCMA has begun building a research program in the eastern Mediterranean where UC San Diego has a long-term record of engagement with local scholars. Recent projects in Greece and Israel take a deep-time perspective focusing on cultural adaptation to climate change and changing trade networks from the earliest Neolithic agricultural societies to establishment of local kingdoms in the Iron Age and through the international Hellenistic and Roman periods. SCMA research investigates key cultural/historical issues such as the collapse of Late Bronze Age civilization in the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1200 BCE), Iron Age (ca. 1200 – 500 BCE) sea-level rise, and submerged trading ports in the Hellenistic/Roman periods. Integrated fieldwork includes: marine geophysics to map the sea floor and discover new archaeological sites; coastal sediment coring for geoarchaeological investigations; and underwater archaeological excavation applying a range of cyber-archaeology digital tools for recording and analyses. This seminar presents a snapshot of SCMA’s eastern Mediterranean research.

This workshop will provide an overview of the principles and processes of qualitative data analysis. The focus will be on introducing concepts and processes that are applicable to most analytic approaches, rather than focusing on a single approach (e.g., grounded theory, thematic analysis). The workshop will introduce key concepts like code development, coding, code searches, description, and comparison. There will be a brief introduction to software packages available to facilitate organization and analysis of qualitative data. Resources will be provided to support students looking to learn more.

*The didactic workshop runs 10am-12pm and ends with a lunch discussion 12-1pm, during which students can ask questions regarding their own research projects and analytic goals.

Space is limited-- Please RSVP here:  https://goo.gl/forms/oVKFdqPYpUQ5xUu03

Tuesday, February 5 | 6:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Rainer Bussman, Co-director of Saving Knowledge, La Paz, Bolivia, as well as Principal Scientist at the Department of Ethnobotany, Institute of Botany, Ilia State University

Twenty-five years of Ethnobotany around the globe -From magic to molecules, conservation and the Nagoya Protocol

Dr. Bussmann earned his M.Sc. (Diploma) in Biology at Universität Tübingen, Germany, in 1993 and his doctorate at Universität Bayreuth, Germany, in 1994. He is an ethnobotanist and vegetation ecologist, and currently Affiliate Scientist at Museo Nacional de Historia Natural in La Paz, Bolivia, and co-director of Saving Knowledge, La Paz, Bolivia, as well as Principal Scientist at the Department of Ethnobotany, Institute of Botany, Ilia State University, both of which which he co-fouded. Before retiring from Missouri Botanical Garden, Dr. Bussmann was director of the William L. Brown Center at Missouri Botanical Garden, William L. Brown Curator of Economic Botany, and Senior Curator. Before accepting the directorship of WLBC, he held academic appointments as Research Fellow in Geography and the Environment at University of Texas at Austin from 2006 to 2007, as Associate Professor of Botany and Scientific Director of Harold Lyon Arboretum at University of Hawaii from 2003 to 2006, and as Assistant Professor at University of Bayreuth from 1997 to 2003, following a postdoc at the same institution from 1994 to 1997. He holds affiliate faculty appointments at Washington University St. Louis, USA; University of Missouri St. Louis, USA; Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, USA; Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil; Universidád Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Perú; and at Ilia State University, Republic of Georgia, and serves as external thesis advisor at multiple other universities worldwide. His work focuses on ethnobotanical research, and the preservation of traditional knowledge, in Bolivia, Peru, Madagascar, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. To date, Dr. Bussmann has authored over 200 papers, over 175 book chapters, and authored or edited over 30 books.

Climate refugees and food insecurity in drought-stricken desert regions: restoring agricultural sustainability and hope

Gary Paul Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement. He co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH.  Native Seeds is a non-profit conservation organization which works to preserve place-based Southwestern agricultural plants as well as knowledge of their uses. He then became founding director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. He currently serves as the serves as the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwestern Borderlands Food and Water Security at the University of Arizona. There, he founded the Center for Regional Food Studies and catalyzed the initiative to have UNESCO designate Tucson as the first City of Gastronomy in the U.S. He is a MacArthur Fellow and has authored over 30 books including The Desert Smells Like Rain (1982), Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons from Desert Farmers on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty and Renewing America’s Food Traditions.

Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology

UC San Diego

2019 Lecture Series

Wednesday, Janurary 23 | 3:00 pm | Nierenberg Hall 101, Scripps Institute of Oceanography  Speaker: Professor Paul Scotton, Chair of Comparative Literature and Classics, California State University Long Beach

The Lechaion Harbor and Settlement Land Project - New Perspectives on Maritime Life In Ancient Greece

Prof. Scotton is currently leading the excavation of the land features of Lechaion Harbor of Ancient Corinth, Greece. This work is being conducted under a cooperative agreement between the American School of Classical Studies Athens and the Corinthian Ephorate of Antiquities.

Lechaion Harbor has long been known as a major hub of ancient commerce for the Mediterranean and the primary harbor for Corinth from at least the late 6th century BCE until the mid to late 5th century CE. In spite of its location having always been known, it has remained largely untouched and unexcavated. The site provides a rare opportunity to investigate an undisturbed harbor in use for over 1400 years. In 2018 the Lechaion Harbor Settlement and Land Project completed the first three years of land excavation and exploration and has produced findings that document a large harbor settlement with habitation dating back to at least the 8th century BCE and perhaps to the Mycenean period and earlier, extensive early Roman remains dating to the 2nd half of the 1st century BCE, fortification walls along the shoreline, what appears to have been the lighthouse depicted on Roman coins, and intriguing anomalies in the inner harbor that may represent sunken ships. These findings indicate the importance of the site and the fact that many years of excavation remain.

Thursday, January 17 | 4:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Lesley Jo Weaver, Department of International Studies, University of Oregon

Sugar and Tension: The Intersection of Diabetes and Mental Health among Women in India

Women in North India are socialized to care for others, so what do they do when they get a disease like diabetes that requires intensive self-care? Drawing from her new book Sugar and Tension: Diabetes and Gender in Modern India (Rutgers University Press 2019), Dr. Lesley Jo Weaver explores how women’s self-care choices, though at odds with the mandates of biomedical managed disease, do important cultural work that may buffer women’s mental health by fostering social belonging. This calculus raises questions about whose priorities should count in domestic, health, and mental health spheres and underscores that routes to living well or poorly with chronic diseases are not always the ones canonized in biomedical models

Climate refugees and food insecurity in drought-stricken desert regions: restoring agricultural sustainability and hope

Gary Paul Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement. He co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH.  Native Seeds is a non-profit conservation organization which works to preserve place-based Southwestern agricultural plants as well as knowledge of their uses. He then became founding director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. He currently serves as the serves as the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwestern Borderlands Food and Water Security at the University of Arizona. There, he founded the Center for Regional Food Studies and catalyzed the initiative to have UNESCO designate Tucson as the first City of Gastronomy in the U.S. He is a MacArthur Fellow and has authored over 30 books including The Desert Smells Like Rain (1982), Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons from Desert Farmers on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty and Renewing America’s Food Traditions.

Anthropology Honors Thesis Presentations 2017-2018   Time: Wednesday, May 23rd 3:00pm-5:00pm Location: Social Science Building Room 107 Description: At the end of each academic year (end of May), an event takes place that showcases undergraduate student achievements, including Honors thesis presentations, recognition of academic achievements by our graduating majors, recognition of activities by the AnthroClub, activities by the Ambassadors of Anthropology, awards to outstanding graduating seniors, and a special salute from alumni.

Psychological & Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Szilvia Zörgő Date: Wednesday May 2, 2018, 10:00am-12:00pm Location: Global Policy & Strategy RBC Room 1201

Szilvia is a doctoral candidate of Mental Health Sciences at Semmelweis University, Budapest, and is currently a Fulbright visiting scholar at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on the sociocultural factors of therapy choice in Hungary and decision-making processes related to health. She is a guest lecturer at the Institute of Intercultural Psychology and Education, as well as the Department of Anthropology, at Eötvös Loránd University.

A peek into the habitus? Complex metaphors of illness and health with regard to therapy choice in Hungary

Medical pluralism not only signifies the availability of various therapies in a given society, but also connotes a nexus of worldviews espousing distinct concepts of world, man, illness, and health. Due to a complex set of sociocultural factors, there has been an increase in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in Western cultures. Patients’ choice of therapy is largely dependent on their information-seeking behavior, explanatory model of illness, and underlying dispositions. In countries such as Hungary, social institutions of integration among Western medicine and CAM are sparse, entailing adverse repercussions in communication between physician and CAM user. The presentation will examine the milieu and sociocultural factors of thera

Monday, April 30 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker:  Catherine, Panter-Brick, MA, Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs,Senior Editor, Medical Anthropology, Social Science & Medicine, Head of Morse College, Yale University, Director, Program on Stress and Family Resilience, Anthropology, Director, Conflict, Resilience & Health Program, MacMillan Center

Forced Displacement and Humanitarian Action: A Case Study with Syria Refugees

In the wake of the Syria crisis, we see numerous reports documenting the trauma, loss, and stress of communities affected by war and forced displacement; a few also highlight evidence of resilience as Syrian refugees rebuild their lives in new communities.  In the Middle East region, the No Lost Generation initiative is one example of a platform grouping together humanitarian programs focused on issues of protection, wellbeing, and social cohesion.  While interfacing with donors and the public, such programs embrace a well-articulated narrative of risk and resilience, one in which notions of social justice and human rights surface more or less explicitly. Over the past two years, I directed an research partnership to engage interdisciplinary scholars with the No Lost Generation programming in Jordan.  I helped to assess a humanitarian program, evaluating how the impacts of stress can be measured over time and what resilience means for young Syrian refugees and Jordanian hosts living side-by-side in communities heavily impacted by the Syrian crisis.  In this presentation, I examine how anthropologists can partner with other scholars and humanitarians to engage in more critical discussions of fairness, dignity, and accountability.

Mother's Milk: Anthropological Investigations at the Intersection of the Life and Social Sciences

Public health efforts promote the first 1000 days of life as influential for health and well-being across the lifespan. This developmental period has both vulnerability and opportunity for the integration of infant physical, behavioral, and microbial systems. Previous research of this developmental stage has remained primarily physiological before birth and behavioral during infancy, but mammals produce milk extending physiological investment for the neonate. Unlike adults in Westernized, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic nations, far removed from the ancestral conditions that shaped our bodies, the breastfed infant develops within an “adaptively relevant environment.” Cross-cultural investigations combined with an evolutionary viewpoint yield new perspectives of mothers, milk, and infants. For example, breast milk nourishes, protects, and informs the developing neonate through nutrients, defenses, and hormones. Milk varies across evolutionary time, human populations, individuals within populations, and within mother across time. In this way mother’s milk reflects the “here and now” and the “there and then.” Biomedical and social scientific research on this topic can directly translate to culturally-sensitive, personalized clinical recommendations and health optimization for mothers and their infants as well as substantiate the importance of infrastructure and institutional support for breastfeeding. Further, a better understanding of the composition and function of milk informs the design of more representative infant formulas for those mothers facing obstacles or contraindications to breastfeeding. Lastly, decoding mother’s milk will allow for enhanced precision medicine for the most fragile infants and children in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. Transdisciplinary approaches to mother’s milk research, along with public engagement, facilitate discoveries at the bench and their translation to applications at the bedside.

Psychological & Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Professor Claire Snell-Rood Date: Wednesday, April 18, 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Location: GPS RBC Room 1201

Claire Snell-Rood is an Assistant Professor in Health and Social Behavior in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores the social dimensions of health among women living in poverty, which she has examined in urban India as well as rural Appalachia. Her book, No one will let her live: women's struggle for wellbeing in a Delhi slum, is published with UC Press and received an honorable mention for the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize. Her current research employs implementation science perspectives to address mental health disparities in the rural U.S.

Does the “Moral Self” matter for applied medical anthropology? Thoughts from Urban India and Rural Appalachia

Though morality, ethics, and care remain prominent themes in medical anthropology research on structural violence, their relevance for applied research has been less explored. In this talk, I bring together studies on moral wellbeing among women living in Indian slums and on rural women’s depression to suggest how the “moral self” may yield both broad directions and specific strategies to address trenchant health dispar

Queer Politics for Field Ecologists? Mourning Other Species in Damaged Landscapes

There’s something queer about relations between field ecologists and their study organisms, on the frontlines of the sixth mass extinction, as more than human intimates die at alarming rates. What radical politics and transformative potentials can arise from witnessing these transgressive intimacies, even or especially among more-than-human others dying because of human (in)action? I search for signs of resistant ‘world making’ (Muñoz) in ephemeral moments where scientists were able to speak their grief at extinction and love for their study species—in the field, in a twitter #cuteoff, and in response to earlier versions of this talk. I look to queer politics—ACT UP’s street protests during the height of the AIDS crisis in the U.S.—as a model for how ecologists might tap grief and rage as a source for social connection and political action.What was unbearable as individual grief became cathartic public performances of mourning and rage demanding research, antidiscrimination legislation, and above all visibility and an end to homophobic erasure. Through autoethnography of my own queer field encounters with dead and dying salmon, I argue that such public mourning for interspecies relations could bring new fire to environmental activism, replacing affectless terms like ‘species loss’ and ‘biodiversity’ with ‘death of beloved kin’.

Monday, April 9| 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room 107 Speaker: Anatoly M. Khazanov, Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus), Fellow of the British Academy, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Department of Anthropology

Contemporary Pastoralism in Central Asia: Problems of Social and Environmental justice.

Contemporary pastoralism in Central Asia is an outcome of three developments, all of which affected it in a negative way. The first one had happened in the late 1920s and in the early 1930s.  The pastoralists were forced to become laborers on the state-owned or the so-called collective farms and were divorced from the possession of pastures and most of livestock. The outcome was a very sharp decrease in stock numbers and in pastoralist population in the whole. The second development took place in the late Soviet period, when some efforts were made to modernize pastoralism and to make it more mobile again. But this was done in a characteristically Soviet inefficient and erroneous way.  Pastoralism had lost its traditional character but was never organized on rational economic principles. In the late Soviet period, a prime goal was to increase stock numbers by any means. This was achieved by large state subsidies, a disregard for production cost, and by complete neglection of environmental factors.  The next, post-Soviet period of drastic changes in Central Asian pastoralism can be characterized as a period of its de-modernization. All subsidies and other support of pastoralism ceased to exist. The two most important reforms were the dissolution of the Soviet state- and collective farms and the privatization of livestock. However, this privatization was accompanied by widespread embezzlement by those in power. Social justice was the least concern of the reformers. In all Central Asian countries, the majority of pastoralists have become non-commercial, subsistence-oriented, and impoverished peasants.   Pastoralism has also become less mobile. While pastures near settlements are overused, distance pastures, remain underutilized, or even are completely abandoned. One is witnessing now desertification and degradation of vegetation, soil, and water. It is clear that In addition to the negative climatic change, the contemporary sociopolitical and economic changes are also implicated in the progressive decline of arid pasturelands.  Whether it rains or shines, these things will not go away by themselves.

Psychological & Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Fernando graduated in Social Sciences (2009) and has a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology (2013). Currently he is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC, Brazil) and is a Visiting Scholar at UC San Diego in the Fulbright Program. His work has focused in the ethnographic study of mental health field in Brazil from the perspective of Anthropology of Health.

"Of Other Realms, Entities and Meanings: Studying Mental Health in an Outpatient Clinic in Southern Brazil”

This presentation discusses my fieldwork in a psychiatric day clinic in southern Brazil. It examines how religious and psychotherapeutic interpretations of self and healing are constantly being evoked and interwoven into therapeutic conceptions and practices. What I take as religious interpretations are not discrete or static conceptions but, in fact, heterogeneous statements that refer to spirits, lights, energies, colors, seeing and talking to other entities. Similarly, when I talk about psychotherapeutic interpretations, I call attention to a diversity of psychological and therapeutic schools that are practiced within the day clinic program, including psychoanalysis, transpersonal psychology, and psychodrama. Both groups of practices/discourses should not be seen as opposed or contradictory but, rather, as crucial in shaping important psychiatric artifacts in that context. Mental health, here, is experienced from the perspective of a world populated with different entities – that include the powers of biomedicine and medication, but also deal with the unknown, the energetic and the spiritual. As a result, instead of describing the clinical practices as expressing a discrete and well-defined conceptual orientation – either that of the religious or mental health perspective – I choose to think about both realms as intertwined.

Monday, March 12 | 3:00 pm | Institute of the Americas Deutz Room Speaker: Jonathan Rosa, Ph.D. Department of Anthropology Stanford University

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a Chicago public high school and its surrounding communities, this presentation examines borders delimiting Latinx and American identities on the one hand, and co-naturalizations of language and race on the other. My analysis of these dynamics in relation to racialized anxieties regarding the implications of an increasing U.S. Latinx population attends to the construction of language as a sign of Americanness, and especially of its potential undoing. I argue that these “raciolinguistic” phenomena are emblematic of broader global processes that result in the profound social fact that populations come to look like a language and sound like a race across societal contexts.

 Monday, March 19, 3:00pm-4:30pm, Spiro Library    

Cacao, Commerce, and Economic Change in Late Postclassic Soconusco (ca. 1200-1520 CE)

The Soconusco region of southeastern Mexico was heavily involved in Postclassic commerce, due largely to the area's valuable forest resources, particularly cacao, which had become a key product in long distance exchange. This talk reviews some of the impacts of Soconusco's growing participation in Late Postclassic Mesoamerican commercial systems. Archaeological data indicate that changes took place in settlement patterns and in consumption patterns of a variety of artifact categories, although some of these changes did not occur evenly across the region. I also explore the economic and

Psychological & Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Professor Merav Shohet Date: Tuesday, February 13, 2017, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Location: Psychological and Medical Anthropology Lab, SSRB 331

Dr. Merav Shohet is a cultural anthropologist whose specializations in psychological, medical, and linguistic anthropology lead to ethnographically grounded, comparative, language-centered research on affect, morality, and health.

“Waiting with Illness and Care” in Vietnam

Recent decades’ marketization and privatization reforms under the policy of đổi mới (Renovation) have led to a contraction of Vietnam’s public health care system, just as the incidence of hypertension and other diseases has been rising. With a decline in nationalized forms of care, families—and especially women—are idealized as steadfast care-takers who unquestioningly shoulder the burdens of sustaining their own continuity and viability, as households remain the normative and preferred places to care for ill members. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Đà Nẵng, this chapter considers how families on the city’s margins cope with terminal illness. Focusing on the case of an elderly matriarch who suffered a series of high blood pressure-related strokes that left her in a permanent vegetative state, I detail the multiple layers of waiting and (lack of) care experienced by the ill grandmother and her extended family. The analysis illuminates how home-based rituals and routines were altered and thereby sustained as the matriarch’s relatives at once anticipated, and yet tried to minimize and ward off their ongoing loss, in part by shrouding the illness in relative silence. In attending to the entanglement of different forms of being-in-time in relation to care, I attempt to show how waiting to and waiting for care are recounted as gendered, troubled, and troubling ethical practices in Vietnam.

Global Seminars Information Session: Sex and Health in Southeast Asia | Bangkok, Thailand

Are you interested in the intersection of gender/sexuality and global health from a socio-cultural perspective?  Are you interested in travelling to Thailand this summer while getting academic credit?  Attend the information session to learn more about this this program.

Thursday, December 7 | 5:00 - 6:30pm | Spiro Library, SSB 269

Ancient Art and Cities of the Maya: Study Abroad in Mexico | Information Session

Are you interested in visiting 18 ancient Maya cities in the rainforests of Mexico during Spring Break? Attend one of the following information sessions to learn more about this program!

• Monday, December 4 | 3:00 - 4:30pm | Social Sciences Research Building, Room 315B
• Tuesday, December 5 | 3:00 - 4:30pm | Social Sciences Research Building, Room 315

Psychological & Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Our next meeting of the UCSD's Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar. will be on Wednesday, November 15th from 10am-12pm, in SSRB 331. Dr. Paula Saravia will be presenting a paper titled, "No hay drama": Precarity, Medicine, and Gender among mental health and HIV-AIDS patients in Northern Santiago, Chile. Please find the attached flyer with the abstract.

We hope you will join us in the Psychological and Medical Anthropology Lab, SSRB 331, on Wednesday, November 15th from 10am-12pm. 

"Climate Change and Religion" with Thomas J. Csordas and Karma Lekshe Tsomo.

Thursday, November 2, 2017 | 2:30 - 4:30 PM | Forum at the Price Center (Level 4)

Come and learn about the history of religious thought and practice in the way humans play a role in preserving the earth and the environment. How does religion, in its diverse forms, understand climate change?

"What Muslims and Jews Need from Each Other" by Yossi Klein Halevi.

Thursday, November 2 | 3:00 - 5:00pm | Cross-Cultural Center - Communidad Room

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co- directs the Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative
Yossi has been active in Middle East reconciliation work, and serves as chairman of Open House, an Arab Israeli-Jewish Israeli center in the town of Ramle, near Tel Aviv. Yossi was one of the founders of the now-defunct Israeli-  Palestinian Media Forum, which brought together Israeli and Palestinian journalists. He was a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem from 2003-2009.
Yossi was born in New York. He has a B.A. in Jewish studies from Brooklyn College and an M.S. in journalism from Northwestern University. He moved to Israel in 1982, and lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Sarah, a landscape designer. They have three children.  Questions: jewishstudies@cloud.ucsd.edu.

This event is open to UCSD students only.

Anthropology Department Colloquium Monday, October 30 | 3:00 pm | Social Sciences Building, Dean's Conference Room Speaker: Sara Ayers-Rigsby, MA, RPA Director, Southeast/Southwest Regions, Florida Public Archaeology Network, Florida Atlantic University

On the Front Lines-Sea Level Rise and Archaeology

With 3 feet of sea level rise, over 16,000 cultural sites in Florida will be destroyed. How do we document these sites before they are gone? What are the best steps we can take to engage the local community? In this talk, we will explore the Florida Public Archaeology Network’s citizen science initiative, Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS) Florida, as well as practical approaches to engage local leaders in this important issue. A major success story in southeast Florida was the inclusion of archaeological resources in the Southeast Regional Climate Compact, a four county agreement between Palm Beach County, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties that details recommendations to cope with climate change in these counties.Resiliency is also a social justice issue—natural disasters such as hurricanes like Harvey and Irma illustrate how marginalized communities suffer disproportionately. Additionally, too often cultural heritage is overlooked in resiliency discussions, but it is a critical part of helping communities engage with the space around them. Pride in historic sites and local archaeological should be accessible to everyone. Although destructive, natural disasters can also galvanize the local community to protect cemeteries or submerged resources under threat that they may not have been previously aware of. In this discussion we will use examples from various communities throughout Florida, such as the fishing village of Matlacha, and recent events to illustrate the need for people to get involved in protecting coastal heritage.

We hope you will join us in the the Psychological and Medical Anthropology Lab, SSRB 331, on Wednesday, October 25th from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm!

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series: Introductory Meeting

Please join us for the first 2017-2018 meeting of the Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar.  We will cover introductions and share updates from the summer and plans for the academic year.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 | 10:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m. | Psychological -Medical Anthropology Lab (SSRB 331)

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Yahalom

June 5, 2017 | 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

Ethics, Religion, and Climate Change: Relating Local Moral Frameworks to Global Science & Religion

June 2nd, 2017 | SSB 107 | 10 - 3:30 p.m.

CAW Critical Anthropology Workshop

May 23, 2017 | 4 - 6 p.m.

We will discuss new work from Dr. Rihan Yeh, U Chicago 2009, a US-Mex alumna, now at the Universidad de Michoacán, Mexico. Rihan is spending time in SoCal during her sabbatical, and will share some of her work in progress with us. She will followup with a workshop on 'grappling with radical vulnerability' - a key concept she offers in her 2014 book, Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism and further developed in Hungry Translations.

This will be co-sponsored by CAW and SED the Studio for Ethnographic Design. This will be a more informal venue where faculty and students can discuss the challenges of ethnography and writing.

CAW Critical Anthropology Workshop

May 22, 2017 | 1 - 3 p.m. | Dolores Huerta Room, Old Student Center

We will discuss new work from Dr. Rihan Yeh, U Chicago 2009, a US-Mex alumna, now at the Universidad de Michoacán, Mexico. Rihan is spending time in SoCal during her sabbatical, and will share some of her work in progress with us. She will be giving a public talk based on her new book-in-progress, Hungry Translations: Telling Stories, Disrupting 'the Social,' Relearning the World, which she is writing in collaborative journeys with members of the Sangtin movement and Parakh theatre. The book looks at questions of storytelling as an ethical responsibility that must do justice to the epistemic energy of those whose knowledges we stand on, but whose intellectual labors often remain invisible in the academy. This will be co-sponsored by the International Institute, the Anthropology Department, and the South Asia Initiative.

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Salih Can Ackisoz

May 22, 2017 | 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

"Saving the World's Most Peaceful Primates"

Karen B. Strier Vilas, Research Professor and Irven DeVore Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Monday, May 15, 2017 | 3:00-4:30pm | SSB 107

My main research interests are to understand the behavioral ecology of primates from a comparative perspective, and to contribute to conservation efforts on their behalf. The northern muriqui ( Brachyteles hypoxanthus ), which I have been studying in Brazil’s Atlantic forest since 1982, are a model for comparisons with other primates as well as one of the most critically endangered primates in the world. One of the current priorities of my long-term field study is to understand how stochastic demographic fluctuations and individual life histories affect population viabilities and behavior. I am also interested in understanding population-level variation and its relevance to basic research in biological anthropology.

 Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Jacqueline Leckie

May 11, 2017 | 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

"Modeling, Combining, Containing: Making meaning in the Aegean Bronze Age"

Carl Knappett, Professor of History of Art, University of Toronto

Monday, April 17, 2017 | 3:00-4:30pm | SSB 107

The Bronze Age societies of the Aegean produced an array of artifacts so striking that they are commonly, if problematically, labeled “artworks”, Yet, these objects are rarely subject to the anthropological approaches that have contributed so much to our understanding of these societies. In this talk I will address some of the reasons for this oversight, and attempt to “rehabilitate” Aegean art from a perspective that combines insights from art history anthropology and archaeology. The focus will fall principally on technologies of modeling, combining, and containing, with an examination of the semiotic resources that these processes offered ancient artisans and consumers in their creative engagement with the material world.

CAW Critical Anthropology Workshop

April 11, 2017 | 5:30 - 7 p.m. | Sequoyah Hall, Room 201

We will meet to discuss one short article, Nitzan Shoshan’s Cultural Anthropology piece: Managing Hate: Political Delinquency and Affective Governance in Germany.  

Graduate Student Seminar: "How to Write an IRB Proposal"

April 11, 2017 | 4 - 5:30 p.m. | SSB 107

The International Institute invites you to a workshop to help guide you through the difficult process of applying for an IRB/Human Subject applications. Guest speakers will be Patrick Patterson, Associate Professor of History, and Chair, Committee on Research Grants, General Campus Lorena Almeida, HRPP Human Research Protection Program.

Subjects to be covered: * When is IRB review required? * Protecting human subjects: rules, requirements, procedures * Approval for social science methods: what's easier than you might think, and what's harder than you might think * Ways to make the IRB process smoother and faster * International issues: special problems and concerns for work abroad * The nuts and bolts of putting together an IRB submission.

For more information, please contact UC San Diego International Institute Director, Nancy Postero.

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Angel Martinez Hernandez

Behind the Times: Work, Neoliberal Futures, and the Politics of Chronic Disease in San Francisco's Transit System

April 3, 2017 | 11 - 1 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

Digital Cultural Heritage in Greece & Beyond

March 27, 2017 | 5 - 7 p.m. | Atkinson Hall

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Mark Fleming

Behind the Times: Work, Neoliberal Futures, and the Politics of Chronic Disease in San Francisco's Transit System

March 21, 2017 | 12 - 2 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

Job Talk: "Clutter: Unpacking the Stuff of Business Innovation"

Speaker: Dr. Eitan Wilf

March 20, 2017 | 3 - 4:30 p.m. | SSB 107

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Arnaud Dubois

March 14, 2017 | 12 - 2 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

"Discerning the Spirits of South Korean Glossolalia"

Nicholas Harkness, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

Monday, March 13, 2017 | 3:30-5:30pm | SSB 107

In Christian traditions of glossolalia ("speaking in tongues"), speech-like behavior without discernible denotation can be an explicitly linguistic form of involvement with the deity. In South Korea, glossolalia is practiced widely across Protestant denominations and congregations, from Pentecostals to Presbyterians. This paper focuses on the problem of spiritual discernment, when South Korean Christians doubt the work of the deity and speculate on the source and character of the forms, forces, and feelings that they confront when they speak in tongues. I link this problem of discernment to the processes through which glossolalia suppresses "normal" linguistic functions while reinforcing ideological commitments to language itself.

Identities are Changeable: A Conversation with Miguel Zenón

In his mixed-media project "Identities are Changeable" (Miel Music, 2014), jazz saxophonist Miguel Zenón explored Puerto Rican identity in New York through interviews and music. Here he will present this work and discuss tradition and innovation in identity, language, and music with Ana Celia Zentella (Ethnic Studies, UCSD), Kamau Kenyatta (Music, UCSD), and Sandro Duranti (Anthropology, UCLA).

Grammy nominee, MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow, member of the SF Jazz Collective, Miguel Zenón was born and raised in Puerto Rico. The Miguel Zenón Quartet will perform in concert at The Loft on Feb. 22 at 8 pm.

This workshop is free and open to the public. For further information, contact kwoolard@ucsd.edu.

Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Leticia Medeiros

February 14, 2017 | 12 - 2 p.m. | Psych-Med Lab (SSRB 331)

Linguistic Anthropology Lab

Speaker: Lina Hou, Postdoctoral Student, University of California, San Diego

"Language ideologies about the uses of an emerging sign language in the San Juan Quiahije Chatino municipality"

December 5, 2016 | 12:30 - 2 p.m. | Linguistic Anthropology Lab (SSRB 340)

"Ties that Bind: Churches, Youth Gangs, and the Management of Everyday Life in the Urban Latin Amercia"

Brendan Jamal Thorton, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Monday, October 24, 2016 | 3:00-4:30pm | SSB 107

Pentecostal churches and transnational youth gangs have more in common than simply their increasing popularity in urban neighborhoods across Latin America and the Caribbean.  Indeed, in a remarkably short period of time these emergent institutions have become regular fixtures in the social and cultural life of urban communities throughout the region.  This talk considers these institutions as similar and related with two goals in mind: first, to reflect on the simultaneous popularity of two seemingly irreconcilably different institutions; and second, to probe what this shared popularity might say about contemporary social life in urban barrios today.

"Origins of Agriculture and Plant Use in Neolithic North China: Evidence from Stone Tools"

Li Liu, Professor of Archaeology, Stanford University

Monday, May 16, 2016 | 3:00pm | SSB 107

In China, grinding stones first appeared during the Upper Paleolithic period, and were one of the dominant tool types in many early Neolithic sites. Grinding stones were primarily used for processing plant foods and other materials. They gradually disappear in the archaeological record after 5000 BC in the Yellow River region at the time when millet-based agriculture intensified. However, grinding stones were continuously used by people throughout the entire Neolithic period in the Liao River region of Northeast China. The different trajectories in food processing methods (with or without grinding stones) in the two regions are likely related to diverse types of plants exploited; and we need to understand what plants were involved. By employing residue (starch and phytoliths) and usewear analyses, this study investigates the functions of grinding stones recovered at several sites in the Liao River region, dating to ca. 6000-3000 BC. The results suggest that the people utilized a broad-spectrum subsistence strategy throughout the entire Neolithic, using various wild, cultivated, and domesticated plants, including tubers/roots, cereals, beans, and nuts. The earliest domesticates in the Xinglongwa period include millets and Job’s tears. Rice may have been introduced to the region for the first time during the Hongshan period, coinciding with the rise of regional elite and intensified interactions with other Neolithic cultures in the south. This study sheds new light on the plant-use strategies of the grinding-stone users who developed complex societies in the Neolithic Liao River region.

"Geographies of Tolerance: State, Space, and Jewish-Muslim Ligatures in Morocco"

Aomar Boum, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Monday, May 9, 2016 | 3:00pm | SSB 107

In the last decades, the Moroccan state has used Andalusian sonic geographies and materialities in aesthetically designed urban festivals to produce an official discourse of Jewish-Muslim understanding. Based on a set of ethnographic interviews with youth and members of the political elite in Morocco and drawing on religious and sound studies, I argue that the urban space is deployed to create a national feeling of a Jewish-Muslim entente channeled through the political and symbolic power of a political and economic Jewish elite in Morocco. In this context, Medieval Islamic Spain is selectively used as a moral past to entertain the possibilities of Jewish-Muslim relations and religious toleration in the modern times of interfaith violence. The Moroccan state deployment of soft Andalusian soundscapes is meant to speak to the hope of Palestinian-Israeli entente. Underlying these musical events of toleration and Andalusian Convivencia is an official and nostalgic re-imagination of a historical Jewish-Muslim symbiosis. This re-imagining is used to market a distinct and unique Moroccan Islam of tolerance in a global market of religious violence.

"Earthquakes and Emergencies in Nepal: Building Sustainable Mental Health Systems amid Political, Structural, and Seismic Violence"

Brandon Kohrt, MD, PhD. Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Global Health and Cultural Anthropology
Duke University

Monday, May 2, 2016 | 3:30pm | SSB 107

Two large 7.8 and 7.3 magnitude earthquakes and more than 500 aftershocks greater than 4.0 magnitude struck Nepal in 2015 resulting in 8,600 deaths, displacement of 450,000 people, and 8.5 million people deprived of access to shelter, food, healthcare, and education. The international community donated millions of dollars to health efforts, including $17 million from Facebook, with a substantial investment in mental health services. However, prior international mental health responses to humanitarian emergencies have been criticized widely, including in detailed ethnographic research, for short-term services, lack of sustainable mental healthcare, an exclusive focus on trauma to the neglect of other mental health and psychosocial needs, stigmatizing survivors of disasters, and undermining existing recovery and support structures. Therefore, to minimize risk of these unintended consequences, governmental and non-governmental organizations strove for collaborative, sustainable efforts building upon a decade of mental health systems strengthening and anthropological research following Nepal’s civil war. Approaches to diagnosis and psychological treatment ranging from WHO programs to school counseling integrated Nepali ethnopsychological frameworks to promote effectiveness and reduce stigma. Transculturally adapted instruments revealed that earthquake-related PTSD rates were low (5.2%) whereas chronic mental health problems related to depression, anxiety, and alcohol use problems affected 1 out of 5 adults. This work demonstrates the opportunities and challenges for integrating anthropological theory and methods into global mental health interventions during humanitarian emergencies.

"Adventures in Epigenetics: Investigating the Long Term Effects of Environments in Infancy on the Regulation of Inflammation in the Philippines"

Thomas McDade, Professor. Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University.

Monday, April 18th, 2016 | 3:00pm | SSB 107

Environments in infancy have lasting effects on human physiological systems that influence health and well-being in adulthood.  Chronic inflammation is involved in many diseases of aging, and it is a potentially important mechanism linking environments and health over the life course.  But this understanding is based almost exclusively on research in affluent industrialized populations, which are epidemiologically and ecologically unique in comparison with most populations globally, and historically.  Comparative studies challenge key assumptions of the chronic inflammation paradigm, and point toward early life microbial and nutritional factors as important determinants of inflammatory phenotypes.  A developmental ecological model of inflammation has potentially important implications for understanding the complex associations among ecology, inflammation, and disease.

"The Ethics of Intelligibility: Understanding Deaf-Hearing Interactions in Nepal"

Mara Green. University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, UCSD

Monday, April 11th, 2016 | 3:00pm | SSB 107

This talk focuses on deaf Nepalis’ experiences to argue that intelligibility is ultimately an ethical as well as a semiotic phenomenon. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with signers of Nepali Sign Language (a young but conventional language) and “natural sign” (more limited signed repertoires), I explore how understanding others depends not only on shared social and semiotic conventions, but also, and more critically, on the willingness of interlocutors to engage.

Steps Toward an Anthropology of the Human Subject in Experimental Psychology

Emily Martin, Professor, Department of Anthropology, New York University (NYU)


Monday, June 2nd | 3:30-5:30PM | HSS 3027

Historians of psychology have described how the “introspection” of early Wundtian psychology largely came to be ruled out of experimental settings by the mid 20th century. In this paper I take a fresh look at the years before this process was complete -- from the vantage point of early anthropological and psychological field expeditions. The psychological research conducted during and after the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits Islands (CAETS) in 1898 had a certain impact on Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, among other things, became an important commentator on experimental psychology. In his later writings, Wittgenstein frequently referred to “anthropological facts” and “anthropological phenomena.” He articulated some of the central tenets of cultural anthropological analysis. His efforts to move the ground of analysis from philosophy to anthropology take on greater force in the light of his acquaintance with the early history of anthropology. I will take this opportunity to reconsider the importance of the CAETS in the history of anthropology and to explore some possible ways of approaching experimental psychology ethnographically.

Senior Research Fellow Presentation: Homelessness and Mental Illness in India


Inserm Cermes, University of Paris Descartes-Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales

Monday, March 10th | 3:00PM | SSB 107

"Speaking for the Voiceless: Metaphors of Power and Agency in American Political Discourse".

Elise Kramer, Department of Anthropology, University of California San Diego

Monday, February 24th | 3:00PM | SSB 107