News & Events

10/20/09

• Dr. Tankersley's will give an hour-long talk about applying to graduate schools in McMicken 53 on October 20 at 1pm. Handouts will be available after the event for those who could not attend.

• The AGSA is pleased to present an archaeology lecture: Lic. Liwy Grazioso, visiting from Guatemala, will speak on "The Rise and Development of the Lowland Maya" on Friday October 23, from 4-5 pm in Braunstein 300. All are welcome!

• Jeremy Koster will participate in a panel discussion on Thursday, October 29 as part of the symposium on Darwinism, Science, Religion, and Society. The symposium celebrates the sesquicentennial of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Additional details about the symposium, which includes multiple distinguished speakers, can be found at: http://www.uc.edu/darwin/documents/Oct_Symposium_updated_agenda.pdf

• Professor Whitcome will host a Human Evolutionary Locomotor Lab Open House on Tuesday, November 10 from 4-6pm. Please drop by and tour the new lab, view demonstrations of data capture techniques and the software used in biomechanical analyses and enjoy some laboratory hospitality. Chocolate dreams and espresso anyone? Braunstein 444.

• Mark your calendars! Together with the Taft Research Center, the Department of Anthropology will sponsor two Taft Speakers this academic year. On November 19 at 4 pm, Dr. Steve Wernke of Vanderbilt University will speak on "On a Mission: Commonplace Archaeology at an Early Post-Conquest Doctrinal Settlement in the Peruvian Andes." The talk will take place in Swift 620; all are invited! In the spring quarter, Dr. Matthew Restall of Penn State University will give a lecture on Thursday April 29 at 4 pm. Additional details will be available closer to the date.

• Archaeological research at Shawnee Lookout by Dr. Tankersley and UC students was featured in UC news: http://www.uc.edu/News/NR.aspx?id=10585

• Dr. Leila Rodriguez was invited as a guest on a radio program at the University of Costa Rica over the summer and interviewed on contemporary issues in international migration.

• Dr. Sarah Jackson is back from excavations over the summer at Say Kah, Belize, together with graduate students Lindsay Argo and Meredith Coats. Their work at this secondary center outside of La Milpa is leading them to question the current understanding of site hierarchy in the region — stay tuned for their results! In addition to work on Lindsay and Meredith's theses this year, they will all be presenting at the SAAs in the spring, and plan to begin work on a co-written article.

• During the 2009 academic year, undergraduate and graduate anthropology students worked on a number of documentary films with Professor Ken Tankersley including National Geographic Television's Naked Science, the History Channel's Universe and How the Earth Was Made, the Discovery Channel and BBC's Catastrophe: Survival Earth, and CET's NOVA special on Human Evolution.

Ken Tankersley• Professor Ken Tankersley's discovery of Sequoyah's oldest written record was featured in newspapers and magazines around the world including the New York Times, Der Spiegel, GEO, and Archaeology. The research was conducted jointly with Andras Nagy, an anthropology Taft Undergraduate Research Fellow and president of Anthropos.

• Welcome to our new graduate students, Andrew Adkins, Nick Arndt, Ethan Barnes, Christian Beck, Emily Culver, and Briana Eames! We're excited to have you join the Anthropology community at UC.

• Welcome to our two new faculty members, Dr. Leila Rodriguez and Dr. Katherine Whitcome! We're delighted to have such strong additions to our departmental faculty. Take a look at their faculty profiles to learn more about their research interests, and classes they will be offering.

10/15/09

• Rhoda Halperin, 62, an influential figure in medical, urban, applied and economic anthropology, died suddenly of acute leukemia on April 9, 2009. Read the obituary.

05/28/09

• The Department of Anthropology is very proud of its MA students graduating in June! Congratulations to Marianne Ballantyne, Jessica Juarez, Matthew Powers, Maria Venegas, and Liz Wehri. Keep us posted on your future anthropological adventures!

• Of 45 A&S students selected for Phi Beta Kappa honors, four are anthropology majors: Molly Mead, Megan Parin (who is also majoring in Journalism), Connie Underwood (who is also majoring in Women's Studies), and Maria Hernandez (who is also majoring in Spanish). Congratulations to all!

• Congratulations to our Anthropology undergrads who are expected to graduate in June: Nicholas Arndt, Matthew Coyle, Joy Eichert, Jonathan Finke, Joshua Haddix, Maria Hernandez, Rachel Martina, Molly Mead, Christopher Olsen, Megan Parin, Varun Pawar, Terry Romans, Tyler Swinney, Connie Underwood, and Charlotte Zureick. Best wishes from the department.

• Anthropology major Alexandria Halmbacher won the 2009 Joyce E. Yeager Memorial Scholarship in May 2009 — congratulations, Alexandria!

• Dr. Sarah Jackson will head to Belize for Taft-sponsored field work in June and July, along with MA students Meredith Coats and Lindsay Argo who will conduct research for their theses. The group, working with the Programme for Belize, will excavate the Classic Maya site of Say Kah in order to illuminate intersite relationships and issues of governance and autonomy in secondary centers.

• Dr. Susan Allen has received an NSF grant to support her archaeological research in Albania — congratulations!

• Dr. Vern Scarborough has recently returned from a successful NSF-sponsored field season at the Maya site of Tikal, Guatemala, along with UC colleagues Dr. Nick Dunning (Geography) and Dr. David Lentz (Biology). Their research focused on investigations of climate, water management, and plant life at the site.

• The Department of Anthropology is very pleased to welcome two new faculty members this coming September. Dr. Katherine Whitcome, a biological anthropologist specializing in skeletal biology, will join us from Harvard University, and Dr. Leila Rodriguez, a cultural anthropologist with interests in migration and demography, will join us from Penn State University. We're delighted to have both of them join our faculty.

• History Channel documentary features Anthropology professor and students http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=10101

• Dr. Ken Tankersley's research on a Kentucky cave is featured in Archaeology Magazine! Read the article.