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Congratulations Dr. Fayana Richards!
The Department of Anthropology would like to congratulate our newest PhD. Dr. Fayana Richards! We are very excited to see Fayana come to the completion of her graduate career here at MSU after the successful defense of her dissertation on November 21 and we wish her and her family all the best as she moves forward with her professional career. Fayana’s research recognizes the role of older African American women in providing care for their own grandchildren, nieces, nephews and even non-kin, crediting historical and structural factors that have shaped observed forms of African American kinship and caregiving patterns. Her dissertation…
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Congratulations Dr. Adam Haviland!
The Department of Anthropology would like to congratulate our newest PhD., Dr. Adam Haviland! We are very excited to see him come to the completion of his graduate career here at MSU after the successful defense of his dissertation on November 13 and we wish him and his family all the best as he moves forward with his professional career. His research shows how Lansing, Michigan, Nkwejong (the place where the rivers come together) has a long history as an Indigenous intersection and space that challenges the local settler-colonial narratives of removal and erasure. Lansing has remained an Indigenous space through…
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MSU alumna discusses volunteer tourism
Dr. Andrea Freidus recently published a piece in The Conversation, an online not-for-profit media outlet. Her piece entitled “Volunteer tourism: what’s wrong with it and how can it be changed,” came out on November 8th. Here is a small excerpt from her piece: “Volunteer tourism, or voluntourism, is an emerging trend of travel linked to “doing good”. Yet these efforts to help people and the environment have come under heavy criticism – I believe for good reason. Voluntourists’ ability to change systems, alleviate poverty or provide support for vulnerable children is limited. They simply don’t have the skills. And they can inadvertently perpetuate patronising…
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Open Faculty Position: Assistant or Untenured Associate Professor in Archaeology
Michigan State University Department of Anthropology in the College of Social Science invites applications for a tenure-system position in archaeology at the assistant or untenured associate professor level. The appointment will begin August 16, 2018. We seek an anthropological archaeologist specializing in Environmental Archaeology. Successful applicants will have appropriate research background, skills, and training to interact effectively with other disciplines across issues of human-environment interactions. These skills may include multidisciplinary training in related fields including laboratory analysis, computer modeling, and data-science methods. Applicant’s research should enhance or compliment current department strengths in anthropological archaeology or our emerging strength in cultural…
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Campus Archaeology Program Featured on MSU Today
The Campus Archaeology Program was recently featured in MSU Today. The article and video (below) explored their excavations of Station Terrace as part of the program’s summer fieldschool. To read the full article, go to http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/digging-deep-msu-campus-archaeology-uncovers-history/
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Dr. Goldstein recognized at SAA meeting for task force achievements
The Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University would like to announce and congratulate Dr. Lynne Goldstein on her recent awards from the Society for American Archaeology at their 82nd Annual Meeting in Vancouver. Dr. Goldstein was awarded two Presidential Recognition Awards for her work on two, separate task forces. The first task force, Recognizing Gender Disparities in Archaeological Grant Writing, was honored for adding a major contribution to the profession of archaeology, directors of funding agencies, academic reviewers, and the Society for American Archaeology by coalescing successful funding strategies for women and statistically demonstrating of the variance of success…
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Campus Archaeology wins 2017 Governor’s Awards for Historic Preservation
Governor Rick Snyder and Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) Executive Director Earl Poleski have announced the MSU’s Campus Archaeology program as one of the winners of the 2017 Governor’s Awards for Historic Preservation. The award recognizes people and organizations who preserve Michigan’s vital historic and cultural resources and is awarded with a ceremony in the month of May, which is National Historic Preservation Month. Campus Archaeology combines the efforts of the Department of Anthropology and Department of Infrastructure Planning and Facilities to conducts site surveys anytime ground is disturbed throughout MSU’s expansive campus. Through excavation, monitoring, and historic research, which includes…
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Rebecca K. Albert wins Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award from SAA/IFR
Undergraduate student Becca Albert (advised by Dr. William Lovis) was honored at the 2017 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting for her paper on pre-contact maize in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Becca was awarded the “Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award” jointly by the Institute for Field Research (IFR) and the SAA. This award, which includes a 1,000 cash prize, acknowledges exceptional scholarly work among undergraduate archaeology students. In Becca’s case, the award committee wrote that “[Rebecca’s paper] employs a methodologically rigorous microbotanical analysis to demonstrate that carbonized residue on pottery from the Winter Site, AMS dated to 100 cal B.C., contains maize…
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Adjunct Feature: Dr. Heather Walder
Heather Walder is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology for 2016-2017. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and her dissertation investigated intercultural interaction and colonial encounters across the Upper Great Lakes region of North America. She has extensive teaching, research, and cultural resource management experience in the Midwest, and she most recently worked for the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Her interest in archaeology first took root during her undergraduate field school excavating a 9th century AD town site in the Czech Republic, where she learned that she…
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Open Faculty Position: Assistant or Associate Professor in Archaeology (Director, Campus Archaeology Program)
Michigan State University Department of Anthropology invites applications for a tenure system position in archaeology at the Assistant or Associate Professor level. The appointment will begin August 16, 2017. We seek an anthropological archaeologist who has experience in public archaeology and heritage studies, and will be responsible for directing the MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) (http://campusarch.msu.edu), which is centered on the MSU campus and largely focused on historic period (AD 1855-1955) sites. The candidate must also demonstrate a commitment to an active and dynamic research agenda that will be pursued in addition to or in conjunction with CAP. Candidates must…