Dr. Alexandra Conell’s dissertation, titled “Domestic Corporate Groups: An Ethnographic and Archaeological Examination of Households, Neighborhoods and Communities”, is an in-depth examination of ethnographic material on corporate group behavior analyzed with the goal of identifying variability in these groups—variability that archaeological interpretations may be missing.

Dr. Conell’s research began with a world-wide survey to identify the nature of variability and the key factors to examine further. She then analyzed ethnographic data on five cultural areas in North America, looking for cross-cultural differences and how the domestic corporate group may have changed over time in each area. She created a descriptive model of this variation and change and identified archaeological correlates, which were then applied to an archaeological case study. In doing so, Dr. Conell identified both variability in the nature of this group’s corporateness and change over time. Not only is this information of interest for her specific case study group, but insights from Dr. Conell’s research will contribute broadly to the archaeological study of corporate groups, allowing for more nuanced understandings of these groups and factors that contribute to their variability.

Throughout Dr. Conell’s graduate student career, her advisor, Dr. Jodie O’Gorman, was impressed with how she actively sought out diverse learning experiences. Her pursuit of one of these interests—geophysical surveying techniques—led her to serve as an assistant for a project in Oman under the direction of geologist Dr. Remke Van Dam. While writing her dissertation, Dr. Conell was an instructor at Alma College and an assistant at the MSU Archives, and she excavated every summer at Colonial Michilimackinac. She will pursue cultural resource management following the 2021 season at Michilimackinac.

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Dr. Lissie Arndt is a dual degree DO and PhD student, having completed her PhD in 2020 under the mentorship of Dr. Linda Hunt (right). Dr. Arndt’s dissertation, titled “The Ambiguity of HIV Risk in Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Administration in New York”, combines her anthropological and medical training as she examines of the concept of “risk” in the emerging market of pharmaceutical prevention of HIV.

Based on close ethnographic examination of the contrasting perspectives of patients, caregivers, public health officials, and pharmaceutical industry representatives, Dr. Arndt reveals a complex picture of “risk” management as the pharmaceuticalization of self and society. She proposes the term “structural risk” to describe how the “risk” concept is built into both societal and health care structures, which manifests in a narrowing of definitions of health and illness, as well as of options for health professionals and patients.

Dr. Arndt’s research is an important contribution to the study of the corporatization of healthcare. Her work illuminates the intimate relationship between corporate interests, clinical models, and public health agendas—raising important questions both for the anthropology of pharmaceuticals and for clinical risk management. As “risk” is increasingly used to revise concepts of many conditions, requiring life-long ingestion of prescription medications, careful consideration of the “structural risk” concept will provide a useful lens for critically examining these issues. In addition to her research and studies, Dr. Arndt co-founded and volunteers with Spartan Street Medicine, a student-led group that provides basic healthcare services to homeless community members in Lansing, Michigan. Dr. Arndt is in the final stages of her medical training and plans to go into family medicine.

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This September, the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL) participated in Operation UNITED in collaboration with the FBI’s Evidence Response Team, the Detroit Police Department (DPD), and several other local universities and law enforcement agencies. Operation UNITED is an acronym which stands for “Unknown Names Identified Through Exhumation and DNA.”

Operation UNITED began as a grassroots effort between DPD Sgt. Shannon Jones and FBI Special Agent Leslie Larsen to solve as many cold case homicides in Detroit as possible. By exhuming the remains of unidentified homicide victims and comparing their DNA with family reference samples, Operation UNITED seeks to make identifications and jump start cold case investigations. This is the third season of the project and participants have successfully exhumed the remains of over 100 unidentified homicide victims, several of which have ultimately led to positive identifications.

Dr. Carolyn Isaac, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and MSUFAL Laboratory Director, as well as graduate students in the Department of Anthropology Clara Devota, Rhian Dunn, Micayla Spiros, and Alex Goots attended the three-day excavation. Each graduate student joined an interdisciplinary team and worked to locate and excavate remains based on cemetery records and autopsy details. Dr. Isaac rotated between the teams, providing her expertise in forensic anthropology and confirming whether or not the remains matched the demographic details of the person in question.

According to Special Agent Leslie Larsen, “Forensic anthropologists on scene are the instrumental piece that we need to make sure we are exhuming the correct bodies from the ground. They review the case files and autopsy reports then match those findings with the human remains uncovered by our dig site teams. Without on-site forensic anthropologists working with us, we would not be able to do these body recoveries.”

Over the course of the three day excavation, Operation UNITED was able to recover human remains from 21 individuals, bringing the running grand total of DNA samples to 121 individuals for the whole project. In short, 121 individuals who have been missing, some for decades, finally have the opportunity to be identified and properly laid to rest, thanks to the tireless efforts of everyone involved in Operation UNITED.

This edition of the Department of Anthropology newsletter recognizes and celebrates our recent graduates who have persevered and achieved their educational goals through a time of extraordinary adversity. As Chair of the Department and on behalf of the Anthropology faculty and staff, we give our sincerest congratulations to the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2021. We are so proud of them and impressed by them. The ongoing global pandemic has wrought indescribable loss, grief, and uncertainty in so many aspects of our lives. In the face of such pervasive hardship, our graduates persisted through challenges and overcame obstacles to earn their degrees. We take great joy in commemorating this milestone that reflects their numerous achievements and the culmination of their triumphs and determination.

In this special newsletter issue, we feature our 2020 and 2021 PhD graduates and four of our exceptional undergraduate graduates who received their degrees this past spring. Next to each graduate’s name is the subfield of anthropology in which they specialize; however, they all embrace the diverse and holistic nature of our discipline.

Since the onset of the pandemic, twelve of our PhD students have earned their doctoral degrees. They completed and defended their dissertation research, which is briefly described in these articles. This feat represents a myriad of efforts in their enduring work over the years and the guiding mentorship from advisors and faculty. The journey towards a PhD involves many challenges, made more difficult by the pandemic, and these doctoral graduates have shown considerable strength through it all. The research and work over the course of these graduates’ careers have made significant contributions to the larger body of scholarly knowledge and have truly made an impact in the world.

All four of our featured graduated undergraduate students represent the Department of Anthropology’s outstanding seniors who have excelled in their coursework, conducted independent research with their mentors, and served as positive influences in their communities. As many traditional collegiate experiences were curtailed during their final year in response to health and safety efforts, our undergraduate students’ achievements are all the more commendable as they continually adapted with grace, diligence, and creativity.

Please join us in honoring our graduates and their many accomplishments and in appreciating their resilience. To all of our graduates, you have inspired us more than you know, and we look forward to celebrating your future successes.

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The Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies (ARHE) Special Interest Group was one of this year’s recipients of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Presidents’ Award for the group’s extraordinary service. Dr. Deon Claiborne, Undergraduate Advisor for the MSU Department of Anthropology, is the Co-Chair of this group with Dr. Kristin Hedges of Grand Valley State University. The ARHE is a Special Interest Group of the Society for Medical Anthropology. The group’s overall mission is to engage and collaborate with colleagues working in the field of public health and infectious disease in emergency and humanitarian contexts.

With this honor, the ARHE group was “recognized for rapidly mobilizing a wide range of valuable information resources in response to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, including a series of highly informative webinars, online background information resources, and an expanded roster of content area specialists ready to share their insights with response partner organizations and affected communities.” Dr. Claiborne has facilitated and promoted this work since the pandemic’s onset, and recently presented on this group’s role and effect during health emergencies at the American Anthropological Association’s virtual conference.

In response to this prestigious award, Dr. Claiborne expressed that “both Kristin and myself were surprised by this honor. It has been our pleasure to serve as Co-Chairs for ARHE and to develop, collaborate on, and moderate the three webinars we were involved with at the beginning of the pandemic.”

To learn more about the ARHE and access the group’s resources, visit their website: arhe.medanthro.net

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The Department of Anthropology is very pleased to introduce our new Business Manager, Jocelyn Janicek, who joined the department in February 2020. As Business Manager, Jocelyn carries out numerous responsibilities to ensure the department’s success. These roles include providing support to the Department Chair, overseeing fiscal responsibilities for the department as fiscal officer, providing budget oversight and administrative support for grant administration (both pre-award and post-award), managing maintenance and renovation of Anthropology’s spaces, supervising issuance of technology and essential work-related equipment, and managing administrative personnel while also overseeing the human resource aspect of the department. Jocelyn is certainly instrumental in contributing to the important work that the Anthropology staff does.

Prior to joining the Department of Anthropology, Jocelyn worked in various MSU departments and/or units, pursuing her career within the MSU community since 2014. Jocelyn’s previous work includes experience in research, accounting, human resources, and the reform and creation of campus policies.

Jocelyn is thrilled to be a part of the Anthropology team and work in this department. Although the remote situation brought on by the pandemic left her to meet most of the Anthropology faculty and students virtually, she looks forward to meeting everyone in person when we return to campus.

In Jocelyn’s free time, she likes spending time with her family and animals and going off-roading. She has two horses, with whom she enjoys trail riding, and two very lovable dogs. Jocelyn also enjoys traveling in her off-road vehicle with her partner.

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During the Fall 2020 semester, Michigan State University’s Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) adapted their yearly Apparitions and Archaeology: A Haunted Campus Tour to address the present realties of the COVID-19 pandemic and a mostly closed campus. The tour has grown every year since its inception in 2014 and was attended by over two hundred people in 2019. Director Dr. Stacey L. Camp and outgoing Campus Archaeologist Autumn Painter knew CAP had to keep up the tradition, as it is one of their largest outreach events of the fall semester. They decided to create a virtual version of the tour that would allow the public from afar to explore the haunted and historic spaces on campus. Autumn Painter and other CAP graduate student fellows had previously created virtual exhibits as part of CAP’s ever-growing digital cultural heritage initiatives, but the online haunted tour turned out to be the largest they have created thus far.

Over the course of ten weeks, from late May until July 2020, CAP fellows Rhian Dunn and Jeff Burnett developed an interactive virtual tour using an open-source story telling tool called Twine. Twine provides developers an efficient way to create “choose your own adventure”-style stories that audience members can explore in their own way. One advantage of the online tour is that they could include all eight sites that CAP has investigated over the years: Beaumont Tower, Sleepy Hollow, Saints’ Rest, Beal Garden, and more! When running the in-person tour, CAP typically showcases and presents five sites at a time.

The virtual tour was designed to give participants a choice in the content they wished to explore. The tour consists of twenty-five main pages featuring the eight historical sites and their attendant archaeological and haunted stories. Each page features a link to several of the forty-seven additional pages, allowing audience members to delve deeper into campus history. Additional links can be selected to return to the main sites or to continue exploring. Examples of these pages include: MSU’s “Sacred Space”, CAP’s celebrated Moore Artifact and the doll Mabel, and the history of fire and destruction on campus.

CAP’s virtual Apparitions and Archaeology: A Haunted Campus Tour was hosted on MSU’s Matrix: Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences and appeared on the front page of CAP’s website for the entire month of October. The event was publicized by CAP via their social media pages and by university partners including the MSU Alumni Office, the College of Social Science, the MSU Paranormal Society, and the Department of Anthropology. Discussion of the tour and interviews with CAP members appeared in the State News, MSU Today, and even on WILX TV10. This advertisement prompted four hundred forty-nine unique views on CAP’s blog post hosting the links to the tour, making it their fourth most visited page of all time. In collaboration with the MSU Alumni Office, they also had a live Question & Answer event featuring video content on the tour, which was developed by the MSU Alumni Office and the College of Social Science. The Campus Archaeology Program is immensely pleased with the results of the tour and they send our most sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to its great success.

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