This spring, PhD student Micayla Spiros received the inaugural College of Social Science Graduate Student Research Award. This award is presented to one graduate student from the entire College of Social Science who initiates and conducts original research and demonstrates a clear potential for continued research excellence. Spiros is a graduate student in the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL) who studies how variation in the human skeleton can aid in the identification of unknown remains.

Spiros’s research focuses on macromorphoscopic (MMS) variation in the postcranial skeleton, which involves examining the expression of human variation in the skeleton below the skull. Spiros became interested in this research topic after identifying a gap in biological anthropology, in which researchers primarily focused on the cranium for estimating an individual’s ancestry from the skeleton. Since recognizing this disparity, Spiros has worked towards standardizing the collection protocol of postcranial variations and assessing their utility in estimating the biological profile. Spiros has presented her research at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference and published articles in Forensic Anthropology and Journal of Forensic Sciences. Spiros is now addressing the current lack of understanding behind variation in the postcranial skeleton, and the absence of postcranial data in juvenile individuals.

While MMS variations are assumed to be associated with genetic variation, the effects of ontogeny and non-biological influences have yet to be fully explored. For her dissertation research, Spiros is exploring the growth and development of postcranial variation by collecting data on individuals from diverse age, population, and socioeconomic cohorts. Using a biocultural approach, Spiros is investigating the theoretical foundations of these variations while considering developmental theory, ecogeographic history, plasticity, and human adaptability.

By better understanding the underlying factors of postcranial MMS variation, Spiros hopes that this will be useful in forensic casework involving identification of juveniles and adults and in bioarchaeological research. Spiros plans to expand her postcranial MMS database beyond the U.S. to a global scale representing worldwide variation. Through her research, Spiros is contributing to the exploration of biocultural impacts on skeletal biology and variation.

Spiros’s experiences at MSU have strengthened her expertise and skills in forensic anthropology and research. As a graduate student of the MSUFAL, Spiros regularly engages in forensic casework involving identification, trauma analysis, and recovery of human remains. Spiros has also taught the osteology lab section for the Osteology and Forensic Anthropology course, which bolstered her passion for education both within academia and the public. Spiros is grateful for the guidance from her adviser, Dr. Joseph Hefner, in encouraging her development as a researcher and instilling the importance of equity and respect in a working environment. Spiros also appreciates the continued support from one of her mentors since her Master’s program, Dr. Sherry Nakhaeizadeh, who constantly drives her to push the boundaries of science; and Dr. Jennifer Love, Forensic Anthropologist at the D.C. Office of the Medical Examiner’s Office, with whom Spiros has interned, who served as a clear example of the mutual respect between medical examiners and forensic anthropologists.

In addition to her postcranial MMS variation research, Spiros is working with Drs. Sherry Nakhaeizadeh, Tim Thompson, Ruth Morgan, and Joseph Hefner on “eye tracking” research. This work examines how practitioners visually perform osteological methods to investigate decision-making strategies of a protocol when analyzing skeletal remains. The findings from this research are important for explaining the intricacies of human variation to new students and for improving protocols in the field.

After earning her PhD, Spiros hopes to work in a medical examiner’s office aiding in forensic casework while continuing skeletal biology research.

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Associate Professor Chantal Tetreault has won a coveted Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Award. Dr. Tetreault specializes in linguistic and cultural anthropology and her recent work has primarily focused on issues of migration and social change in France. More generally, her research illuminates how cultural processes of identity construction are achieved through everyday language use. Dr. Tetreault’s award will support her research project, “What is Arabic Good For? Future Directions and Current Challenges of Arabic Language Educational Reform in France.”

Currently, only 0.2% of all middle and high school students who take a second language in France have access to Arabic, despite it being the second most widely spoken language. In her research, Dr. Tetreault will analyze the ways that Arabic is taught and not taught in France through investigating the types of discourses, institutional gatekeepers, and practitioners influencing the inclusion of Arabic in the French education system. Dr. Tetreault will explore the perspectives of politicians, educational administrators, scholars, teachers, and students to gain insight into the ways these differently positioned individuals interpret the value of Arabic relative to the evolving issues of culture, politics, and education in France.

The educational landscape of Arabic language instruction in France is complex, with ties to a colonial past and a post-colonial present. These relationships continue to play out in terms of France’s immense role in economic, political, and cultural affairs in the Maghreb and the Middle East. However, despite clear geo-political stakes in the Middle East and North Africa and the Arabic language, France has repeatedly failed to make Arabic a national educational priority unlike other European Union countries. Dr. Tetreault’s research will contextualize the French cultural impasse on Arabic language educational reform in terms of the rise of right-wing Islamophobic political discourses. The importance of these public conversations and failed educational reforms goes beyond the scope of language instruction to entail changing understandings of French identity in the context of immigration, globalization, and post-coloniality.

With this award, Dr. Tetreault will travel to France and conduct her research next spring over the course of six months, collaborating with colleagues at the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations (INALCO). Dr. Tetreault’s analysis of the national debates surrounding Arabic language educational reform in France will be disseminated through a series of articles and a book. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program encourages academic and professional experts across disciplines in their international research and/or teaching endeavors. This program selects individuals through a competitive process to help them achieve their ambitious goals. Fulbright prides itself on being the “most widely recognized and prestigious international exchange program in the world.”

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Dr. Mara Leichtman has been awarded a prestigious fellowship of the Luce/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs. Dr. Leichtman is an Associate Professor of Anthropology affiliated with the Muslim Studies Program, African Studies Center, and Asian Studies Center. Her research interests focus on the interconnections among religion, migration, politics, and economic development through examining Muslim institutions and the communities they serve.

Luce/ACLS Fellowships support scholars in the humanities and social sciences pursuing research on any aspect of religion in international contexts with a desire to convey their specialist knowledge to the media. The Luce/ACLS Fellowships culminate in producing a significant piece of scholarly work and communicating these perspectives to public audiences through collaboration with journalists. Dr. Leichtman’s fellowship will support her book project, “Humanitarian Islam: Transnational Religion and Kuwaiti Development Projects in Africa.”

Arab Gulf states are surpassing Western development agencies in providing assistance to African countries. Dr. Leichtman’s research will analyze individual, civil society, and state giving in Kuwait through Islamic ethical frameworks as motivations for charity. Case studies of transregional connections with Senegal and Tanzania assess the cultural and religious impact of Gulf funding in Africa while complicating the “giver/receiver” binary. Through exploring Sunni and Shi‘i organizations in Africa, Dr. Leichtman’s project will unpack the politics of Kuwaiti giving by situating the aid apparatus within national, international, historical and contemporary contexts. Media coverage has depicted Africa as another sphere for the Saudi Arabia-Iran rivalry in disseminating Sunni-Shi‘i sectarianism. Based on this research, public writing for media and policy outlets will demonstrate that Iran is not the only Shi‘i player in Africa and that Africans are not simply pawns in Gulf power politics.

Dr. Leichtman is among only six other scholars from across the country to be awarded a fellowship this year. In addition to receiving $63,000 to implement their projects, each fellow will participate in a media training workshop and an annual symposium that brings the scholars into dialogue with renowned journalists to discuss key issues in religion and international affairs. This collaboration will serve to disseminate more nuanced, contextualized, and dynamic understandings of religion in global public life, politics, and policy. The Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs is made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

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Dr. Gabriel Sanchez has been awarded a National Geographic Early Career Grant in support of his collaborative and eco-archaeological research with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Their project, “Archaeology as Conservation Science: Investigating the Historical Range of California’s Endangered Coho Salmon” employs archaeological data to inform contemporary salmon management by identifying the native range of salmon species and their presence in specific coastal streams. Dr. Sanchez joined the Department as a College of Social Science Dean’s Research Associate and specializes in Indigenous and environmental archaeology. Working through the lens of historical ecology, he studies ancient fisheries along the Pacific Coast of North America and how data from archaeological sites can inform contemporary resource management and conservation.

The National Geographic Society funds “bold, innovative, and transformative projects” through a highly competitive grant program, with a particular focus on projects aligned with conservation, research, education, technology, or storytelling. The National Geographic Early Career Grant is a one-year funding award, which offers an exceptional opportunity for early career scholars to join an international community of National Geographic Society Explorers.

Dr. Sanchez’s collaborative eco-archaeological project employs archaeological datasets and molecular archaeology methods, such as collagen peptide mass fingerprinting and ancient DNA analysis, to define which salmon species were historically present in California streams over the last ~7,000 years. This research is pertinent for the endangered Coho salmon as their historical biogeography is debated; researchers argue that Coho salmon are not native south of the San Francisco Bay, while others suggest Coho are native as far south as Santa Cruz County. The field of archaeology is uniquely situated to inform the debate of salmon biogeography given the preservation of animal remains in archaeological sites and the broad use of resources by Native Californians, which provides a wealth of baseline environmental information prior to the arrival of Euro-Americans and subsequent landscape-level transformations.

The research is especially relevant for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, who, through their established non-profit Amah Mutsun Land Trust, are stewarding their traditional terrestrial and aquatic territories. Salmon is a culturally significant species, and the research will support their efforts to mitigate the potential extinction of salmon within their territories and California broadly. As part of the project, members of the Amah Mutsun Native Stewardship Corps will participate in all aspects of the fieldwork.

The research project will define which salmon were native to coastal streams and illuminate their genetic diversity as a means of helping tribal and state resource managers prioritize salmon restoration, stream protection and restoration, water allocation, and also inform land-use practices. At this time, samples have been submitted for collagen peptide mass fingerprinting and ancient DNA analysis but are delayed due to laboratory closures resulting from Covid-19.

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Associate Professor Heather Howard has been awarded a distinguished Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship. The Whiting Public Engagement Program is a national grant that advances scholarly work applying the humanities in ways that benefit communities. The program’s fellowships recognize faculty whose work interacts with the public and brings together discussion on topics of significance. Dr. Howard’s work focuses on collaborative, community-based, and participatory approaches to research which promote the value of Indigenous knowledge frameworks to scholarship.

Dr. Howard is one of only six Fellows awarded across the country this year. The fellowship, in the form of $50,000, will support Dr. Howard’s project titled “Waganakising Quillwork: A Portal to Share Indigenous Knowledge.” With this fellowship, Dr. Howard will engage in a collaborative project with Waganakising Odawak (Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians) to build a digital portal for Waganakising heritage.

The Waganakising Odawak are leaders in encouraging positive relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people while preserving their culture and advancing their self-sufficiency. This portal, and the process of its creation, will initially focus on porcupine quillwork traditions and align with Waganakising initiatives supporting historical and traditional arts knowledge while cultivating intercultural respect and understanding. As a Tribal-governed platform, the portal will be curated by Indigenous historians, makers, and other knowledge-holders of the Waganakising Odawak in Michigan.

Waganakising porcupine quillwork is a beautiful decorative art but is also a significant and profound cultural practice representing Waganakising history, Tribal sovereignty, and environmental responsibility. This art embodies the respectful relationships between the human and non-human world which are interwoven in Waganakising oral traditions and storytelling.

These dimensions of the art are brought to the foreground by porcupine quillwork master and teacher Elder Yvonne Walker Keshick, who is known not only for her artistry, but also her way of relating that work to responsible gathering and protecting resources, Tribal rights, and the history of regional trade and political negotiations. Quillwork and Waganakising artists like Yvonne Walker Keshick therefore play a central role in perpetuating cultural knowledge and educating non-Indigenous neighbors about respect for Tribal ways of life.

To create this interactive tool, Waganakising historians and knowledge-holders will lead community events with Tribal members to identify heritage objects for including in the portal and to discuss the portal’s design. The project will begin by drawing on materials that are already digitized by the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC) with further technical support from the MSU Digital Heritage Imaging and Innovation Lab. The Waganakising portal will be a gateway to cultural heritage items and discussions by digitally drawing together materials held across the country and internationally into a centralized, Indigenous community managed platform.

Images:

Right—A quill box featuring otters made by Yvonne Walker Keshick using all natural quills. Image courtesy of MSU Museum collections, ID 2017:24.108. Photo by Pearl Yee Wong.

Lower left—Yvonne Walker Keshick with her granddaughter teaching quillwork on birch bark at the Great Lakes Folk Festival, East Lansing, August 8, 2015. Photo by Pearl Yee Wong.

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Associate Professors Stacey Camp and Ethan Watrall were awarded a three-year National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant for $379,017 to develop The Internment Archaeology Digital Archive (IADA). The IADA is an open digital archive that will host, preserve, and provide broad public access to digitized collections of archaeological materials, archival documents, oral histories, and ephemera that speak to the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II in the United States. This digital archive will focus on two sites of WWII incarceration located in Idaho: (1) the Minidoka National Historic Site, where the Minidoka War Relocation Center incarcerated over 9,000 predominantly Japanese American citizens and (2) the Kooskia Internment Camp, a Department of Justice prison that incarcerated over 260 Japanese American men deemed “alien enemies” by the U.S. government.

This project is a collaboration with MSU’s internationally recognized Matrix: The Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, where Dr. Watrall also serves as Associate Director. In developing the digital archive, Dr. Camp and Dr. Watrall will take advantage of the Department of Anthropology’s Digital Heritage Imaging and Innovation Lab to do 3D scans of archaeological material, which will be accessible on the IADA website. 

The IADA will make a critical intervention in the preservation and interpretation of the digital record of WWII incarceration in several important ways. First, the IADA will be the only digital archive of its kind to disseminate, interpret, and make legible archaeological and material culture from sites of WWII Japanese American incarceration. Unlike censored photographs and governmental documents that present an incomplete or biased picture of the internment and incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, archaeology provides a unique window into the actual material realities of prisoners’ lives. In its focus on the archaeological record, the IADA will use several crosscutting themes to interpret and contextualize the archaeological data and materials from sites of incarceration, including recreation and leisure, dining and foodways, healthcare, and education.

Second, the IADA will contribute insight into the lives of first-generation Japanese migrants, also known as Issei, who are largely neglected in historic and archival records. Issei were unable to naturalize due to the exclusionary immigration laws of the time and, as non-citizens and important members of the Japanese American community prior to the war, were seen as a threat by the U.S. government. They were consequently considered prisoners of war and treated as such. The IADA will provide a mechanism to compare the experiences of Japanese American non-citizen Issei at the Kooskia prison, which has been studied archivally and archaeologically by Dr. Camp since 2009, with the experiences of Japanese American citizens imprisoned at the Minidoka War Relocation Center.

While the IADA is primarily designed to address the immediate needs of Kooskia and Minidoka’s descent communities, Japanese Americans, and scholars of Asian American studies and incarceration, the project’s audience extends well beyond these groups to the general public. The project’s long-term goal is to provide a platform for the inclusion of archaeological collections from other sites of confinement and incarceration.

This project continues the Department of Anthropology’s longstanding focus on research and teaching in the domain of digital cultural heritage and archaeology.

Established in 2006, the National Park Service’s JACS grant program is focused on the preservation and interpretation of U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during WWII.

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Dr. Andrea Louie, Professor of Anthropology and founding director of the Asian Pacific American Studies Program at MSU, has been awarded a competitive 2020 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. The NEH Fellowship, worth $60,000, will support Dr. Louie to fully engage in her yearlong research project, culminating in a book titled Chinese American Mothering Across Generations: Toy Len Goon and the Creation and Recirculation of the Model Minority Myth (under contract with New York University Press). For her research, Dr. Louie will investigate the multiple narratives surrounding the story of Toy Len Goon, a Chinese immigrant who was selected as U.S. Mother of the Year in 1952.

Toy Len Goon, a Chinese American widow from Portland, Maine received widespread media attention after being selected as U.S. Mother of the Year by the American Mother’s Committee in 1952. Toy Len Goon was publicly lauded as a successful immigrant woman who had raised “good American citizens” after the death of her husband, a WWI U.S. veteran. She accomplished this while running the family’s hand laundry, and refusing welfare. While deserving of this honor, she was also chosen precisely because she was a Chinese American woman who could represent the virtues of mothering and upward socioeconomic mobility during the Cold War era. As the U.S. was trying to validate its claim as leader of the free world, her example was used to further the goals of containing Communism and integrating minorities into broader American society.

Although Dr. Louie is not the first to call attention to Toy Len Goon’s remarkable story, as Toy Len Goon’s granddaughter, and as a scholar of Asian American Studies and cultural anthropology, she is well positioned to examine the construction of the model minority myth embodied by this historical moment. Toy Len Goon was portrayed as a symbol of strong mothering, family values, and Chinese immigrant success. However, Dr. Louie believes that the public presentation of her story flattens out the complex relationships she had with both her Chinese homeland and the U.S., and does not do justice to the challenges she and her family faced.  

“I am grateful to have been awarded an NEH Fellowship to work on this project,” Dr. Louie expressed. “Toy Len Goon’s story is important to me not only because of my personal connection, but also because examining the various ways it has been told and interpreted allows us to think about how immigration narratives connect to broader questions of race, gender, and belonging in the nation, particularly in relation to Asian Americans as ‘model minorities.’ While these issues were important during the Cold War, they remain relevant today.”

Dr. Louie’s fellowship is among $30.9 million in grants awarded by the NEH for 188 humanities projects across the nation. Only eight percent of NEH Fellowship applicants were funded, with 99 fellowships approved out of 1,220 applicants across NEH’s four fellowship programs. For more information about the National Endowment for the Humanities, visit www.neh.gov. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Dr. Linda Hunt retired from the Department this spring after a remarkable career specializing in medical anthropology. Dr. Hunt attributes her early interest in anthropology to growing up in an eclectic household, with a Mexican catholic mother and New York Jewish father in an Irish-catholic neighborhood. With the diverse perspectives and realities surrounding her, she was always interested in understanding the conflicts and resolutions this fomented. After studying anthropology at Wayne State University, Dr. Hunt earned her PhD from Harvard University in 1992. Dr. Hunt joined the MSU Department of Anthropology in 1999 and attained Full Professor status in 2008.

Dr. Hunt’s research interests are rooted in the study of clinical medicine and healthcare delivery for racial/ethnic minorities. With numerous research projects in the U.S. and Mexico, Dr. Hunt’s work has covered topics including the culture of biomedicine, racial-ethnic health disparities, concepts of race and ethnicity in the health sciences, and corporatization of medicine. She became interested in these research foci while working in various medical research settings, where she saw the ways cultural constructions and market forces manifest themselves in what was assumed to be a scientifically neutral area. Much of Dr. Hunt’s research has examined the ways that health researchers and clinicians view minority populations, particularly how assumptions about the ways cultural and biological difference are manifest in clinical practice, professional training, research agendas, and health policy.

One area of accomplishment in Dr. Hunt’s outstanding career has been her great success in securing grants for her various research projects. Dr. Hunt was consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other public agencies over her career. Many of her large grants allowed her to employ numerous graduate assistants, and to collaborate with various faculty members. Dr. Hunt’s dedication to disseminate her research is evident in her prolific publication and presentation record. Over her career, Dr. Hunt has published nearly 70 articles, chapters, and reports, presented over 70 papers at professional conferences, and discussed her work in over 50 invited lectures worldwide.

Throughout her publishing activity, Dr. Hunt has always been committed to sharing her research in diverse venues in order to address medical and public health audiences. In doing so, thousands of practitioners outside the field of anthropology have accessed Dr. Hunt’s extensively cited research on genetic risk, cancer patient experience, chronic illness management, and health care reform. With her varied publications and collaborations, Dr. Hunt is regarded as a highly influential proponent for the value of anthropological perspectives in biomedical research and clinical practice. This extension of anthropology into the health sciences has helped advance the field of medical anthropology.

In reflecting on what she has enjoyed most during her career, Dr. Hunt recounts working with graduate students and teaching graduate courses, especially Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology. Dr. Hunt’s role as an extraordinary mentor is appreciated by students and colleagues, as she has constantly provided opportunities for collaboration and helped lay foundation for her students’ successful careers. Dr. Hunt is grateful to have had the opportunity to conduct a series of research projects that she felt would address socially important issues in a critical and productive fashion.

As an outdoor enthusiast, Dr. Hunt is looking forward to plenty of canoeing, kayaking, hiking, biking, skiing, and camping in her retirement. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Hunt and thanking her for her profound and far-reaching contributions as professor, mentor, scholar, and advocate.

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For the past several months, Michigan State University has been responding to the COVID-19 crisis in accordance with directives from government and health officials. This emergency initiated an immediate reaction across campus in March to switch our courses and work to remote alternatives. The tremendous effort and patience in adapting to this situation from across the Department of Anthropology deserves profound recognition. Our faculty and graduate teaching assistants quickly modified courses to online platforms so that our students could resume their studies for the remainder of the year with the least amount of interruption possible. Our undergraduate students continued to excel and engage in their courses, albeit through a different experience. Our research and laboratory activities were altered to enable related tasks to move forward. Our staff maintained the department’s operations and, as always, were eager to help resolve issues that arose.

In the midst of this global pandemic, many have regrettably experienced grief over the loss of family or friends, missed opportunities, unfulfilled endings, and imminent uncertainties as this school year came to a close. While it is difficult to reconcile these feelings of loss, I am grateful for how the people in this department have consoled and supported one another as we have navigated through these complicated times.

Among the obstacles we have recently faced, we have also enjoyed commemorating many accomplishments across the department this semester. We have celebrated the Class of 2020 in graduating from MSU and look forward to when we can honor them in an in-person commencement ceremony. Our Anthropology Outstanding Senior, Clara Devota, was recognized by the MSU administration for her commitment to academic excellence, and is among the top College of Social Science graduates applauded for their perfect 4.0 grade point average. Numerous graduate students achieved major milestones as they progress through our PhD program and develop their own academic paths with the aid of their mentors. Finally, our faculty have continued to publish the findings from their research, and several faculty members received exciting news that they were awarded grants to support their impressive research projects.

My sincere pride in this department has only strengthened as we advanced into uncharted territory. The Department of Anthropology has demonstrated its unwavering dedication to provide an exceptional education for our students and to engage in meaningful research, even when faced with unprecedented adversity. We will carry this commitment forward in the upcoming academic year as we continue to manage ongoing challenges while prioritizing everyone’s health and safety.

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