This semester, the Undergraduate Anthropology Club is continuing its mission to provide students interested in anthropology with a constructive environment to further their professional and academic goals. By the end of this semester, they will have presentations by four professors about their research, had a presentation from the Campus Archaeology Program, and a tour of the bioarchaeology lab. The UAC is planning a trip down to Ann Arbor this semester to meet the University of Michigan’s Anthropology Club and to tour some of their museums.
At the last meeting of the semester, the UAC will host their annual Students vs. Faculty Jeopardy Game and will announce the winner of both our attendance award and the undergraduate paper competition. They are also pleased to announce that they will be reinstating the Professor of the Year award in an effort to recognize and congratulate outstanding professors who go out of their way to teach, guide, and aid undergraduate students. The winner will be selected by the UAC members via a poll and will be announced at the last meeting of the year.
Dr. Lovis with his Chili Award, Photo by N. Silva, used with permission
This has been an exciting year for the Graduate Students of Anthropology (GSA). The department turned out in full force for the 2013 Chili Cook-off. Mouthwatering chili recipes were brought from every corner of the department, with the Award Winning Chili title going to Dr. William Lovis and his wife Libby. With the money raised, the GSA was able to sponsor a holiday bowling bash.
The GSA has made it a point this year to increase departmental social activities. Aside from monthly social hour meetings, events like the holiday bowling bash were planned to connect graduate students from different cohorts and specializations. To celebrate spring after the never-ending winter, the GSA reserved a box of seats for the Crosstown Showdown, a baseball game featuring the Lansing Lugnuts versus the MSU Spartan Baseball Team.
The GSA has also revamped their website to create a space where graduate students can get department news, information on graduate student events and details on how to update one’s department bio. In addition to this, the GSA is reinstating the Climo Mentoring Award and the GSA Peer Award. If you would like to nominate someone, please email the GSA at msu.anp.gsa@gmail.com with their name and why you believe he/she is deserving of the award.
Finally, the GSA is in the process of creating an MSU Anthropology calendar featuring photographs from faculty, staff, students and alumni of the department. Each month will feature a photograph and explanation of the context. The calendar will highlight major conferences for each sub-discipline, departmental events, and major University dates. Calendars are scheduled to be released this summer!
Allison Apland, Photo by A. Apland, used with permission
Allison Apland is a junior from West Des Moines, Iowa. She is studying Anthropology and History at MSU, is part of the Honors College, and hopes to go to graduate school to study bioarchaeology in the Middle East. She is currently conducting research in the Biomarker Lab for Anthropological Research with Dr. Masako Fujita to investigate questions of food insecurity and nutrition. Her focus is connecting food insecurity with food-based coping strategies and diet. She is presenting her findings about these relationships at the Undergraduate Research Symposium at the American Association of Physical Anthropology meeting in April.
Allison hopes to investigate these kinds of research questions that connect health and culture in a bioarchaeological context in graduate school. She became interested in bioarchaeology as a fieldschool student on Dr. Gabriel Wrobel’s Central Belize Archaeology Survey project this past summer. Allison loves taking archaeology and ancient history classes at MSU, and being in the field is the most fun she’s ever had. This year, she has volunteered every month at Campus Archaeology’s Dig the Past program at the MSU Museum to teach kids about archaeology through hands on learning. Allison is pursuing her interest in the Middle East by taking Arabic classes and pursuing a Muslim Studies specialization. This summer, she will be studying Arabic in Jordan through a Critical Language Scholarship from the US State Department. She is excited for the opportunity to immerse herself in a new culture and improve her language skills.
This year Allison was nominated for the prestigious Beinecke Scholarship. The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick, and Walter Beinecke. The endowment was created to provide a scholarship to enable young men and women of promise to attend graduate school in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
Each year Michigan State University nominates one junior to compete for the scholarship, and the Department of Anthropology is proud that Allison has been nominated.
Jen Vollner majored in biology while she was an undergraduate, and she had interests anatomy, evolution and genetics. Her college had no anthropology department, so it wasn’t until she was accepted into graduate school at Mercyhurst College that she took her first anthropology course. Spending two years in Erie, PA at Mercyhurst helped prepare her academically for the transition into Michigan State’s Ph.D. program.
While at Michigan State University, Jen (at left below) has been fortunate to work in the Forensic Anthropology Lab directed first by Dr. Norm Sauer and currently by Dr. Todd Fenton. The lab not only works closely with local medical examiners and law enforcement to assist in medicolegal cases, but also takes part in several outreach activities, such as law enforcement training, lectures to the public, and activities for local school children. These experiences have provided her invaluable on-the-job training and led to several research collaborations.
Jen has had the opportunity to travel to southern Italy to assist in osteological investigations of skeletal remains excavated from medieval rural cemeteries under the mentorship of Dr. Fenton and Dr. Paul Arthur. Using the methods she learned abroad and at the forensic lab at Michigan State, she was able to hone her skills in the identification of human remains. Portions of this study have been presented at MSU’s Graduate Academic Conference and at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and Paleopathology Association meetings throughout the past few years.
Jen Vollner (on left), Photo by J. Vollner, used with permission
She currently works for Dr. Fenton on his National Institute of Justice funded grant, “Pediatric Fracture Printing: Creating a Science of Statistical Fracture Signature Analysis,” which proposes best practice in the interpretation of pediatric cranial fractures. This is a multi-faceted project involving physical anthropologists, biomechanical engineers, and computer science engineers. Initial results from the pattern recognition software applied to the porcine model used in this project are quite exciting and promising. Several papers and posters focused on this project have recently been presented at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting and the National Institute of Justice sponsored symposium.
Jen’s dissertation research will center on a craniometric analysis of a medieval Christian Nubian population excavated from a site near the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. This sample will be compared with other already excavated populations from the same time period from further up and down the Nile. She will attempt to understand the amount of cranial variation within each cemetery population and between these populations to examine the concept of identity and ethnicity.
“The four-field approach at Michigan State has made me a well-rounded anthropologist,” says Jen. She believes that the experiences she has had thus far in her academic career have prepared her to confidently venture out from the walls of Michigan State when the time comes.
Eve Avdoulos, Photo by E. Avdoulos, used with permission
Eve Avdoulos was eight years old when she decided that she wanted to become a paleontologist. At the time, it was unclear whether it was her love for pre-historic large reptiles or her curiosity of exploring and learning about things so foreign to our current world that intrigued her. A trip to Italy at age fifteen solidified that it was in fact the latter with which she was captivated. After seeing the plethora of ruins that decorate Rome, Florence and Pompeii, her interests transitioned from paleontology to archaeology. Her ambition of becoming an archaeologist never disappeared, and, in August 2008, Eve began her studies at Michigan State University declaring a major in Anthropology.
During her time at MSU, Eve was actively involved within the Department of Anthropology. As a freshman, she volunteered for Dr. Alison Rautman in the archaeology lab and worked with Dr. William Lovis and his graduate assistant photographing a selection of the Departments’ collection for a NAGPRA project. Between her sophomore and junior years, she was fortunate enough to attend Dr. Jon Frey’s study abroad program to Greece where she not only had the opportunity to learn about the art and archaeology of Ancient Greece first hand, but also participated in her first fieldwork experience at the Pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Isthmia.
In her junior year, she became involved with the MSU Archives & Historical Collections as a social media intern where her interest in public outreach began. In her final summer at MSU, Eve had the opportunity to participate in Dr. Lynne Goldstein’s Campus Archaeology Field School. This led to an internship with the Campus Archaeology Program under the supervision of Dr. Goldstein and Katy Meyers and subsequent CAP fieldwork during the Summer of 2012. Her time interning with the Campus Archaeology Program and the MSU Archives & Historical Collections set the foundation for her interest in public archaeology and the ways in which archaeology and history manifest in the present.
In September 2012, Eve moved to the United Kingdom to pursue a Masters in Archaeological Heritage and Museums at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation, which she completed with a high pass, focused on the management of archaeological sites imbued with sacred values and centered upon the famous site of Hagia Sophia in Turkey.
During her Masters program, she was an active member of the Cambridge Heritage Research Group and recipient of a travel grant from Fitzwilliam College. She presented her research at Fitzwilliam College’s Graduate Conference. Her studies introduced her to a wide variety of concepts within the fields of archaeological heritage and museums, and increasingly became interested in the link between heritage and identity in urban settings.
In October 2014, Eve will return to the University of Cambridge to begin her PhD at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research within the Department of Architecture. She seeks to understand the potential of culture-led regeneration in urban settings focusing on Detroit, Michigan and select European cities.
Maxwell Fortin, Photo by W. Lovis, used with permission
The Institute of Museum and Library Services Museums for America Program recently awarded $77, 292 of a total project budget of $151,296 to Co-PIs Dr. William Lovis and Lynne Swanson (Cultural Collections Manager at the MSU Museum) for a project titled “Michigan State University Museum Archaeological Collections Stewardship Project: Compact Storage Upgrades to Cultural Collections Resource Center.” This programmatic and infrastructure improvement grant is designed to provide improved storage conditions and enhance the available storage space for archaeological collections housed at the Collections Resource Center at Central Services building adjacent to Spartan Stadium. Compact storage technology, familiar to many through its use at libraries, can enhance space availability by an additional 1/3 to almost 50%, allowing proper curation of more collections in less space. The compact storage units have already been installed, and many collections are already being moved into the renovated storage facility.
In tandem with the infrastructural improvements that accrue from compact storage, many of the archaeological collections are being brought up to contemporary museum curation standards by rehousing them in appropriate acid and chloride-free materials. This work is being undertaken by undergraduate anthropology students, both those supported by the grant and volunteers seeking hands on experience in museum collections management.
Maxwell Fortin (above) is a senior Anthropology undergraduate working on the project. He has been involved with rehousing the archaeological collections into proper archival boxes and bags for storage, as well as aiding in supervising the student volunteers. Maxwell states “I began helping with this process my freshman year as a volunteer and it has been very rewarding to see the project come into fruition as I graduate from MSU.” An Anthropology Department-supported graduate assistant supervises the activities. It is hoped that by the end of Fall Semester 2014 that the majority of the rehousing will be completed, and that the collections will be in better and more accessible condition for use by researchers.
After graduation from City College of New York (B.S. 1951), Dr. Bernard Gallin began his graduate studies at Cornell University, majoring in anthropology and China studies. One year later, in 1952, he enrolled in a 10-week summer Chinese language program at Yale University, intending to return to Cornell. Because of the Korean War, however, he was drafted into the army for two years (1952-54). Given his Chinese language training, he was assigned to Tokyo, Japan, as a China research specialist. As a result, his commitment to a career in China studies and anthropology crystallized.
Soon after Dr. Gallin’s army discharge and return to graduate work at Cornell, he and his wife and research partner, Rita S. Gallin, (MSU Professor Emerita of Sociology), spent two years in Taiwan, where he did his Ph.D. dissertation field work. In the spring of 1959, they returned to Cornell, where he began writing his dissertation.
Like other graduate students at the time, he left the dissertation unfinished to teach at Wayne State University, followed by another year teaching at SUNY Binghamton. Finally, in Fall, 1962, he arrived at MSU’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, which shortly thereafter became the Department of Anthropology. In the 12 years that followed Dr. Gallin’s arrival, he taught, served as the department’s chair, and made multiple trips to Taiwan to conduct research. Since retiring from the university in 2002 as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Dr. Gallin has continued his research on Taiwan. Based on his years of fieldwork, he has authored and co-authored numerous publications with Rita.
As the first Western anthropologist to do a Taiwanese village ethnography, his dissertation research focused on Taiwanese culture in a single village and that community’s relationships with other villages in the local area and with its urban migrants. With Taiwan’s industrialization, he continued research in the same village as well as with migrant families from the village living in Taipei and its suburbs. In the late 1990s he also followed villagers to several southeastern industrializing centers in Fujian Province on the China Mainland (People’s Republic of China or PRC). There they pursued temporary work and business opportunities and joined tours to sightsee and to participate in religious activities.
As an aspiring China specialist, why, in 1956, did Dr. Gallin opt to work in Taiwan rather than on the PRC Mainland where the Taiwanese people’s ancestors had originally emigrated? Between 1949 and the late 1970s, research on the China Mainland was impossible for almost all Westerners. The PRC refused to admit Western researchers, and the U.S. would not permit Americans to go to the PRC. Further, most American China-oriented-scholars were unwilling to work in Kuomintang-held Taiwan. They considered it a police-state controlled by the corrupt and dictatorial Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government.
Dr. Gallin agreed with their sentiments but decided to go to Taiwan for China field research. In his view, Taiwan would be the closest he could get to Mainland China to conduct research. He believed that the socio-cultural life of Taiwan’s main population would likely approximate that of the southeastern Mainland area of Fujian Province, from which most of the ancestors of the Taiwanese population had migrated, beginning in the mid-1600s. In the years since his original field work, American China researchers flowed to Taiwan to carry on research.
During Dr. Gallin’s years of research, as with many anthropology field workers, he gradually became involved in the villagers’ lives. Before the end of his first year of field work, a serious village problem developed, in which he inadvertently became involved. For Dr. Gallin the situation raised issues regarding a researcher’s personal intervention, or even involvement, in field situations. In this situation, Dr. Gallin felt he had no choice, if he was to continue living in the village and carry on his work successfully. Luckily, his intervention had a very positive effect and he realized how much better off he was by becoming involved. That decision helped him over the next 50 years to continue research with residents in the village area and its migrants in Taiwan’s cities, as well as in the PRC. That initial instance of intervention made him understand the necessity for flexibility in field research. In the years that followed, his involvement brought him the villagers’ respect and confidence, attributes necessary for successful field work. In 2006 the County government made his wife and himself Honorary Citizens of Chang-hua County.
The Gallins’ research findings from their many years of Taiwan field research provided valuable analysis of Taiwanese society and cultural life as it is compared to that of both traditional and PRC Mainland China, especially now as the PRC rapidly develops a capitalist-like socio-economic system, although under continuing Communist political rule. His own findings have demonstrated that much of the socio-economic and cultural patterns of family, kinship, economics and religion, whether in Taiwan or in various related PRC Mainland areas, appear to be undergoing much of their developmental and socio-cultural change along similar lines.
Dr. Moniruzzaman, Photo by MSU’s Presidential Report, used with permission
Dr. Monir Moniruzzaman first became interested in Anthropology during his undergraduate studies in Bangladesh at Jahangirnagar University. He finished his undergraduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology and stayed another year at the university to complete a Masters in Anthropology. He then taught Anthropology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology for three years. In 2000, he left for Canada to continue his graduate education. He received his Master of Arts from University of Western Ontario in 2003 and his PhD from University of Toronto in 2010.
It was during his studies in Canada that Dr. Moniruzzaman developed his current research interests on human organ trafficking in Bangladesh. For his Masters he examined how organ transplant raises serious ethical questions, as spare body parts become commoditized through new technology. His PhD was focused on exploring the underworld of kidney trafficking from living donors in Bangladesh. Due to the fact that the entire process and trade is illegal, fieldwork was extremely difficult. The act of selling organs is also socially stigmatized, making it more difficult to locate the sellers and talk to them about their experiences. Dr. Moniruzzaman learned to navigate these difficulties, but it was a highly challenging and risky process.
Dr. Moniruzzaman’s PhD research revealed the processes and experiences of kidney sellers in Bangladesh. He concluded that organ trafficking is utterly unethical: organ extraction is a form of violence and exploitation of the poor, imposing a terrible cost of harm and suffering. His research offers insight into bioethics and broadens debates on human rights, by examining the exploitation of the poor population,violence against their bodies, and suffering of their embodied selves, all of which generate a novel form of bodily inequality. His last fieldwork was in 2013, consisting of interviews with a liver seller (who sold part of his liver), his recipient, liver specialists and organ brokers to examine the emerging liver trafficking in Bangladesh and beyond.
Dr. Moniruzzaman’s work has been shared and published in a wide variety of formats and was even transformed into a successful art installation piece. He has been published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Journal of Social Studies, and several edited volumes. He has given testimonial on global organ trafficking to the US Congressional Human Rights Commission and the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. BBC, the Atlantic, ABC, NPR WKAR, and Discover Magazine have also featured his work and interviewed him. In 2012, MSU’s President Simon highlighted Dr. Moniruzzaman’s work as part of her annual report of the university, an honor for himself and the Department.
Dr. Moniruzzaman is planning to return to the field to continue his research on illegal organ trafficking. Currently, he is writing an article on liver organ trafficking in Bangladesh. He wants to continue examining broader bioethical questions based on the deeply moving narratives of organ sellers themselves.
Spring commencement preparations always remind me of how terrific our students are, and what wonderful opportunities our faculty provides for both undergraduate and graduate training. Throughout this newsletter you’ll see examples of undergraduates involved in various faculty-mentored research projects funded by the Provost Undergraduate Research Initiative and the department, volunteer experiences, field schools, peer mentorship, and Anthropology Club field trips and other events.
Watch your email for a special invitation to alumni to connect with our undergraduates. We are planning a fall reception to bring together alums working outside of the academy with undergraduate majors to help students envision the wide variety of directions that their bachelor’s degree may take them.
I am also very happy to note that we recently hired two new faculty members: a Socio-cultural Anthropologist hired as part of MSU’s Water Initiative, and a Forensic Anthropologist. These exciting additions to the faculty will be introduced in the Fall 2014 Newsletter.
During the 2014/2015 Academic Year I will be away in order to intensively focus on my research and Dr. Laurie Medina will guide the department as Acting Chair. Please feel free to contact Dr. Medina or Katy Meyers with your news updates.
Anthropology majors Kelsey Carpenter, Mari Isa, and Kyla Cools recently received honors for their research presentations at the annual MSU University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF), held at the MSU Student Union on April 4, 2014. Kelsey, Mari, and Kyla received First Place Awards in their respective sections within the Social Sciences division. Approximately 660 students presented at this year’s forum.
Kelsey’s presentation, entitled Cranial Fracture Patterns in Pediatric Deaths: Homicides and Accidents (abstract on page 134) focused on differentiating between inflicted and accidental injuries in cases of infant deaths involving head trauma. Mari’s presentation, Fracture Initiation and Propagation in Pediatric Blunt Cranial Trauma (abstract on page 145), focused on the interpretation of cranial fractures in cases of suspected child abuse. Dr. Todd Fenton advised both Kelsey and Mari as they completed their projects in the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory.
Kyla’s presentation, entitled Ceramics at the Aztalan Site: Results of the 2013 MSU Excavations (abstract on page 143), compared ceramics found during the 2013 field season to collections previously excavated at Aztalan. Dr. Lynne Goldstein, director of the MSU Archaeology Field School at Aztalan, advised Kyla on her project.
