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Alumni & Friends of Archaeology Research Award
The Alumni and Friends of Archaeology Expendable Fund, established to enhance research and learning of undergraduate and graduate students in the archaeology program through the MSU Department of Anthropology, awarded Jeff Painter funds for his dissertation research during the Summer of 2018. This was the second year for the Alumni and Friends of Archaeology Research Enhancement Award and Jeff was able to complete two trips to the Dickson Mounds Museum in west-central Illinois in order to gather data for his dissertation. Mr. Painter’s proposed dissertation seeks to better understand the role of cooking and foodways within social interaction by examining…
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New Research on the Peopling of the Americas
An international research crew, including MSU Department of Anthropology Assistant Professor Kurt Rademaker and five team members, contributed some of the key ancient human remains that documented population dynamics in the Andean region. The results of this research were revealed in a recent article, “Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America,” published in the journal Cell Vol.175(5). In 2015, Dr. Rademaker’s team excavated several ancient individuals from Cuncaicha rockshelter, in the high-elevation Peruvian Andes. Dr. Rademaker hand-carried the three rare, ancient individuals which included a 9000-year-old female and two males dating from 4200 and 3300 years ago…
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Featured Faculty, Dr. Lucero Radonic
Dr. Lucero Radonic, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, joined the department in 2014. Her research centers around the human/environment interaction within urban landscapes. More specifically, the human governance of changing landscapes, the ways nature is transformed for human use and how we make decisions about the distribution of natural resources within dynamic, urban environments. In Arizona, where she grew up, water has always fascinated her and was ever present in conversations. Her fondness for the desert environment lead her to pursue her BS in environmental sciences in 2005 from the University of Texas El Paso. It was during her early studies…
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Featured Graduate Student, Autumn Painter
Autumn Painter, a graduate student here in the Department of Anthropology, specializing in archaeology was provided the opportunity to travel with Dr. Marcy O’Neil, an anthropology alumna and grant support staff and former instructor in the department, to Benin, West Africa during the summer of 2018. In collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and the African Studies Center, both here at MSU, Ms. Painter and Dr. O’Neil celebrated the launch of the second volume of a project called Books That Bind at the US Embassy in Cotonou. Autumn became a part of this project during her assistantship in Lab for…
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Message from the Chair: Dr. Jodie O’Gorman
At this time of the semester, when we stop to take stock of what we’ve done over the past year, I’m always inspired and astounded at the breadth and scope of the research done by our graduate students, faculty, and undergraduates in the Department of Anthropology. We have many examples of faculty mentors publishing with their students, including Dr. Tetreault and graduate student Sarah Tahir who co-authored with two physicians an article appearing in the Journal of Muslim Mental Health based upon research conducted after the 2016 election on American Muslim women’s responses to rising Islamophobia. Dr. Hefner mentored his…
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New Graduate Program Director
The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce Associate Professor and affiliated faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program, Dr. Mindy Morgan is our new Graduate Program Director. Dr. Morgan previously held the position of Associate Chair and enjoyed having input on department policies and practices and when this position arose, it seemed like another opportunity for her to be able to help shape the direction of our program. After having the opportunity to teach the incoming core theory course for many years, Dr. Morgan always enjoyed getting to know the incoming students and to help them…
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Featured Faculty: Dr. Joe Hefner
Dr. Joe Hefner joined the Department of Anthropology in the Fall semester of 2014 as an assistant professor in forensic anthropology. He currently teaches graduate level Human Osteology and Multivariate Statistical Analysis along with undergraduate Introduction to Physical Anthropology, Hominid Fossils and Time, Space and Change. Previously, Dr. Hefner worked as a contract archaeologist throughout the Southeastern United States and then at Mercyhurst College after completing his PhD in 2007 from the University of Florida. Joe reports stumbling into anthropology inadvertently during his undergraduate studies at Western Carolina University. As a philosophy/art/psychology major, he took an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology…
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Featured Graduate Student, Kehli Henry
Kehli Henry, PhD candidate, developed an interest in anthropology early on, deciding to pursue it as her major at Central Michigan University. The nuance of anthropological theory, as well as the attention to cultural factors gave her an appreciation for the complexity within the field. Her previous work with an American Indian tribe allowed her to see the utility of anthropological theory in the issues she dealt with. MSU provided the perfect fit for her graduate studies because of the faculty, and the focus on both medical anthropology and applied work. Since her undergraduate work, Kehli has been deeply concerned…
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News Around the Department
Congratulations to Marcella Omans for her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship she received for her project entitled “La Mesa Barrio Chino, Tijuana, Mexico: China’s Gateway to Latin America.” Her work focuses on providing insight into how newly arrived Chinese immigrants and business people leverage preexisting Chinese networks to gain economic footholds in Latin America; and on revealing how perceived Chinese identity in Latin America and the mediation of the expectations associated with this have shaped the Sino-Latin American narrative. Through her NSF funding, she plans to conduct multilingual (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese) ethnographic fieldwork in La Mesa Barrio Chino, Tijuana, Mexico…
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Message from the Chair: Dr. Jodie O’Gorman
This past spring semester in the Department of Anthropology has been a tumultuous time. We’ve celebrated great achievements and made important plans for our future, and at the same time we have been, and continue to be, stunned and outraged by the Nassar scandal. All across campus and in our department, faculty struggled to cope with the knowledge that the sexual predation that occurred was possible at MSU. Our hearts go out to the young women and their families who came forward and to those who have not yet found their voice. The well-being of our undergraduate and graduate students…