Anthropology Faculty Research Articles

Beyond market share: Accounting for doctoral program size in recent rates of anthropology faculty job placement.

Job placement trends in higher education at US institutions are bleak. Within anthropology and other social science disciplines this problem appears to be particularly pronounced. Recent studies focusing on placement in Anthropology using market share analysis have suggested that specific doctoral programs offer a greater chance of placing their graduates in faculty positions. Here we expand on that work, looking beyond market share to the number of graduates placed in positions relative to the total number of program graduates. Our results suggest that while large programs do indeed command the majority of tenure track placements by market share, much of this may be a product of the high numbers of graduates from these programs. Smaller programs can be proportionally as successful at placing their students in tenure track positions. The majority of PhDs in anthropology should anticipate gaining employment outside of a tenure track position. Training students for positions in private industry, government, and other non-faculty opportunities is essential.

Introduction

Introduction

Self-Authoring an Open Textbook for General Anthropology: Worth the Time and Effort?

Students in higher education are facing challenges with paying for their education. Cost of course materials, primarily textbooks, continues to be a financial concern. As a result, students often delay or simply do not purchase the materials they need to perform well in courses. Openly licensed materials are becoming popular because they are free to the student, accessible from the first day of class, and can be modified by the teacher. In this study, an open textbook was co-created by two anthropology faculty with the support of two instructional designers for an introductory anthropology course at a large university in the United States. A survey was given to 1,402 students to gauge satisfaction with the textbook and elicit feedback, and final grades were compared pre- and post- open textbook implementation. In general, student satisfaction was high and poor grades declined. In conclusion, we propose recommendations for those who are interested in implementing more affordable course materials in their anthropology classes.&nbsp

Reproducing the “white public space” in anthropology faculty searches

Reproducing the “white public space” in anthropology faculty searches

Evaluating Graduate Student Diversity in Forensic Anthropology

In this paper we explore why graduate programs with a focus in forensic anthropology typically lack racial and ethnic diversity. Specifically, we ask how application and enrollment data from our MA anthropology program at Texas State University, a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI), compare to census data and national data sets. We further compare diversity in 2020 applications in the Texas State MA anthropology program to the programs at California State University, Chico, which is also an HSI, and at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, which has multiple forensic anthropology faculty and a highly regarded forensic anthropology research center but is not an HSI. Our program had a greater percentage of White students and fewer underrepresented minority (URM) students compared to U.S. population data. However, compared to a nationwide 2007–2008 survey of anthropology MA programs, our program had a higher percentage of enrolled URM students, especially Hispanic students, and fewer White students. Our program also reached parity with 2017 data on nationally awarded anthropology MA degrees. In terms of race and ethnicity in 2020 application data, the HSIs (Texas State University and California State University, Chico), were similar to each other. Finally, we found that the majority of students who applied to and enrolled in our program wanted to study forensic anthropology, including the majority of URM students. We suggest that many factors contribute to graduate student diversity, including state demographics and university strategic plans that strive for a welcoming campus environment. Our study serves as a starting point to assess general trends in graduate student diversity within forensic anthropology programs.

In Memoria: Problematic Fields of Cultural Archaeology in the Context of Leo Klein’s Observations

Up to nowadays, archaeology is considered to be a “history assistant”, tied to the linked aim and subject field, and the ancientries themselves are mostly just catalogued and typologized. It was obvious to Professor Leo Klein that ancient culture should be studied not by archaeology, requiring a fundamentally different methodology. Unfortunately, in November 2019, this outstanding researcher stopped his creative path, leaving behind many wise observations. This essay in memory of Lev Samuilovich substantiates his methodological observations around archaeology, history and culture.While traditional history is based on written evidences and is interested in individual events, the archaeologist analyzes the exact circumstances under which and how these events occurred. In particular, the comparison of archaeology with criminology is accurate. Similarly, historical culturology deals with “clues”: it analyzes cultural fragments, layered in time and space echoes of the former everyday life, disassembling which, tries to carry out a certain reconstruction – not of the material component, but rather of information. For cultural (pre-)history, culture appears as a materialized (“objected”) form of the mass consciousness embodiment.Leo Klein certainly accepted the fundamental role of the theory of culture and just distinguished it from the very concept of “culturology”, which as of the mid-nineties he considered as an artificial fiction. However, in the twenty years later texts we do not find such statements. In a broader context, the researcher dreamed of a disciplines ensemble capable of shedding light on various aspects of the past through a natural experience exchange. The ideal embodiment of which the professor considered to be a single institutional department: the Faculty of Anthropology, where the Archaeology Department would be adjacent to the Departments of Anthropology, Ethnography, Cultural Studies, Museum Studies, Primitive and Ancient Art, Theoretical Linguistics, Historical Geography, etc.Manuscript received 10.09.2020

An innovative approach to human gross anatomy for undergraduates

Prompted by demand for an anatomy laboratory to serve students considering pre‐medical professions, Geisel School of Medicine faculty and Dartmouth College anthropology faculty developed an interdisciplinary undergraduate course integrating human dissection, human evolution, and the art and history of human anatomy. Our goal was to create an active learning laboratory that was highly structured but also offered an opportunity for reflection and creativity. We were concerned that undergraduates, many of them undeclared majors, might not have the maturity and study skills to excel in an interdisciplinary human dissection laboratory with significant time demands. We designed the course to meet for 7 hours of instruction each week of the 10‐week term, with 1‐hour lectures on a topic in human evolution relating to three 2‐hour dissection laboratories where students worked in alternating teams of four to complete regional dissections or view prosections of human donors and comparative specimens. We replaced some laboratories with workshops examining Renaissance anatomical illustrations or sleuthing through local historical records of ‘body‐snatching’ in the library special collections. Applying a flipped‐classroom approach, students completed readings and readiness quizzes prior to each dissection laboratory. Students also wrote a reflection essay on the dissection experience and completed an art project to appreciate how anatomy bridges science and the arts and humanities. Two years of course evaluations and reflection essays reveal that students with science backgrounds were surprised that they benefitted from incorporating art and the humanities into their learning, and those without science backgrounds said they would not have dared enroll in an anatomy laboratory without the interdisciplinary approach. This course merging dissection and the liberal arts could serve as a model for other institutions interested in enriching the pre‐medical professions curriculum and engaging a variety of students in the anatomical sciences.Support or Funding InformationThis course was supported by Dartmouth's Innovative Course Award.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Market share and recent hiring trends in anthropology faculty positions.

Between 1985 and 2014, the number of US doctoral graduates in Anthropology increased from about 350 to 530 graduates per year. This rise in doctorates entering the work force along with an overall decrease in the numbers of tenure-track academic positions has resulted in highly competitive academic job market. We estimate that approximately79% of US anthropology doctorates do not obtain tenure-track positions at BA/BS, MA/MS, and PhD institutions in the US. Here, we examine where US anthropology faculty obtained their degrees and where they ultimately end up teaching as tenure-track faculty. Using data derived from the 2014–2015 AnthroGuide and anthropology departmental web pages, we identify and rank PhD programs in terms of numbers of graduates who have obtained tenure-track academic jobs; examine long-term and ongoing trends in the programs producing doctorates for the discipline as a whole, as well as for the subfields of archaeology, bioanthropology, and sociocultural anthropology; and discuss gender inequity in academic anthropology within the US.

Interdisciplinary undergraduate education: water as life, death, and power and the certificate in global health disparities

Abstract Background Central Michigan University's student chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines organised a conference on global health disparities in April, 2011. From this conference came a student-driven initiative to develop interdisciplinary courses on health-related topics, and courses centred on global health and social justice. We describe the preparation and assessment of an interdisciplinary course about water. Methods The course was cotaught by the anthropology, biology, and chemistry faculty to 28 undergraduate students with anthropology, biology, chemistry, and other majors. The course combined waterborne diseases and water treatment with cultural-related and power-related barriers to clean water. The course included a student-mentored seminar stressing activism on water-related issues. The course's theme examined the effect of cholera, a waterborne disease, in a global context. Findings Analysis of pre-class and post-class questions about student attitudes via a written questionnaire showed an increase in social awareness and desire to continue to act towards solutions of global problems. For example, of 29 questions concerning civic engagement issues, all 29 responses showed an increase in agreement, with 11 showing statistically significant increases (28 degrees freedom). Assessment of student interdisciplinary thinking showed trends towards an increased ability to solve complex issues with interdisciplinary logic for seven of eight groups of students (the eighth group kept its high level). Interpretation The student initiative led to the development of an interdisciplinary course that included activism. This course has been expanded to an interdisciplinary undergraduate certificate in global health disparities and might lead to an interdisciplinary major or minor in the future. Funding Central Michigan University (CMU) Faculty Center for Innovative teaching (FaCIT).

RESPONDING TO COMMUNITY NEEDS THROUGH LINKING ACADEMIC AND PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY: AN ENGAGED SCHOLARLY FRAMEWORK

We argue in this article that applied anthropology offers a compelling model for conducting engaged scholarship in higher education and developing an engaged scholarship platform. As colleges and universities increasingly endorse meaningful ways to address critical needs of their wider communities, anthropology faculty, students, and alumni can lead the way in forging successful and effective partnerships and grappling with crucial community needs. With the growth of participatory action research—and its theoretical and methodological perspective—anthropologists have tackled challenging societal issues in collaboration with community partners (Schensul). Typically this entails involving multiple stakeholders in the articulation of solutions. Anthropology is in a prime position to take the lead in advancing the “engaged university” model. This article builds upon Baba's thesis (2009) that the survival of the discipline of anthropology is linked to its relevance in addressing critical societal issues and its ability to integrate the work of academic and practicing anthropologists. Many approaches from anthropology can be drawn upon as promising models for community connectedness. We offer an example from the University of Memphis that has been particularly effective: through their research and practical experience as students of anthropological study, alumni cycle back into collaborative ties with faculty and other alumni and nonanthropological colleagues, connecting the community with the university in a dynamic and productive system. In addition, long‐term commitment to addressing relevant local issues such as poverty and health disparities through analysis and reflection of outcomes is critical to developing a meaningful engaged scholarly tradition.

The Art of Teaching Anthropology: Examples from Biological Anthropology

Teaching in a college or university setting has many challenges, including often-inadequate preparation in graduate school and the requirement to develop new courses, often in a short period of time. Anthropology faculty are at a particular disadvantage because anthropology lacks any discipline-specific journals for the publication of articles on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Many anthropology faculty desire to have more resources available for course and assignment development. In this chapter, we present several examples of course syllabi, class activities, and a sample student paper that faculty can use as they develop or revise anthropology courses.

Stress, Survival, and Success in Academia 2.0: Lessons from Working Inside and Outside of the Academy

As graduate students writing our dissertations between 2009 and 2010 at the University of California Irvine, we began to feel the first ripples of a shrinking job market for tenuretrack academic positions in anthropology. There were questions, in hushed whispers as well as anxious and frantic outbursts, about how long the recession would last, whether we should "wait and see" before graduating, or apply now and just cast a wider net in terms of schools and searches. The 2009 Anthropology Faculty Job Market Report opens up with, "AAA has been increasingly concerned with the academic job market. Anecdotal evidence suggests that faculty lines are being lost and searches cancelled" (Terry-Sharp 2009). Given uncertainty, we both chose the latter option and had the good fortune to find employment in academic institutions— Cortney Hughes Rinker at the Arlington Innovation Center for Health Research (Virginia Tech) and Sheena Nahm at the Norman Lear Center (University of California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism). Interestingly enough, neither of us entered these institutions through the traditional route of the tenure-track position. Although our jobs were quite unique and different from each other, they both were in research centers focused on contracts and grants and were not solely situated in the realm of cultural anthropology, the field in which we are trained. Since then, we both went on to publish, teach, work in applied fields, and often engage with academic and nonacademic interlocutors.

Capacity Building in the Latino Community: Lessons from the Promotora Project in Eastern North Carolina

In June 2009, the Association of Mexicans in North Carolina (AMEXCAN), a leading Latino grassroots organization based in Pitt County, North Carolina, received funding from the Pitt Memorial Hospital Foundation to implement the project "Community Health Advisors Promoting Healthy Nutrition and Physical Activity in the Latino Community" (henceforth the Promotora [Promoter] Project). The goals of the project were to train a group of seven women from the Latino community (henceforth promotoras) to promote healthy nutrition and physical activity and to develop a model of community health outreach relying on the trained promotoras' own natural social networks. The project was designed, implemented, and evaluated through a university-community partnership involving AMEXCAN and university faculty from the Departments of Anthropology and Nutritional Sciences, the College of Nursing, and the School of Social Work, all authors of this paper. Students from these academic units were involved through curricular and non-curricular service learning activities. The project derived from a previous collaboration between AMEXCAN and the anthropology faculty, whose goal was to promote diabetes prevention through a series of informative workshops in local churches.

PROPOSALS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY FROM THE CURRENT SITUATION OF ETHNOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGY TRAINING AND RESEARCH IN VIETNAM

The Faculty of Anthropology, former sub-faculty of anthropology, in the university of Social Sciences and Humanities of Ho Chi Minh City was established in 2002. For 10 years, the department has developed a strategy to develop its staff and teaching faculty together with gradually building up undergraduate and graduate curricula; as well as translating reference books, mostly about theories and methodology; compiling textbooks etc. Basing on the reality of constructing and developing the discipline in Vietnam, we come up with some ideas about how to continue constructing and developping anthropology in the context of international integration such as information exchange, national and international training and researching collaboration, publishing textbooks, translating reference materials, and improving curricula at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Collaborative Ethnography and Public Engagement: Crafting a New Peer Review

Every spring for the last three years the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at Wake Forest University (WFU) has sponsored Boy Scout Day as one of several family oriented Saturday activity sessions. Most of the "Family Days" are exhibit related, providing active extensions to museum designed and community advised thematic presentations. Boy Scout Day is a different phenomenon, designed in part to add "authenticity" to the decades old practice of young boys dressing up as Indians in order to earn proficiency badges. With up to 200 Scouts and their leaders in attendance, the activity has had mixed reception among the principals involved. Boy Scouts love throwing atlatls, learning to flint knap and hearing Native American stories. Anthropology faculty members are skeptical, wondering about the implications of the continued Scout-Indian relationship. Local Native American groups have had an increasing presence, first as vendors, and then as advisors and participants. But has this taken us past a 1950s-era popular notion of what Native Americans are all about, and beyond this, the relationship between anthropology, museums and the indigenous? The following pages explore the ways in which a model of ethnographic collaboration can inform and expand the growing call for public engagement as a motivation for academic/community relationships.

The poisoned gift: ‘Fortune cookie’ genomics at UC Berkeley (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In the summer of 2010 the Deans of the College of Letters and Science at University of California at Berkeley launched a risky educational experiment. They sent a letter to incoming Berkeley freshmen inviting them to submit their DNA for genetic testing. The project quickly garnered national attention and heated debate among social science and anthropology faculty. The Center for Genetics and Society and the Council for Responsible Genetics called for a halt to the Bring‐Your‐Genes to Berkeley program. After having their DNA analyzed, students would be given information about three genetic codes concerning their tolerance for alcohol, lactose (in milk), and folic acid deficiency. Why did this educational and health project become so controversial? Nancy Scheper‐Hughes unpacks the issues that led to a legislative hearing in Sacramento and to a California State Department of Public Health order to stop the DNA test results from being transmitted to Berkeley students.

Texas Biology and Biological Anthropology Faculty Express Their Views on Teaching Evolution

Unsurprisingly, survey results indicate that Texas biology and biological anthropology faculty with expertise in an evolutionary area strongly support teaching “just evolution” (100%; N = 54) and not creationism/intelligent design. Importantly, they do not think that religious faith is incompatible with acceptance of evolutionary biology (91%; N = 55), even though 50% (N = 52) describe themselves as “not at all religious.” As school boards nationwide debate science standards, it is important that faculty with relevant expertise have a voice. Biological anthropologists should not be overlooked as a public resource in these debates.

Citation Patterns of the Faculty of the Anthropology Department at the University of Notre Dame

This study sought to determine the extent to which the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame meet the needs of the anthropology faculty. It did that by focusing on how useful the University Libraries’ collections were in their research and publications. This article describes both the methodology employed and the findings of this citation analysis. The study looked at the following questions: What were the faculty of the anthropology department at the University of Notre Dame citing in their published research? Where were they publishing their research? Did the library own these cited items and the publications in which the faculty were publishing? The study found that the anthropology faculty's citations overall were 47 percent and 45 percent book and journal citations, respectively. In addition, the library owned only 41.48 percent of the items anthropology faculty were citing in their research. This study also found that the library owned 72 percent of the publications in which anthropology faculty publishe...

Anthropology Faculty Job Market Report. Gendered Dimensions of Applied Work Environments: COSWA Survey Report. Doing Anthropology Well?: Panels and Proposals

Abstract:“Anthropology Faculty Job Market Report,” by Kathleen Terry‐Sharp“Gendered Dimensions of Applied Work Environments: COSWA Survey Report,” by Keri Vacanti Brondo and Linda A Bennett“Doing Anthropology Well?: Panels and Proposals,” by Deborah Winslow

Alan Dundes (1934–2005)

Alan Dundes died at the University of California, Berkeley, on 30 March 2005, doing what he loved--teaching folklore theory and methods to a group of advanced folklore students. He was widely recognised as one of the most important folklorists of all time. He did not limit himself to a single aspect of folkloristic enquiry--indeed, Wolfgang Mieder noted there is no folklore genre that [Dundes] has not (Mieder 1994, 3). Professor Dundes's studies of fairy tales, legends, jokes, songs, folk belief, gesture, obscenity, folk expressions, rhymes, ritual, riddles, games, Xerox-lore and national character, and the history and theory of the discipline, are all well known and often cited. He is also remembered as the most eloquent champion of psychoanalytic approaches to the study of folklore. Alan Dundes was born in New York, the son of a lawyer and a music teacher. He attended Yale University, graduating with both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English, where he also studied music. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he served in the Navy aboard the USS Mississinewa, which was stationed in Italy. This early contact with Italy was renewed in his classic study, with Alessandro Falassi, of the Palio of Siena (Dundes and Falassi 1975). During his early graduate work, Professor Dundes found himself drawn to the stories--the myths, the folk tales, the legends--behind the literature. Realising that he wanted to explore folklore rather than literature, he left Yale, and went to study at Indiana University, under the tutelage of Richard Dorson, in the early 1960 s. Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale had just been published in English translation, and Professor Dundes was quick to realise the importance of structural study for all genres of folklore. He finished his graduate work in three years, and after a one-year appointment in the English department at the University of Kansas, joined the anthropology faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1963. In 1965, along with his colleagues William Bascom, Wolfram Eberhard, Bertrand Bronson and Joseph Fontenrose, he founded the MA program in at Berkeley. Professor Dundes's first book, Morphology of the North American Indian Folktales (1964), is a structuralist tour de force that has had a lasting impact in the field. By the time the book appeared he had already published over thirty of his two hundred and fifty or so books and articles, and had begun laying the groundwork for his important structural and psychoanalytic contributions in the analysis of folkloric expression. In his mind, it was imperative that, if folkloristics were to advance as a science, folklorists had to formulate accurate definitions of the materials of folklore, definitions based upon formal morphological features (Dundes 1964, 112). Based in part on the syntagmatic structuralism of Vladimir Propp, and drawing on Kenneth Pike's work on the concepts of emic and etic, his morphology proposed several important advances in the structural study of folk expression, among them the concepts of the allomotif and the motifeme. Professor Dundes was interested both in the mechanics of variation and the possible explanations for those variations. These explanations were rooted in an understanding of individual psychology, and cultural and performative contexts. Many of Professor Dundes's studies engaged the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Perhaps best known of these studies are his considerations of the Earth-diver myth (Dundes 1962), the Bullroarer (Dundes 1976), and Little Red Riding Hood (Dundes 1988). His compendium of essays, Parsing through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist (Dundes 1987a), provides an excellent overview of his work in this area, while essays such as The Psychoanalytic Study of Folklore (Dundes 1985a) and edited volumes such as Oedipus: A Casebook (Dundes and Edmunds 1984) present the complexities of this critical approach to folklore. …