Department of Anthropology , Emory University
Graduate Students
SARAH BARKS
B.A., Anthropology and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Washington
University
M.A., Anthropology, Emory University
I am interested in the evolution of the human brain, the evolution of cognition, and comparative primate neurobiology. In particular, I am studying the evolution of the neural substrates for social cognition. I am performing my dissertation research, a series of functional neuroimaging studies with chimpanzees, at Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Overall, I want to apply the research methods of neuroscience to long-standing questions in biological anthropology.
KATHRYN BOUSKILL
B.A., Anthropology, University of Notre Dame
Influenced by biocultural and medical anthropology, my interests rest in the interplay between sociocultural perceptions and treatments of disease and subsequent impacts on physiological processes. Specifically, I am examining the emotional and physical effects resulting from socioculturally-mediated coping mechanisms of breast cancer patients. Through multi-sited ethnographic and research approaches, I hope to further explore the sociocultural and physiological embodiment of illness.
AVI BRISMAN
B.A., Studio Art/French, Oberlin College
M.F.A., Fine Art, Pratt Institute
J.D., University of Connecticut
My work lies at the interface of legal/political anthropology, criminology, and the sociology of punishment, and engages the following issues: 1) definitions of crime (including a consideration of who defines proscribed behavior and how these proscriptions change across cultures and over time); 2) causes of crime (mostly from a macro-level socio-economic perspective); 3) controlling crime (including therapeutic jurisprudence and problem-solving courts, conditions of incarceration, collateral consequences of conviction and imprisonment, reentry, recidivism); and 4) perceptions of, response to, and the impact of crime (especially the fear of crime and how it affects neighborhood and community interactions).
Currently, I am working on an article for a special issue of the Seattle Journal for Social Justice devoted to environmental justice that explores the wide range of linkages between crime and the environment. I am also in the midst of a series of articles examining power relations in prisons and challenging the notion of the prison as a fixed, monolithic entity.
JAMES BROESCH
B.S. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004
I am primarily interested in studying the transmission of human cultural behaviors and the evolution of human culture. I am fascinated by the interaction between culture and genetics, and how the transmission of cultural beliefs allows for more rapid adaptation to environmental change. I spent the past summer working in lowland Bolivia among the Tsimane’ studying the interaction between local knowledge about parasites and long-term health outcomes. Some of the other questions I am interested in studying are how individuals choose who they use as models for acquiring new behaviors, ways in which human social structure affects the transmission of cultural information, and differences between social learning in humans and non-human primates.
My previous research experience includes studying social learning in white-faced capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica, and an experimental study of the effects that changes in limb morphology had on the energetic costs of human locomotion in Homo erectus.
AMBER CAMPBELL
B.S., Kansas State University
My interests focus on the environmental, cultural, and political ecology of disease in both archaeological and modern populations. I particularly interested in the social, political, and economic, and environmental contexts of parasitic infections. My dissertation research will consist of a variety of immunocytochemical tests to screen for water borne/related parasitic infections including schistosomiasis and malaria in mummified remains from Sudanese Nubia. My interests, however, are more focused on the interpretation of this data in terms of subsistence strategies, social organization, political economy, and belief systems as they relate to the threat of disease than on simply determining the prevalence of infection.
BRYCE CARLSON
B.S., Biology, University of Michigan
My research interests center on the interaction of human nutrition with natural selection and evolutionary constraint. More specifically, I'm interested in how omega-3 fatty acids (n3 FA) contribute to modern brain development and function and as a consequence what role they must have played in the hominid diet over the past 2 million years.
Brain tissue contains a high concentration of n3 FA which humans are unable to synthesize de novo and thus must obtain from the diet. I am currently working to define the differential dietary requirements for two types of n3 FA, plant- vs. fish-based, with respect to the growth and function of the human brain. In the field, I then intend to sample the availability and distribution of these essential nutrients from a number of potential dietary sources within ecosystems across equatorial Africa implicated in hominid evolution.
MOYUKH
CHATTERJEE
B.A. English Literature, St. Stephen’s College – Delhi,
India
M.Phil. Sociology, Delhi School of Economics – Delhi, India
M.A. Sociology, Delhi School of Economics – Delhi,
India
My major interest is in the anthropology of ethnic violence and in exploring new ways of writing and thinking about questions of representation, subjectivity, and belonging through a study of ‘camp life’ in Gujarat, India. Related to this project is an effort to recover new ways of understanding pain, suffering, attachment and sociality in the face of political violence.
Research Interests: anthropology of violence and literature, hate, love, poetry, subjectivity, representation and aesthetics, nationalism, India, South Asia.em.
RICHÉ DANIEL BARNES
B.A., Political Science, Spelman College
M.S., Urban Studies, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies,
Georgia State University
M.A., Emory University
My "fieldwork" is currently drawing to a close and I am beginning the writing process. For the past two years I have conducted ethnographic research in the Atlanta metropolitan area with U.S born Black and White women who are married or heterosexually partnered, with children under the age of five, who hold or have held professional, executive, and/or managerial positions (i.e. are middle class). The research explores changes in the socio-cultural models of motherhood, family and work and how these women and their families negotiate these changes. Investigating the factors that contribute to the decision to stay at home or return to work, this project takes mothers' ability to integrate work and family out of deviancy models which leads to competition between mothers on either side of the divide and explores instead how and why middle class professional women decide to leave or postpone, rearrange or push-on in the workforce when they have children under the age of five.
Recognizing that there are a myriad of factors that contribute to a mother's decision to stay home, or return to work, this dissertation project probes for consistent factors that impact the mother and ultimately the family's decision; takes race-based lived experiences into consideration as a historical and structural variable that impacts decision making; continues the ongoing dialogue on theories of gender ideology, gender equality, and middle-class American life.
SARAH DAVIS
B.A., Harvard University
My interests fall at the intersection of philosophy and anthropology. I will be studying nationalist sentiment in Corsica , France. On Corsica, there has been a movement for political autonomy over the past 30 years. During the most violent phases of this separatist movement, the French media dubbed it "the Corsica Question" or the "Corsican Problem." Interestingly, over the past decade, the nature of the Corsican question has shifted. It is no longer posed by the French state about the rebellious, peripheral island. Rather, the Corsican question is posed by Corsicans themselves in the form of heated discussion about their own identity: what does it mean to be Corsican? Rather than considering this shift to be evidence of a decline of nationalist sentiment, I will consider whether the identity crisis on Corsica reveals something that is often overlooked in considerations of nationalism in its late-modern form. I am interested in how an epistemological crisis, characteristic of modernity, may create irresolvable tensions when it comes to understanding group identity. These tensions may be the recipe for fervent and often violent expression of identity. The goal of my project is 1) a detailed ethnographic study of Corsicans' struggle to articulate their own identity and 2) a theoretical re-orientation towards nationalism as a social phenomenon.
MATTHEW DUDGEON
B.A., Vanderbilt University 
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~mdudgeo/
I am a medical anthropologist, and my broad interests are in gender and health, focusing on masculinity and the anthropology of reproduction. I conducted 28 months of field research in two K'iche' Mayan communities in Guatemala, examining men's influences on maternal and infant health, as well as men's reproductive health problems. I compared two communities so that I could see different impacts of Guatemala's civil war on demography and reproduction.
I am also trained as an epidemiologist. My master's research examined associations between socioeconomic indicators and women's dental health care utilization during pregnancy.
I like to run, swim, and rock climb.
ERIN FINLEY
B.A., Anthropology, Emory University, 1999
MPH, Behavioral Science, Emory University, 2006
M.A., Anthropology, Emory University, 2007
Research Interests: Culture and mental health; political violence; constructions of trauma and recovery; intersubjectivity and well-being
I am a medical anthropologist interested in how culture shapes experiences of mental health and illness, particularly in the aftermath of political violence. My dissertation research will examine post-combat mental health among U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the efforts of families and communities attempting to manage and respond to veterans' needs post-deployment. I am particularly interested in the role of culturally-informed strategies, such as narrative formation and meaning-making efforts, in buffering and/or exacerbating symptom severity and illness course. My fieldwork will be conducted among Anglo- and Mexican-American veterans in San Antonio, Texas.
I recently completed my MPH in Behavioral Science at the Rollins School of Public Health, an opportunity stemming from my fellowship with the Center for Health, Culture, and Society in 2003-2004. My thesis research examined emic perspectives on health and social service needs among Southern Sudanese refugees living in the metro-Atlanta area.
TRICIA FOGARTY 
M.A., Anthropology, Georgia State University
I am focusing on the production and reproduction of social identity—particularly national and ethnic identities, through language use in the Republic of Moldova (formerly part of the Soviet Union ). Some factors influencing this topic are the intersections of official and unofficial discourses produced through national policies and influential community/national leaders as well as through everyday language use and people's beliefs about language use.
These topics came together during 15 months of fieldwork, between Sept. '06-Dec. '07, funded by a Fulbright-Hays dissertation research grant. Now I am beginning the process of writing my dissertation with the working title of "Building Moldova". The different discourses I hope to bring together in my writing concern development, corruption, ethnicity, kinship and other social “connections”—basically, what influences people's formation of social and national identities in the multiethnic and post-socialist context of Moldova.
TYRALYNN FRAZIER
B.S., Biochemistry, Michigan State University
I am interested in the connection between health, disease, and development in marginalized populations. I am primarily interested in immigrant populations in France and the U.S.
MAYSOUN FREIJ
B.A. University of Chicago
M.P.H. Emory University
I am currently writing my dissertation on issues of identity, power, and representation among Arab American artists in New York City. It is based on three years of ethnographic research of among various overlapping groups of artists of Arab descent as they work to build institutions and careers that foster community, artistic production, and presence in the diverse landscape of ethnic and mainstream America
BRONWYN FULLARD
B.A. Anthropology & Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 2008
“As the daughter of Australians growing up in the American South, I have always had an odd sense of home—feeling more a member of humanity than a citizen of a particular place. As an Anthropology and Psychology major, I have sought a holistic understanding of this humanity. Beyond academic explorations, I constantly seek opportunities for applied learning and international experiences. I thus value the way Anthropology encourages its researchers to engage actively in the world. I appreciate not only an international but also an interdisciplinary approach to educating oneself. I have come to recognize the importance of history, economics, biology, and other disciplines in the study of human systems. A genuine interdisciplinary education is not only something I love but something that I find essential for pursuing responsible research. Through various research endeavors from Primatology to Medical Anthropology, I have explored the intersection of biology and culture and their influences on behavior. These experiences have helped me to discover my passion for research that not only contributes to intellectual understanding but also has real-world implications. My most influential research project took me to coastal Kenya during the past two summers, as I explored the distribution program for HIV medication. I examined the factors of agency and infrastructure that influenced whether or not people accessed the medication. By examining a particular system of access, I have attempted to understand its shortcomings and identify ways of improving its efficacy. In future, I hope to expand this project and explore more fully the areas of potential application of my research.”
SWARGAJYOTI GOHAIN
sgohain@emory.edu
B.A. University of Delhi, India, M.A., M.Phil. Delhi School of Economics,
University of Delhi
I am concerned in dealing with the narratives of identity and modernity in relation to ethnic communities in the border regions of Northeast India. There have not been adequate studies on the subjectivities of the local populations of this region, and how these may have been shaped by the peculiar conditions of living created by historical exigencies, colonial conditions and their counter practices, and postcolonial regimes. I would also like to explore how development policies, displacement of populations, and ethnic strife may have shaped the region’s politics, and given rise to varied expressions of identity.
DINAH HANNAFORD
B.A. , Duke University
My research focuses on Senegalese transnational migration, particularly to Italy. I am interested in the effects of migration on Senegalese courtship and marital practices, masculinity, and identity. I am also interested in extramarital relationships in Senegal, the “sugar daddy” phenomenon, and formal and informal sex work. Having worked in HIV/AIDS education both in the United States and Senegal, I am interested in adding a health component to my research by examining the intersection of migration, courtship and marriage, and the spread of HIV in Senegal.
Research Interests: transnational migration, gender, power, marriage and kinship, sexual and reproductive health; Europe; West Africa.
CLAIRE MARIE HEFNER
B.A. Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2008
“ My long-term research interests lie in the anthropological study of gender and sexuality, modernity, and Islam, as viewed from the perspective of the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, Indonesia. My interest in Indonesia began in 1999 when my family and I moved to Yogyakarta, Java for nine months. It was during this time that I picked up Indonesian and became interested in studying Islam. I have had the opportunity to return to Indonesia for short stays every summer except one since 1999. Realizing that I wanted to study Islam, I began studying Arabic during my junior year at UW. That spring, I studied abroad at the American University in Cairo, Egypt where I continued my studies of Arabic, Islam, and gender studies. I am interested in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University because of the Department’s strong emphasis on both sociocultural theory and issues of human development, socialization, and psychological anthropology. Several of Emory’s faculty have done important and truly inspiring research on gender and sexuality in general, as well as in Southeast Asia in particular. I am also interested in studying anthropology at Emory University because of the excellence of the university’s overall focus on Islamic studies and its strong Women’s Studies program. My research in Indonesia would draw on all of these resources to examine questions of gender and sexuality among Muslim women. For my senior honors thesis, I am researching the two largest Muslim social welfare organizations in the world, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, both based in Indonesia. I am interested in understanding how these organizations view “the proper Muslim woman” and whether it is possible to talk about a “Muslim Indonesian feminism”.”
AMANDA
HILLMAN
B.A., Harvard University, 2002
My primary research interests include the intersection of race, class, and health in Urban Brazil. Public policy debates and discourse in Brazil have taken a new direction in recent years with the advent of university "cotas" and deeper public examination of Brazil's long-standing, yet downplayed, racial inequalities. I am particularly interested in the adoption/ascription of "Negro" identity among the Afro-Brazilian middle class in São Paulo and Salvador. Much of my training has been in Medical Anthropology, and throughout this investigation I seek to uncover factors that may contribute to class-cutting health disparities between these groups. I also aim to incorporate a community-participatory research model.
DREDGE
BYUNG' CHU KANG
B.A., Anthropology, University of Maryland
I am interested in conceptualizations of gender/sexuality categories, the social legitimacy accorded to these categories, the social and moral status of the individuals inhabiting them, and the relationship of status to material and embodied outcomes.
My dissertation research focuses on gender pluralism and social status among gay men and transgender male to female persons (kathoey or sao praphet sawng) in Bangkok, Thailand. The main question concerns how class positioning affects sexual subjectivities and subsequently how sexual subjectivities, through gender presentation, condition further life opportunities. The project examines gay male/ kathoey experiences of stigma and management strategies that enhance moral standing (e.g. being the "good" gay), especially in regards to transnational relationships (with Westerners and East Asians) and beauty practices. My initial dissertation project addressed the relations of power and relative status of white men in the US who prefer same-sex interracial relationships with Asians ("rice queens").
I am currently finishing an MPH in global epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health. My thesis focuses on obesity among minority populations in the US. My prior work focused on HIV among Asian immigrant populations ( e.g. Filipino parloristas and transgender sex workers) in the US. In the future, I hope to conduct research on sexual and mental health outcomes related to social inequalities.
BRANDON KOHRT
1998 B.S. Psychobiology, University of Southern California
Research interests: Mental health, human rights, torture, political violence, Nepal
My work focuses on the eradication of torture and other forms of human rights abuses by employing medical anthropology, clinical medicine, and advocacy. I am currently in a joint MD-PhD program between Emory's Department of Anthropology and School of Medicine. My previous research has investigated the mental health impact of discrimination and human rights violations in Nepal among child and adult populations. A Fulbright-sponsored project explored the role of physical comorbidity in somatization among residents of northwestern Nepal. In Mongolia I have investigated how the deterioration of social services resulting from the transition to capitalism has affected childhood disruptive disorders and adult mental health, specifically yadargaa. In 2003 I founded the Atlanta Asylum Network, a group of volunteer health professionals helping survivors of torture living in the southeast United States. Physicians for Human Rights recognized this work with the Navin Narayan award for human rights activism. In 2006 I will be in Nepal working with the Center for Survivors of Torture on a project incorporating research of human rights violations and care for torture survivors.
JEN KUZARA
B.A.., Anthropology and German, University of Nebraska
My research interests center primarily on the study of infectious disease, which I hope to pursue from both bio-cultural and bio-medical foundations. My interests include the following: social factors, including gender issues, in the spread of HIV; the effects of acculturation, social inequalities, and development and infrastructural issues on parasite and pathogen loads; and cross-cultural and environmental differences in immunological function. Many of these issues are ones I have not been able to explore in much depth, and hope to narrow my focus once I have had the opportunity to do so.
BRANDIE LITTLEFIELD
B.S., Duke University
M.A., Anthropology, Emory University
My research interests focus primarily on primate behavior and reproductive endocrinology. Specifically, I am investigating the impact of female intrasexual competition on infant survival during lactation, and how female competitive behavior is mediated via gonadal and adrenal steroids. Traditional interpretations of sexual selection theory have tended to focus on male competition and female choice, often overlooking the importance of female investment (particularly the energetic investment of gestation and lactation) and reproductive variance. I am interested in looking at how these factors influence female reproductive strategies and correlate to androgen and glucocorticoid levels. I am conducting my research on female sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) in Beza Mahafaly, Madagascar.
AUN LOR
B.S. Biology, Emory University
M.P.H. International Health, Emory Rollins School of Public Health
I am interested in examining customs, experiences, and beliefs that influence health and health-seeking and decision-making behaviors across multiple cultures and communities. As a former refugee, I want to focus my research on immigrant communities, particularly immigrants who came to the U.S. from regions of conflict, because they are often among the poorest and most vulnerable groups. Alastair Campbell believes that the meaning of health is closely dependent on personal values and beliefs that are linked to the local community and social group. He describes health as a liberation or freedom not only from pain or illness, but also as a freedom that allows a person to “create, inhabit a space, to simply live, and share the world around us.” These perspectives on health are rarely explored in-depth in public health. I am committed to bringing these issues to the forefront in public health and to conducting and leading research on these important aspects of health as they relate to ethics and human rights.
KENNY MAES
B.A., University of California, Santa Barbara
In spring 2007, I will leave for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to begin my dissertation fieldwork -- studying the experience, beliefs, and mental health of community volunteer caregivers of people with AIDS. I will also compare the diet and nutrition of caregivers and their patients, who are the first wave of recipients of free antiretroviral treatment in Ethiopia. I will be working in Addis Ababa, and a smaller town in southern Ethiopia.
My previous research has included mitochondrial population genetics and bioarchaeology in West and Northeast Africa. I am also working with Prof. Armelagos on biological, cultural, and historical approaches to studying race and racism
JENNY MASCARO
B.A. University of Notre Dame
Research interests: social cognition, theory of mind
I would like to use functional and structural neuroimaging to explore the neural substrates correlated with social cognitive skills such as empathy and a theory of mind. In looking at both comparative primate neurobiology and at intra- and inter-group variation found in humans, I hope to gain a better understanding of the specific nature of these cognitive features; that is, how we develop and employ them to become successful social beings.
CHRISTINE MURPHY
B.A., Anthropology, Columbia University
I am a graduate student broadly interested in both the evolution of emotion and its cross-cultural experience, expression, and interpretation. In particular, I am intrigued by the implications of embarrassment and self-conscious emotion in the (ontogenetic and phylogenetic) development of human social consciousness, with an emphasis on the blush response.
LAUREN MYERS
2006, B.S in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, Emory University
2006, B.S in Anthropology and Human Biology, Emory University
My interests in anthropology broadly lie in the fields of psychological and medical anthropology, primarily where they intersect concerning physical wellness, mental health, and the psychobiological mediators of disease. My focus in the future will be to research and identify biomedical solutions that are informed by broader cultural experiences and meanings to increase treatment efficacy across socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries.
In particular, I am interested in examining and analyzing the complex relationships between nutrition, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and the global obesity epidemic. By investigating the ways in which modernity has shifted and changed our dietary profiles, I hope to gain insight into the cultural and social factors currently contributing to the increased incidence of obesity and its related chronic diseases in America, as well as globally. My future research will focus on developing and understanding this connection between the cultural aspects and social implications of diet and the marked ethnic health disparities revealed through obesity's epidemiological patterns.
MICHELLE SCHULEIN PARSONS
AB, Human Biology, Stanford University
SM, Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health
I came to medical anthropology through international development and health. For my masters in public health I focused on quantitative and qualitative research methods. My thesis was on middle-aged women’s use of psychotropics in Beirut . Following my masters, I worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva for two years. I have also lived in Spain, Russia, and Indonesia.
My dissertation will focus on the mortality crisis in Russia following the sociopolitical ‘transition’ during the 1990s. This public health crisis represents the largest drop in life expectancy in modern history, primarily among middle-aged men. I will examine how a cohort of older Russians, those that were at greater risk of increased mortality in the early 1990s, suffered and survived the life-threatening social changes. How did men and women experience those years? How are current expressions of distress mapped onto socioeconomic trajectories and gender? This project brings an anthropological approach to a health crisis that has not been studied through on-the-ground ethnography.
I define myself as a critical interpretive medical anthropologist with an interest in how socioeconomic and political change affects the health of individuals. I am also interested in how the methods of ethnography and epidemiology influence the production of knowledge.
KWAME
PHILLIPS
B.A., Religious Studies and Philosophy, Macalester College
M.Sc., Transcultural Mental Healthcare, Queen Mary - University of London
I am a graduate student of Visual Anthropology and Film Studies. I am interested in investigating the recent rise of suicidality among the African-Caribbean community in the UK and how this might be connected to issues of identity and personhood. My intent is to then produce a film from my research to present both a textual and visual analysis of the issues at hand.
MAURITA POOLE
1998: B.S., Arabic/Government, Georgetown University
2005: MPH, Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Research interests: identity, race/ethnicity, beauty and modernity
My research examines the ways that Egyptian beauty ideals and practices reflect their perceptions of skin color, race, and identity. I am currently writing my dissertation, “Brown Skin is Half the Beauty”: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Beauty in Contemporary Cairo.
YAYA REN
J.D, Vanderbilt University, 2001
M.A., Social Science, University of Chicago, 1999
B.A, Social Studies of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago, 1997
I am currently working in the field in California. I currently utilize
the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) as a unique social niche for
exploring the "courtesy anthropomorphization"
of pre-social bodies into "little persons" in a context where
medical, socio-cultural, and legal boundaries collide.
ANA E. SCHALLER DE LA COVA
aschall@emory.edu
A.B., Anthropology and French, Bowdoin College
Research interests: Modernity and development, education, urbanization, youth, and Islam; Senegal. I have recently returned from having conducted my field research in Senegal and have begun to write up my dissertation .
My research is comparative and involves Koranic boarding schools, Islamic day schools, and national secular schools in Dakar. I examine the ways in which these diverse and historically-contingent modes of education articulate with a restructuring of the meaning of knowledge, economic instability, urban migration, and social change. I am also keenly interested in issues of personhood and identity, youth culture, and local ways of being modern.
JULIE SOLOMON
jssolom@emory.edu
B.A., Biology, Brown University
My current research interests converge at the intersection of international
health, the ecology of infectious disease (related to immune function,
nutrition, pathogen burden, environmental ecology, etc.) and the practical
application of biocultural anthropology to public health initiatives.
I am also fascinated by the interplay of psychosocial stress and immunology,
the social construction of illness, and cross-cultural differences in
mental health care. I am pursuing a dual MD/PhD degree.
JED
STEVENSON
egsteve@learnlink.emory.edu
B.A., Archaeology, Classics, and Classical Art, University College
London, 2000
I came to the department with a background in archaeology, and with broad interest in—among other things—the anthropology of education, social change, and political economics in Africa , the Middle East , and the USA . Emory has allowed me to indulge these interests: during my first year I studied Arabic, took classes on African history, and learnt a great deal about American culture on the side. (I grew up in the UK .) Being at Emory has also led me to cultivate new and complementary interests in the social distribution of health and disease (especially HIV and malnutrition), and the evolutionary underpinnings of human behavior. During the year 2004-5, I studied Global Health as a fellow in the Center for Health, Culture, and Society. For my dissertation research, I am investigating the relationship between state schooling, views of the life course, and child health in an agro-pastoralist society of southern Ethiopia. I will begin fieldwork in June 2007.
JENNIFER SWEENEY
B.A California State University, Northridge
M.A. California State University, Northridge
I am broadly interested in food, identity, nationalism, gender studies and ethnographic film. My dissertation will focus on the ways that ‘traditional’ foods are being selectively deployed in the post-colonial Caribbean nation of Barbados, especially in response to the perceived threat of increased immigration under the implementation of a regional program that will open the borders of many Caribbean nations to interregional migration. I am interested in the ways that people use consumption to signal identity and the contexts in which this signifying takes place. I intend to use both film and text to complete my research in order to allow for a deeper more multinuanced understanding of the topic.
LESLEY
JO WEAVER
B.A., Smith College, 2004
As a medical anthropology student, I am interested primarily in issues of disease and social stigma in North India. Most of my research thus far has focused on Hansen's Disease (leprosy) in a small community of people outside of Varanasi, an ancient and very significant Hindu pilgrimage site. Here, religious traditionalism goes hand-in-hand with social ostracization of those afflicted not only with HD, but with a whole host of dermal maladies. By discouraging the ill from seeking or complying with treatment, such disease-associated stigma diminishes both the quality of life of afflicted individuals and their actual chances of being healed. At Emory, I plan to continue and broaden my work on disease and stigma, possibly doing a comparative study that examines patterns of social ostracization surrounding both HD and HIV in North India. Through my work, I hope to promote an understanding of disease-related stigmata, such that their ability to act as a barrier to proper treatment becomes diminished. In conjunction with my Ph.D., I am also pursuing a Master's degree in Public Health from Emory's Rollins School of Public Health.
ANDRE WELLINGTON
B.Sc., Political Science, University of West Indies, 2005
M.A., African
Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, 2008
Andre Wellington is Jamaican and earned his B.Sc. with First Class Honours in Political Science and a minor in Criminology from the University of the West Indies, Mona in Kingston, Jamaica. He is currently pursuing an M.A. in African Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where his focus is on South Africa. His interest in Africa grew out of his collaborative experiences with the South African High Commission in Jamaica. While his research interests have and continue to evolve, he mainly focuses on issues of crime and conflict in South Africa, and is interested in alternative conceptions and interpretations of violence vis-à-vis the state, vigilantes and criminals. He has visited South Africa on two occasions: the first to deliver a paper entitled "Agricultural Protectionism in South Africa" to the All African Student's Conference at the Universiteit van die Vrystaat in Free State, South Africa in 2006. On his second visit he performed archival research on crime trends during and after Apartheid in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town and was most pleased to visit and study the infamous town of Hillbrow – crime capital of Johannesburg in 2007. His desire to study Anthropology comes out of an appreciation for the discipline's critical integration of history, social theory and ethnography and its grappling with the concept of agency and social action to unearth new and creative understandings. He also intends to do comparative work on crime and violence in Jamaica and South Africa, and he feels a confluence of supportive people and institutions have brought him thus far and will carry him further still.
SHUNYUAN ZHANG
B.A., English Language and Literature, Shanghai International Studies
University, 1999
M.A. English Linguistics, Shanghai International Studies
University, 2002
M.A. Gender Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong,
2008
“I was born and raised in mainland China, with Cantonese as my native tongue and Mandarin as my second language. I have a born interest in learning languages, and even dreamed of myself speaking different languages with people from different parts of the world when I was still at primary school. That attachment to language has led to the first important decision I made in my life: to be an English major. I studied English language and literature as an undergraduate at Shanghai International Studies University, and earned my first M.A. degree in English linguistics at the same university. Right after graduation, I joined a local publishing company in Shanghai as an editor for an academic journal dealing with English teaching methodology in China. Yet feeling disappointed and frustrated with the bureaucratic operation of the company and the lack of intellectual challenge in my work, I finally decided to quit my job and started my second academic pilgrimage in Gender Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). My interest in gender and sexuality started with my growing interest in gay novels and the representation of gay people in media, and was further boosted as I work as volunteer for two NGOs working respectively for the LGBT community in China and sex workers in Hong Kong. The one-year intensive studies at CUHK in gender issues from an interdisciplinary perspective serve not only as a transition that bridges the gap between mechanical office work and rigorous academic pursuit, but also help me locate my academic interest in cultural anthropology and gradually develop my research plan for further studies.”
MOLLY
ZUCKERMAN
2004 - B.A., Anthropology and Women’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University
I am interested in the relationship between differential health outcomes and population and social sub-grouping in the archaeological record. I am particularly interested in health and pathological conditions related to gender and socioeconomic status—not just those of marginalized and disenfranchised sub-populations—in early modern and late Medieval Europe. My training is in skeletal biology, bioarchaeology, and paleopathology, with ongoing extensions into paleodemography and paleoepidemiology and cross-disciplinary work in Women’s Studies and Social History.
I will be engaging in sample selection/ pilot research this summer (2007) at skeletal collections in and around London. My dissertation research explores the intersection between population, biological, and social sub-groupings (ie. sex, gender, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, occupation, etc.) and syphilis (in its endemic stage) in urban populations during the early modern period (1450 to 1800) in England.
My current research projects explore the nutritional adequacy and dietary components of a group of 14th century Mongolian mummies, differential diagnosis of metabolic diseases expressed in the skeleton, and the origins of syphilis.