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Prof. Nancy White's New Book on Florida Archaeology

Late Prehistoric Florida, edited by U. North FL archaeologist Keith Ashley and USF archaeologist Nancy White, has just been published by the University Press of Florida. It describes native societies in all different regions of the state right before the time of the Old World invasion (of which we all in Florida will celebrate the 500th anniversary next year!). Graduate alums Jeff Du Vernay and Amber Yuellig from USF's anthropology department coauthored a chapter with White, as well.

USF Archaeological Research Featured in Current Issue of Historical Archaeology
The current issue of the journal Historical Archaeology (vol. 46, no. 1), the leading journal in the field, features four articles by Anthropology faculty, graduate students, and a recent graduate. Brent Weisman's article focuses on the cultural significance of housing styles among the late 19th-century Florida Seminoles. Doctoral student Daniel Hughes, Weisman's advisee, describes a statistical technique for comparing 18th-century Caribbean ceramics. Michelle Sivilich, also Weisman's doctoral student, writes about the anthropology of U.S. military strategy in the Second Seminole War. Recent M.A. graduate Felicia Silpa describes her research at the Gamble Plantation, which is pictured on the journal cover. These articles are part of a thematic issue titled "Cosmopolitanism and Ethnogenesis, Colonialism and Resistance: Themes in the Historical Archaeology of Florida," edited by Uzi Baram and Daniel Hughes. This volume nicely showcases the research of USF Anthropology faculty and students.

 

 

 

The “Lost Boys of Dozier” Project Makes Front Page News.  To read more about this multidisciplinary research project involving USF forensic anthropologists, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists and biologists, click here:http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article1230895.ece

New Book by Antoinette Jackson
Speaking for the Enslaved Heritage Interpretation at Antebellum Plantation Sites
See: http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=386
Focusing on the agency of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the South, this work argues for the systematic unveiling and recovery of subjugated knowledge, histories, and cultural practices of those traditionally silenced and overlooked by national heritage projects and national public memories. Viewed through the lens of four distinctive plantation sites—including the one on which that the ancestors of First Lady Michelle Obama lived—everyday acts of living, learning, and surviving profoundly challenge the way American heritage has been constructed and represented.

Anne Pfister Receives Fulbright Award

USF's Top Tier Fulbright Scholars Five students are among the recipients of the most competitive postgraduate scholarships

 

Nancy Romero-Daza and David Himmelgreen Receive NSF REU Award for Field Training in Costa Rica

Nancy Romero-Daza and David Himmelgreen have been awarded a three-year Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant from the National Science Foundation, for a total of $418,611.  The grant will support the "Globalization and Community Health: Combining Social Science and Engineering" field school in Monteverde, Costa Rica. The 10-week field school will provide cross-disciplinary training in methods, theories, and ethics to anthropology and civil engineering students, and will allow them the opportunity to conduct community based health-related research that combines both disciplines.  In addition to the Monteverde Institute, a long-term partner, Nancy and David will work with colleagues from the USF Department of Civil Engineering, Sarina Ergas and James Mihelcic.

Trevor W. Purcell Memorial Speaker Series with Carolyn Behrman - Teaching Through Research: Food Insecurity at an Urban Elementary School - Has been moved to April 16th 2012 SOC 159 11:00

Dispelling Immigration Myths Feb. 22

WUSF's University Beat this week has a story about the Darwin Days events at USF. It features visitor Dr. Eugenie Scott, as well as comments from our own faculty - Lorena Madrigal and Liz Bird.

Elizabeth Bird in Tampa Bay Times

Statewide Chairs' Response to Governor Scott's Remarks on Anthropology

Heide Castaneda wins the USF Hispanic Heritage Award 2011 for faculty

Antoinette Jackson in American Anthropologist

Elizabeth Bird in Anthropology News

Anthropology in USF Magazine

David Himmelgreen interviewed on 10 News

>Erin Kimmerle in the news

USF's Top Social Work Educator - Iraida V. Carrion - Anthropology Alumni

An Appreciation of Susan Greenbaum
In almost 30 years at USF, Susan Greenbaum set the standard for the kind of engaged, relevant work that is now the signature of USF Anthropology. Read more about her career and goals for a very active retirement

2011 Summer Newsletter - Anthroscope

 

With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Thomas Pluckhahn, Brent Weisman, and Victor Thompson (Ohio State), will conduct archaeological research at the Crystal River site, a mound complex on the Gulf Coast of Florida dating primarily to the Woodland period (ca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1000). Their research will examine the dynamic between cooperation and competition in the formation of early village societies. In the few instances where the topic has been directly addressed, the focus has primarily been on chiefdoms and states, where competitive and cooperative practices were already institutionalized. Field investigations include geophysical survey, coring, and test excavations. Laboratory analyses include a variety of archaeological dating techniques, as well as studies to determine season of occupation and rate of deposition. The research contributes to the understanding of the dynamic between competition and cooperation in human societies---one of the foremost issues in the social sciences. The project also contributes to the study of social complexity through focused study of early villages, precursors to better-studied ranked and stratified societies. Finally, the project contributes to the understanding of Crystal River and related sites of the Woodland period on the Gulf Coast, an area and time period marked by one of the most distinctive, yet least understood, material culture complexes in the prehistory of North America.

Robert H. Tykot has continued with his diversity of geographic and methodological interests, mainly using archaeological science approaches to look at materials exchange and ancient diets in different parts of the world. Expanding on his work on obsidian trade in the central Mediterranean, he spent time in Croatia with his portable, non-destructive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer analyzing obsidian found at prehistoric inland sites, along the Dalmatian coast, and on some of the Adriatic islands. This was the first time ever that significant work was done on obsidian from Croatia, with one of the most important discoveries some pieces from far-away Melos in the Aegean.

Wells follows a greener path

E. Christian Wells

When USF President Judy Genshaft signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment in 2008 to green the university, Christian Wells had no idea how his life would change over the next year. After being evacuated from his field site in Honduras in the summer of 2009 because of a military coup d'état, Wells was given the opportunity to apply what he learned from his Honduran archaeological research on sustainable land management to the USF campus by being appointed the founding Director of the USF Office of Sustainability. In his role as chief sustainability officer for USF, Wells is responsible for overseeing the President's climate commitment to reduce the university's greenhouse gas emissions significantly over the next few years (80 percent by the year 2050!), and finding new ways of making the USF campus more sustainable. Toward this goal, and working with the Provost's Office and the Graduate School, Wells helped create the new School of Global Sustainability, which will use the USF campus as a living laboratory to test out novel ideas for renewable energy, water conservation, green building, and native landscaping.

Professor Jacqueline Messing has been invited to serve on the National Science Foundation's Advisory Panel for Doctoral Dissertation Grants in Anthropology starting in 2010.  She recently published the article "Ambivalence and Ideology among Mexicano Youth in Tlaxcala, Mexico" in a special issue on INDIGENOUS YOUTH AND BILINGUALISM in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education.


Dr. Heide Castañeda has been awarded a Humanities Institute grant to support archival data collection at the Germany National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) in Frankfurt am Main as part of an ongoing project entitled "Without Papers: Illegalized Migration to Germany since Reunification."
"Illegality" is an exceptionally fluid category, produced by shifting practices of inclusion and exclusion. In Germany, the idea of "illegal immigration" coincides with the end of the guestworker programs in the early 1970s. German reunification in 1990 set additional population shifts in motion, challenging the boundaries of the newly integrated nation. Increased freedom of movement for citizens of former socialist countries, combined with civil conflict in many regions of the world, led to a surge in immigration during this period. The political asylum mechanism, in particular, was utilized because other channels (such as labor migration) had become too restrictive or closed entirely. By the early 1990s, a concern with Überfremdung ("over-foreignization") became a dominant discourse in public debates, and despite mass expressions of solidarity with refugees, the state's response was to severely limit the constitutional right to asylum in 1993. This marked a turning point in migration policy. The right to asylum had previously held a special place in German postwar society, and it is the only nation in the world to enshrine this right in its constitution. With this calculated removal of legal entry options, unauthorized or "illegalized" migration has increased since the mid-1990s. Unauthorized migrants have increasingly filled gaps in the German shadow economy, while greater numbers of individuals from diverse backgrounds and with varying reasons for migrating have become subject to arrest, detention, and deportation. Although migrant needs in education, medicine, and social service settings were a prominent concern throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, a turning point was reached by the late 1990s with changing criteria of "deservingness" and inclusion.


Dr. Linda Whiteford, (Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Strategic Initiatives in the Office of the Provost), has been invited to be a member of the Executive Committee for the Commission on International Programs (CIP) of the American Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), previously named NASULGC.

 

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