Your Contributions at Work
Your contributions to the department are used to support activities that facilitate training, research, and teaching in anthropology. The most important of these are the awards that the department gives to undergraduate and graduate students.
Undergraduate Students
Each year we recognize the Best Undergraduate Honor's Thesis and Best Anthropology Essay with financial awards. A faculty committee selects the papers for each award. We give out three awards for Best Anthropology Essay - one each for archaeology, biocultural anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology.
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Best Honors Thesis in Anthropology 2008-2009
Winner: Laura Hinton
Thesis Title :Staying Invisible: The Stigma of Injection Drug Use
Advisor: Bettina Shell-Duncan
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Best Anthropology Essay Awards 2008-2009
Sociocultural Winner
“China's Birth Policy: Changes, effects, and Paying Attention to the future”
Kaitlin Banfill
Professor: Dr. Stevan Harrell
Archaeology Winner
“Bonobo and Chimpanzee Behavior: A Discussion of Gender Bias in Anthropology"
Molly de Gorgue
Professor: Dr. Angela Close
Biocultural Winner
"An Event History Model of Dengue Fever Outbreaks in 8 Different Endemic Regions"
Daniel Parker
Professor: Dr. Darryl Holman
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The department helps to support pre-dissertation pilot research projects and travel to national academic conferences for graduate students. The awards provide graduate students with critical support that is not typically available from any other source of funding.
Each year we fund as many graduate students as possible to conduct pre-dissertation pilot research. This research is used to identify a field site, make important connections at the field site, and undertake preliminary data collection. These awards were made around $1,250.00 each. The students and projects funded for the 2009-2010 academic year are:
- Megan Carney
While adoption as a family-forming method in the United States is still in the minority, it has a high public impact – it has been estimated that 6 in 10 Americans have had personal experience with adoption, (Princeton Survey Research Associates, 1997). This pilot project will consider two aspects of adoptive behavior: (1) that parental status is socially beneficial and (2) that it may occur in clusters (that is—people who adopt know people who adopt/have been adopted).
This preliminary work will lay the groundwork for my dissertation research which will assess the same topic in more detail and with a longitudinal component. In terms of research and theory, the work here will contribute to current adoption research in two very important ways. First, it represents an initial step in applying evolutionary theory to adoptive behavior. To date, no sufficient evolutionary explanation for the practice of adoption, a persistent puzzle given no genetic benefits to adoption of an unrelated child, has been advanced. Second, it will explore one possible benefit of parenting that may apply similarly to adoptive and biological parents – namely social support via extension of one’s social network. Given a better understanding of not only the pattern of and benefits to adoption, but also the evolutionary reasons for adoption, government agencies will be more equipped to facilitate the adoption process, to make more informed policy decisions, and be able to undertake more successful adoption-endorsing campaigns.
- Amy Jordan
Pilot research funding is allowing me to investigate the process of ethnogenesis in a colonial context in the Banda Islands, Indonesia. A remote archipelago in modern Indonesia, the Banda Islands were the world’s sole source of nutmeg before the 18th century. Control over the spice trade was a major goal for European powers during the Age of Expansion. Consequently, the Banda Islands were a location of early disputes and colonial experimentation. After a bloody conquest which virtually wiped out the indigenous population, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) established a plantation system in 1621 on the islands. The Banda Island plantation system was an early experiment in mercantile colonialism with imported enslaved workers, company-provided subsistence rations, and a VOC monopoly on the spice trade inhibiting the accumulation of capital. The plantation system survived in various forms until WWII. The plantation system fundamentally altered the lifeways of the inhabitants of the Banda Islands, most of whom were non-indigenous, but there is little evidence regarding how the alterations occurred or why. I believe that processes of ethnogenesis in the Banda Islands can be addressed through the analysis of food remains, which can be accessed through both historical records and archaeological materials.
For my pilot research, I would like to 1) identify plantations on the Banda Islands with potential for intact archaeological deposits, 2) negotiate landowner and government permission for future excavation, 3) examine archaeological collections from previous excavations at facilities in Jakarta and Ambon, and 4) locate pertinent historical records about the plantations at local and national archives in Banda and Jakarta.
- Molly Odell
My proposed dissertation research will focus on the role of shellfish in buffering seasonal and long-term environmental variability in Kodiak, Alaska. Using an optimal foraging theory framework, I will address how it was that populations in Kodiak were subject to significant dietary stress when shellfish should have been available year-round. My pilot award will be used to travel to Kodiak, AK to assess whether existing collections of shellfish can be used for my disseratation research.
- Nicole Torres
My pilot research will explore the various elements involved in the increasing rates of incarceration in Mexican migrant communities, primarily in the Phoenix metropolitan area. In recent years, the detention rates of both documented and undocumented Mexican workers in the Southwestern United States has grown exponentially, particularly since September 11, 2001 and the accompanying “war on terror.” The intent of this research is to examine the relationship between localized political discourses on the war on terror, Mexican migrants, and the development of the increase in incarceration, an area fairly unexplored since its inception. This pilot Summer 2009 research award will greatly help me to further explore a significant component of my research project: local language practices and public discourses in the Phoenix area that connect migrancy with criminality.
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