Carol Zane Jolles (PhD 1990, Washington)

Research Interests:
Culture change, gender, ethnohistory, modern hunter-gatherers; Alaskan Inuit and Yupik societies, Native North America

"My research addresses issues having to do with changing cultural, social and physical environments that affect Alaska Native communities and includes on-going work with north Bering Sea Alaska Native communities as well as a new focus on communities of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska. One project, funded by the National Science Foundation and nearing completion, has investigated the extent of sociocultural and economic changes associated with globalization processes in three subsistence-oriented Iñupiat societies (circa 1930 to present) and the effects of those changes over time on local identity and culture. The communities are Wales, Diomede and the King Island diaspora living in Nome and Anchorage. Work with these communities has been collaborative and has involved extensive community outreach activities, including the return of all original data in the form of usable maps, charts, and notebooks. A second set of linked studies, funded by the National Institutes of Health, “Assessing Alaskan Yup’ik Community Interest in a Dental Health Initiative” [pilot project] and “Ethnographic Approaches to Alaska Native Health Disparities Research” [full proposal], involves work with communities of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and will incorporate ethnographic research into a project designed to address on-going dental health issues that disproportionately affect Alaska Native children in the region. A third study, “Connections between Coastal Sea Ice Characteristics and Human Populations in the Bering Sea: Comparisons over Time and Space”, with funding by the National Science Foundation anticipated, focuses on connections between sea ice and human populations in the Bering Sea region. The study is interdisciplinary in scope and will combine existing data with new knowledge from both social and physical disciplines and will draw on scientific as well as traditional knowledge. Included in the study are the Alaska Native communities of Wales, Diomede, Gambell, Savoonga, St. Paul and St. George, located along the coast or as island communities in the Bering Sea."