New Stuff

In Anthropology

Climate Anthropology

• Climate Anthropology

For a number of years, archeology has been instrumental in reconstruction of past climates. Brian Fagan, Emeritus Professor at U.C. Santa Barbara, has become one of the most prolific writers in modern archaeology.

The podcast on Big Weather originated in Camden, Maine, in October, 2004.

EvoDevo

EvoDevo

Chi-Hua Chiu Assistant Professor Departments of Genetics and Anthropology, Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, Rutgers University

Specializes in evolutionary developmental biology or "evo-devo", which seeks to explain the evolution and development of morphological characters as well as the evolution of their underlying genetic and developmental mechanisms using a comparative approach. We currently use the tetrapod limb as a model system, with focus on the genetic basis for evolutionary diversity in the hands and feet of primates.

Evolutionary Psychology

• Culture, Cognition, and Evolution….Dan Sperber.

Sperber, a French anthropologist, has developed an approach to culture under the general heading of "epidemiology of representations". Epidemiology is the study of the distribution of certain items or conditions in the population. One can study the distribution of particular pathological conditions, but you can also study the distribution of good habits, or thoughts, or representations, artifacts, or forms of knowledge.

“When we say anthropology is in crisis we're talking about anthropology as defined by academic institutions. And it doesn't matter. It deserves to be in crisis; it deserves to explode, let it do so. “

Landscape Archaeology

Marcos Llobera, a new prof at the University of Washington is a landscape archaeologist developing new methods, based on GIS and computer models, to understand people's interaction with and experience of the landscape. He compliments interdisciplinary collaboration between the Department of Anthropology and Geography, Mathematics, and Physics, as well as strengthen our ties to existing interdisciplinary units, including the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology and the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences

Spatial dimensions of cultural evolution: The evolution of footpaths and trail systems.

Performance Ethnology

Tomie Hahn’s ethnography Sensational Knowledge: Embody Culture Through Japanese Dance provides a powerful dissonance to the widely circulated objectifying images of Japanese women. In the introduction, Hahn invokes her subversive impulse to “re appropriate the exotic mystique of the ‘fan dance’ stereotype of the demure ‘Oriental lady’ who entices the onlookers’ gaze by revealing and concealing her body… to re appropriate the fan, kimono, and hair ornaments to tell a very different story of Japanese performing women” (14-5).

http://www.yellowbuzz.org/2007/09/tomie-hahns-new-book-moves-with.html