Anthropology

News & Events

Visiting Paleoanthropologist Fall Semester 2009

Dr.Chris Beard from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History will be visiting Kalamazoo to give a series of talks at WMU on November 18 and 19, 2009. His departmental seminar, entitled Burmese Days: Primate Paleontology in the Union of Myanmar, will be on Wednesday November 18 at 5pm in Moore 01115. His public lecture, entitled Filling some missing links in primate evolution, 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin, is scheduled for Thursday November 19 at 5:00pm in Sangren 2302. Social activities following the talks on both evenings will be planned for interested graduate students and faculty.

Over the past 25 years Dr. Beard has done paleontological fieldwork in Wyoming, New Mexico, Egypt, Kenya, China, Indonesia, and Myanmar. He is a leading expert on primate evolution, and has made major contributions to our understanding of the first anthropoids or higher primates. His East of Eden hypothesis suggested that the first modern primates are Asian in origin, and his fieldwork in Asia has yielded solid support for this revolutionary hypothesis. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000 and is the author of the award-winning The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey (2004). Read more about Chris's research on his website.

Chris will be accompanied on this trip by his wife, the noted zooarchaeologist Dr. Sandra Olsen. Sandi is a Curator of Anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of a fascinating recent article in Science on the domestication of horses during the 4th millennium BCE in Kazakhstan. She has agreed to give a departmental seminar entitled Taming the wild steed: Evidence for early horse domestication in northern Kazakhstan, 4th millennium BCE on Thursday afternoon November 19 at 2pm in Moore Hall G0111. Read more about Sandi’s research at her website.

I hope that you will join me and my graduate students in welcoming Chris and Sandi to our department in November.

Bob Anemone

Visiting Archaeologist Fall Semester 2009

The Anthropology and History departments, in conjunction with the Graduate Certificate Program in Ethnohistory, would like to invite Dr. Patricia Galloway to visit our campus in October 2009 to present a public lecture, a graduate seminar, and a departmental seminar that will be of interest to the University and the community.

We have contacted Dr. Galloway and arranged the following tentative schedule.

Graduate Seminar in Ethnohistory: Bringing Economic Anthropology to Bear on

Ethnohistory.In this seminar in conjunction with ANTH 6090 scheduled for Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 4 p.m., Dr. Galloway will discuss how economic anthropology can be used to address the current trend in colonial history to push capitalism into discussions of the Indian trade without attempting to understand how Native exchange regimes worked or were manifested in behavior and in the literature.

Public lecture: Who Reads, Practices, and Owns Ethnohistory and Who Should?

In this public presentation on Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.,Dr. Galloway will examineethnohistory at the intersection of history and anthropology and place it within the emerging and ongoing discussion about whether the people who are written about in the social science should have any say in the discourse that portrays them.The talk will be held in a large lecture hall and will be of interest to the public, as well as students and faculty in Anthropology, History, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and related disciplines.

Departmental seminar: Representing Southeastern Indians in Southern Archives.

In this seminar scheduled for Friday, October 23, 2009 at 10:00 a.m.,Dr. Galloway will present her current collaborative research project with Stephanie Bordy, one of her archives students, and Ruth Bayhylle, chair of the Society of American Archivists' Native American Archivists Roundtable. She will discuss the process of inventorying and examining southern archives' holdings about southeastern Indians, comparing them with tribal archives, and examining how archival descriptive practice circumscribes access to such holdings by constituting a discourse of its own that is frequently unaware of the various significances of the materials.The seminar will be held in a small lecture room and will be of interest to upper level students and faculty in Anthropology,History, Archival Management, and related disciplines.

Graduate student and faculty luncheon: On Friday, October 23, 2009 at noon, Dr. Galloway will meet with anthropology and history graduate students and faculty to discuss research of mutual interest.