Anthropology

Past Events

  •  Location: 128 Hope StreetRoom: 103

    Each 15-min M.A. presentation will be followed by a 5-min Q&A:

    9:30-9:40AM: Intro/Welcome

    9:40-10:00AM: Ashley May  Tending to a Sacred Past: Memory, Aurality, and the Space/Time Imaginary at Dirre Sheikh Hussein

    10:00-10:20AM: Moi Herrera-Parra — Cultivating Milpas and Harvesting Ethnoecological Practices: A Paleoethnobotanical Study of Plant Use in the Classic Period Site of Lacanjá-Tzeltal

    10:20-10:40AM: Creighton Burns — The Right to Look and Bear Witness: Visualizing US Occupation in Guåhan

    10:40-11:00AM: Daniel Krugman — The Localization Game: Equitizing Experts and (Re)making Globality at Africa’s Premier Population and Health Research Center

    11:00-11:10AM: Break

    11:10-11:30AM: Madeline Nicholson — Adopting Change: Intergenerational Dynamics of Transnational Adoptee Kinship & Advocacy in Norway

    11:30-11:50AM: Gonzalo Aguirre — The distribution of the sensible in the salmon modernity of Chiloe and the Chilean Patagonia

    11:50AM-12:10PM: Mira Guth — More Bugs, Less Drugs: Veterinary Interventions in the Multispecies Health Issue of Antibiotic Resistance

    12:10-12:30PM: Lily Swaine-Moore (A.B. presentation) — In[Sight]s: An Ethnographic Exploration of Diagnosis, Meaning-making, and the Visual Sense in Artists with Stargardt Disease

    12:30-1:30PM: Lunch/Q&A

  •  Location: Rhode Island HallRoom: 008

    PEC welcomes Graduate Students interested in Early Cultures to join us for our next Grad Forum: “Writing and the Academic Career.”

    Professors Johanna Hanink (Classics), Jason Protass (Religious Studies), and Parker VanValkenburgh (Anthropology) will share their thoughts and experiences, and answer students’ questions about both academic and non-academic writing, and the roles they play in an academic career.


    We will meet in Rhode Island Hall, Room 008 at 12pm.

    Please RSVP by 12:00pm, December 6th to book your free lunch.

     

    RSVP
  •  Location: 128 Hope Street (Giddings House)Room: 103

    This event is part of Anthropology’s Fall 2024 Colloquia Series

    Speaker: Cheryl Yin is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Carleton College. 

    When the communist Khmer Rouge (KR) gained control of Cambodia in 1975, the Khmer (Cambodian) language’s honorific register system became contradictory to the KR’s vision of an egalitarian, agrarian society. In an attempt to create a classless society, the KR selected lexical variants from the middle honorific registers often used by farmers in the countryside. By using language that is not elitist, but also not condescending, the KR created one register level Cambodians could use with everyone as all Cambodians were now equal. When the regime fell four years later, the KR language policy largely disappeared.

    More than four decades later, Cambodians continue to talk about their experiences under the KR through plays, films, personal narratives, and courtroom witness testimonies. In these discussions, KR survivors often re-animate the voices of KR soldiers, mimicking how the KR spoke to and treated them. In addition to the communist voice, survivors frequently re-animate their KR captors with Khmer’s non-honorific register, the lowest register level that is often associated with anger and condescension. Because such language-use goes against the KR period’s language policy of equality, Cheryl analyzes re-animations of KR voices to examine their collective memories about KR language-use. What do these re-enactments and performances tell us about how Cambodians remember the KR? How do we reconcile Khmer Rouge language policy and on-the-ground language-use under the Khmer Rouge regime? Were KR cadres communist revolutionaries, cruel torturers, or could they be both at the same time?

  •  Location: Cogut Institute, Andrews HouseRoom: 110

    What does it mean to work through archival silences? What archival methods are necessary to tend to the gaps? Building on the Collaborative Humanities seminar “Archive Theory: Imagining Absence Otherwise,” this symposium showcases research that considers the methods, contradictions, and possibilities of archival studies.

    The symposium brings together an interdisciplinary set of projects on a range of topics, including: reading with and alongside ephemera, coloniality and institutional power, artistic responses to archival materials, embracing methodological failures, and the beauty of storytelling and personal archives, among others. Each speaker will complicate the assumptions of the “gaps” and “losses” in the archive in search for other modes of thinking with and alongside a range of archival artifacts.

    Free and open to the public. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.


    Speakers

    Presenters:

    • Justina Blanco (Africana Studies)
    • Alexander Chun (American Studies)
    • Macie Clerkley (Anthropology)
    • Brian Dang (Theatre Arts and Performance Studies)
    • Nélari Figueroa Torres (Africana Studies, English)
    • Jordan Good (Music)
    • Erin Hardnett (History)
    • Amber Hawk Swanson (Theatre Arts and Performance Studies)
    • Brooke Johnson (Africana Studies)
    • Lucas Joshi (Comparative Literature)
    • Joyce Matos (Modern Culture and Media)
    • Claudia Ojeda Rexach (History)
    • Gery Vargas (RISD)
    • Shuang Wang (Music)
    • K Yin (American Studies)

    Moderators/Hosts:

    • Kiana Murphy (American Studies)
    • Alejandra Rosenberg Navarro (Hispanic Studies)

    Schedule

    9:15 am – 10:45 am

    Welcome / Session 1 — Archival Failure: Ethics and Methods

    • K Yin, “Stone I: Asian/Rock Form(ation)s”
    • Amber Hawk Swanson, “Doll Closet”
    • Lucas Joshi, “In This Garden Called Archive”
    • Alexander Chun, “Abject Pleasure: Asian/American Fantasies in the Digital Archive”
    10:45 am – 11:15 am

    Break

    11:15 am – 12:30 pm

    Session 2 — “Fragments and Ephemera: Loss and Abundance in the Archive”

    • Shuang Wang, “Voice Beyond ‘Yellow’: Rediscovering the Lives of Early 20th-Century Chinese Singsong Girls”
    • Claudia Ojeda Rexach, “Imperial Gaze: The Archive of Puerto Rican Surveillance Photography”
    • Jordan Good, “The Life Cycle of a Player-Piano Roll: Material Ephemerality and the Risk of Playing in the Gaps”
    • Justina Blanco, “Deathly Intimacy: Unrequited Love and Archival Reanimations”
    1:30 pm – 2:45 pm

    Session 3 — Mediated Archives: Language and Authenticity

    • Gery Vargas, “Tierras Celosas”
    • Nélari Figueroa Torres, “Land(e)scapes & Sound(e)scapes in the Black Caribbean”
    • Brian Dang, “Notes on Twilight Zone: The Movie and What Happens to (Asian) Kids in America”
    • Joyce Matos, “chuymar katuqaña”
    2:45 pm – 3:15 pm

    Break

    3:15 pm – 4:30 pm

    Session 4 — Archive as Home: The Politics of the Personal

    • Macie Clerkley, “Gaps in the Archive: Understanding Homeplace in Archaeological Contexts”
    • Erin Hardnett, “Mapping Kinship”
    • Brooke Johnson, “Touching the Archive: Measuring Distance with Desire”
    5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

    Keynote Lecture — Ahmad Greene-Hayes, “Quadrants and Marginalia: Mapping Black Religion in the Archive”


    Image: A piece of art that has been altered to look like a collage, Heather Green, 2003

  •  Location: RI HallRoom: 108
    Ross Perlin will be giving a talk on his book titled Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology as well as the Program in Urban Studies.
    Contemporary cities are the most linguistically diverse in history, even as half of the world’s 7000-plus languages are endangered. How did this happen, and what does it mean for the future of language? Ross Perlin, author of the new Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, describes the race to document and support little-known languages, following six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities, from New York’s outer borough neighborhoods to villages on the other side of the world, to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against the odds. He also explores the languages themselves and the particular challenges and opportunities for language documentation, maintenance, and revitalization in urban areas.
  •  Location: Stephen Robert ’62 Hall, 280 Brook StreetRoom: Leung Conference Room (110)

    Join the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Studies to learn more about its summer internship opportunities! At this panel, you will hear from former interns that participated in one of our offered internships: Human Rights Watch, Project Hope, Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), Crisis Group, Refugee Dream Center, and the Gammadda Initiative.

  •  Location: 121 South Main StreetRoom: 245

    The Pandemic Center is excited to welcome Tyler Franconi, Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Classics as well as the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World, to the School of Public Health on December 3rd to present his talk: Archaeological Perspectives on the Study of Pandemics in the Roman World.

    Professor Franconi’s talk will focus on the three main pandemic events in the Roman world, as known from historical sources, what archaeology has added to these narratives, and what else it might yet add in the future.

    This event will be held in person and lunch will be served.

    Tyler Franconi is a Roman archaeologist whose research focuses on the economic and environmental history of the Roman Empire, especially in Western Europe. He co-directs the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project in central Italy, and is a specialist in Roman small finds and ceramics.

  •  Location: Manning HallRoom: Gallery

    Join the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at our final public program of 2024 as we host a special conversation about Iñupiaq life and culture in Alaska. We are honored to welcome Hannah Paniyavluk Loon (Iñupiaq), Instructor of Inupiaq language, University of Alaska, Chukchi campus in Kotzebue, and Norma Anallaq Ballot (Iñupiaq), Ivory carver and Selawik teacher of Inupiaq language, art, and culture, to speak with us about their experiences and communities in western Alaska. They are joined by their longtime friend and HMA collaborator Wanni W. Anderson, Adjunct Professor Emerita of Anthropology. Anderson is co-author with Douglas D. Anderson of the recent publication Iñupiat of the Sii: Historical Ethnography and Arctic Challenges (University of Alaska Press, 2024). The event is a rare opportunity for our campus to hear directly from Iñupiaq cultural practitioners working to educate and sustain traditions, communities, homelands, and Inupiaq self-determination.

    6:00pm | Reception

    6:15pm | Lecture begins

    Supported by Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. National Park Service, and generous donors to Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum

  •  Location: Rhode Island HallRoom: 108

    Humans mark themselves and each other with shared identities in many ways. In ancient Ecuador, this included modifying skull shape, incising and inlaying teeth with precious metals, and burying people at special locations and in special ways. (Bio)archaeologists use these identifiers in order to understand broader patterns of power and community in the past. In this talk, Sara Juengst, Associate Professor at UNC Charlotte in the Department of Anthropology, will explore the various methods and meanings of body modification in coastal Ecuador as one way to understand how people identified themselves, with each other, and with the broader cosmos.

    Sara Juengst is an Associate Professor at UNC Charlotte in the Department of Anthropology. She specializes in bioarchaeology and Andean archaeology. She has conducted research in Bolivia and Peru and plans to begin a project in Ecuador in Summer 2017. She has also worked locally, assisting with field projects in the Southeastern United States when possible. Dr. Juengst is particularly interested in using human skeletal remains to investigates people’s identities and social structures in the past. She has also worked with human remains to evaluate past medical practices (trepanation or skull surgery) and violence levels within past Andean populations.

     

    Co-Sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

  •  Location: John Carter Brown Library

    The Brown Departments of Classics and Hispanic Studies cordially invite you to join us for the presentation of Professor Andrew Laird’s new book Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2024), hosted by the John Carter Brown Library.

    There will be comments from Louise Burkhart, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Albany, SUNY, and David A. Lupher, Professor of Classics, Emeritus, University of Puget Sound. Professor Jeremy Mumford, Brown Department of History, will chair the event.

    In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and cultural exchanges that would result from that initiative are the subject of this book. Aztec Latin highlights the importance of Renaissance humanist education for early colonial indigenous history, showing how practices central to humanism — the cultivation of eloquence, the training of leaders, scholarly translation, and antiquarian research — were transformed in New Spain to serve Indian elites as well as the Spanish authorities and religious orders.

    While Franciscan friars, inspired by Erasmus’ ideal of a common tongue, applied principles of Latin grammar to Amerindian languages, native scholars translated the Gospels, a range of devotional literature, and even Aesop’s fables into the Mexican language of Nahuatl. They also produced significant new writings in Latin and Nahuatl, adorning accounts of their ancestral past with parallels from Greek and Roman history and importing themes from classical and Christian sources to interpret pre-Hispanic customs and beliefs. Aztec Latin reveals the full extent to which the first Mexican authors mastered and made use of European learning and provides a timely reassessment of what those indigenous authors really achieved.

    The author of Aztec Latin, Andrew Laird, is the John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities, Professor of Hispanic Studies.

    This event is free and open to the public, reception to follow. We look forward to seeing you there!

     



  •  Location: Stonewall House

    Join us on Thursday, November 14th from 12:00 - 1:30pm at Stonewall House for an Out for Lunch and Conversation with Dr. Vincent Pak. RSVP is highly encouraged!

    Dr. Vincent Pak earned his PhD in English Language and Linguistics in 2023, jointly awarded by the National University of Singapore and King’s College London. Trained as a sociolinguist, he’s most interested in discursive behavior surrounding sex and sexuality, produced by and/or about non-heterosexual persons. He aligns his research interests with sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and gender/sexuality studies; most of his published work tries to understand linguistic expressions of sex/uality in a variety of contexts. He also has interests in the critical study of language and race; the social theories of Michel Foucault; and queer theory. His doctoral work examines logics of change and transformation embedded in contemporary Christian discourses on sex and sexuality, and how they constitute a mode of neo-homophobia. He’s currently working on his first monograph on the same topic, as well as a second book project on truth-telling practices amongst gender/sexual minorities.

    You can also hear Dr. Vincent Pak speak about his work on November 13th, 1:00 - 1:50pm at the LingTalk: (Dis)course Corrections.

  •  Location: Zoom login details will be provided at registration

    Are you interested in funding your self-designed research project? Interested in graduate school? Committed to diversity and equity issues?

    We invite you to register for this virtual information session on November 13th 4:00-5:00pm to learn how the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship can support your academic journey.

    Register by emailing mmuf@brown.edu. Registered students will receive Zoom login details.

    Eligibile candidates are:

    • Second semester sophomore concentrators in the humanities or social sciences who are committed to eradicating racial disparities in higher education and pursuing research careers
    • In good academic standing having a minimum equivalent of 3.0 grade point average in eligible field of study
    • Are intending on pursuing independent research during their junior and senior years within their concentration.
    • Applications are particularly encouraged from students who are African Americans/of African heritage, LatinX, Native Americans, as well as those from marginalized backgrounds (first generation college student, low-income, etc.).

    MMUF staff is eager to help you with every stage of the process. Interested students are strongly encouraged to attend one of our information sessions, review the Brown MMUF application portal and to reach out for an advising appointment as soon as they begin thinking they might apply.

    The Mellon Mays Mission:

    The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) is committed to supporting a diverse professoriate and to promoting the value of multivocality in the humanities and related disciplines, elevating accounts, interpretations, and narratives that expand present understandings.

    Mellon Mays Fellows benefit from undergraduate research, cohort community engagement, faculty and staff mentoring and financial support, including stipends and loan repayment, throughout their fellowship.

    The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship application opens in UFunds on Friday, December 6th.

    Learn more about eligibility and how to apply
  •  Location: Friedman HallRoom: 208

    Join the Department of Anthropology, LGBTQ Center, Program in Linguistics, and Southeast Asian Studies Initiative for LingTalk: Dis(course) Corrections featuring Dr. Vincent Pak, a visiting scholar who earned his PhD in English Language and Linguistics from the National University of Singapore and King’s College London. Dr. Pak will be discussing his research exploring the relationship between language and non-normative sexualities in Singapore on Wednesday, November 13th, from 1:00 - 1:50pm at Friedman Hall 208. 

    Contemporary iterations of queer animus have evolved beyond its past recognizable configurations. They recently arrived, in the case of Singapore, as religion-based discourses that carry logics of change and transformation, now observable as neo-homophobia. These discourses coax change through the Christian idea of metanoia – spiritual transformation – that encourages a change of mind through a variety of technologies, including penitence and repentance. This talk considers how language, specifically discourse, can be deployed as a corrective for non-normative sexualities. Discourses in three forms – multimodal, narrative, and metapragmatic – are analyzed to demonstrate how correction can be achieved without relying on traditional modes of animus. Stories of ex-gay Christians, circulated by a young, non-denominational organization in Singapore, are examined for their audiovisual and narrative qualities, and ethnographic interviews conducted with religious queer individuals in Singapore evince language as a powerful technology for correction. Non-normative sexualities can therefore be spatialized as courses to be corrected through language.

    You can also join us for an Out for Lunch with Dr. Vincent Pak on November 14th, from 12:00 - 1:30pm at Stonewall House!

  •  Location: Rhode Island HallRoom: 108

    In “Sinews of Empire: Rome, Rope, and the Navalia,” Rabun Taylor explores a resource that has dwelt in the shadows of Roman studies: rope. Naturally associated with ports and naval arsenals, ropemaking in the preindustrial world required a distinctive architecture—narrow and spectacularly long—to house the production of the premium ropes needed for rigging ships, hauling barges, and operating theater canopies and large machines. It is argued here that the Navalia in Rome’s Emporium (traditionally called the Porticus Aemilia), perhaps the longest covered, open-planned structure in Roman antiquity, initially served a dual purpose—not just to house the galleys of the city’s naval detachments, but to accommodate ropeworks along its immense breadth.

    Rabun Taylor is the Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in Roman archaeology, architecture, and urbanism, with particular research interests in ancient builders and construction processes, aqueducts and other instances of hydraulic engineering and water distribution, and the cultural and social history of architecture.

    Taylor received his B.A. in English from Haverford College in 1982 and his Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Minnesota in 1997. Before joining the Department of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin, Taylor taught for nine years as an assistant and associate professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

    Taylor’s work on Roman architecture and urbanism includes books such as Roman Builders: A Study in Architectural Process (2003), Rome: An Urban History (2016), and Ancient Naples: A Documentary History. Origins to c. 350 CE (2021), as well as many further articles, chapters, and presentations. He is currently co-editor of A Cultural History of Technology in Antiquity (forthcoming from Bloomsbury).

  •  Location: 164 Angell StreetRoom: 302

    Data & Donuts

    Join the DSI at 3:00 pm on Friday, November 8 for Data & Donuts!

    Jordi A Rivera Prince

    Jordi A Rivera Prince is a bioarchaeologist and mortuary archaeologist, with particular focus in coastal communities in the Andes pre-colonization. Currently, she is a Brown University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, faculty affiliate of the Brown Institute for Environment and Society, and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Andean Past. 

    Her work is founded on two interrelated objectives: 1) to better address inequality in the present, we need to understand its manifestations in the past, and 2) we cannot study the past (especially histories of inequality), in an effective manner unless we address inequities in current archaeological practice.

    Join the Data Science DUG for an hour with Jordi A Rivera Prince to learn about her work and path in data science.

    These talks are open to students, faculty, and staff of all levels with an interest in data science and are set up as a community roundtable to engage everyone.

    Donuts will be served!

  •  Location: Manning HallRoom: Gallery

    Join the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology as we welcome Deanna Byrd (Mississippi Choctaw), NAGPRA Associate Director at the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology as she discusses her career and work as an Indigenous professional engaged in repatriation work. Her presentation will cover a broad comprehensive approach with consultation considerations from a unique NAGPRA practitioner perspective.

    Deanna Byrd is Mississippi Choctaw, and an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Deanna worked for her Tribe as the NAGPRA coordinator for nearly a decade and remains on contract for NAGPRA training and other special projects. Deanna started in her new role as the Associate NAGPRA Director at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in February this year. Since starting, Deanna has overhauled the entire NAGPRA process at PMAE, encompassing all programs on campus and fostering interdepartmental collaboration. Deanna enjoys spending time with her family and various traditional creative pursuits including weaving and beading.

    This program is part of the Haffenreffer Museums 2024-2025 Programming Initiative to highlight Indigenous professionals working in the fields of tribal historic preservation and repatriation work, to discuss the intersection and overlap of these professions and how museums such as the HMA can best work to support them.

    6:00pm | Reception

    6:15pm | Lecture begins

    Supported by generous donors to Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum.

  •  Location: 128 Hope StreetRoom: 202

    Prepare for pre-registration by exploring Department of Anthropology course offerings for spring 2025. At this event you can expect to:

    • Hear from professors about what they’ll teach
    • Ask all your questions about course content
    • Discuss requirements and prerequisites

    Lunch will be provided and all are welcome!

  •  Location: 5 Branch Avenue, Providence, RI

    It’s time once again for the celebration of the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This is a time of love, honor and memory. It is not the Mexican Halloween! In the spirit of this popular Mexican holiday, everybody is invited to partake in this joyful celebration of the family and friends who passed away. Learn about the rich traditions and customs surrounding the Día de los Muertos and similar practices in other cultures.

    Community altar | processional | family activities

    Free. Families and children welcome.

    SHUTTLE SERVICE: Free shuttle service will be available. Shuttle will pick up on Waterman St. near the Campus Center (or Brown St. near Paige-Robinson). Bus will leave campus at: 2:45pm, 3:45pm, 4:45pm and 5:45pm. Loop service, return as needed. Last bus leaves North Burial Ground at 7:15pm.

    PARKING & DIRECTIONS: No cars will be allowed inside the cemetery gates during the program. Parking is available on North Main Street and space is reserved for elders in the cemetery circle near the main gates. Pedestrians should enter North Burial Ground at the pedestrian gates on North Main Street near the Greenhouse.

    This program is a partnership between North Burial Ground, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, and the Department of Anthropology at Brown University.

  •  Location: 128 Hope Street (Giddings House)Room: 103

    This event is part of Anthropology’s Fall 2024 Colloquia Series

    Speaker: María Elena Garcia, Professor in the Comparative History of Ideas at the University of Washington in Seattle.

    This presentation offers a preliminary discussion of the afterlives of war in Peru, with a focus on Quechua narratives that foreground violence against more-than-human kin. Garcia engages critically with the archived testimonies of Quechua survivors, testimonies collected as part of the work of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She also begins to think about the possibilities opened up through the various counter-archives produced by Quechua artists, scholars, activists, and others. Quechua survivors insist that the lives of their non-human kin matter, even as processes of justice-seeking and reparations in Peru promote a humanrights framework that at best sidelines those concerns. How can Indigenous testimonies and counter-archives open up alternative forms of justice? How do they unsettle existing frameworks that continue to perpetuate colonial hierarchies? Through an analysis of Quechua narratives, Garcia explores what the contours and limitations of the archive suggest for decolonial and multispecies forms of justice in Peru.

  •  Location: 67 George StreetRoom: 104

    This student-centric workshop is an opportunity for students to hear tribal leaders from various sectors share stories of leadership, career and life paths, and experiences. We hope the ensuing conversations will inspire and encourage students to understand their own leadership styles, to learn new ways to lead, and consider the value of occasional detours on courses already charted. Our guests include elected tribal First Councilman Cassius Spears, Jr. (Narragansett), Dr. Bryan Brayboy (Lumbee), higher education thought leader and dean of Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy, and Dr. Cedric Woods (Lumbee), director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies at UMass Boston.

    Dinner from Kabob and Curry will be provided!

    This event is limited to Brown students. 

  •  Location: Rhode Island Hall

    Join the Anthropology and Archaeology DUGs to celebrate spooky season!

    There will be:

    • Apple cider
    • Candy
    • Tote bag painting
    • Stratigraphic mud cups

    All are welcome and costumes are encouraged!

  • The Brown Journal of History is looking for associate editors for the Spring and Fall 2023. The BJH is a double-blind, peer-reviewed journal edited by Brown undergraduates and published annually in the spring. It features a collection of outstanding history essays written by Brown students.

    Interested candidates should submit their application by Sunday, 10/27 at 11:59pm via this google form.

    Click here to apply
  •  Location: Rhode Island Hall

    Join the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the AIA Narragansett Society for an archaeology-themed open house on Brown University’s Main Green. See ancient coins from Greece and Rome up close! Touch animal bones! Examine and draw Persian and Roman ceramics, prehistoric tools, precious metals, and other artifacts from thousands of years ago – coached by experts! And talk with Brown’s archaeologists about their fieldwork all over the world!

    Free and open to the public! All ages welcome!

  •  Location: List Art Building

    Come be part of an active archaeological excavation! Students will be digging on the grounds outside the List Art Building. Stop by (with your family or on your own) any time between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm to see what our students are uncovering or even try your hand at digging.

  •  Location: Manning HallRoom: Gallery

    Meet HMA student staff who work behind the scenes, engage with archaeological objects from around the world in our CultureLab, learn about our programs and events, and enjoy light refreshments. View our current exhibit “A Verry Drunk Hunters Dream: Modernist Expressionism in Africa”

    Admission is Free.

    Please note: the date has changed for this event. HMA’s Archaeology Day Open House will be held on October 26th. 

  •  Location: Watson Institute for International and Public AffairsRoom: Kim Koo Library (328)

    Claudia Brittenham, Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, will speak on, “In Nepapan Tlacah: Reimagining Ancient Mesoamerican Identities.” This will be followed by a reception beginning at 5:30 p.m.

    About the Talk
    Ancient Mesoamerican identity was complex and multifaceted. Fiercely local, identity was tied to community, lineage, place, and history. The ways that ancient Mesoamerican people understood difference do not correspond entirely to modern conceptions of race or ethnicity, which were beginning to take shape precisely at the time of the Spanish invasion of the Americas. Using colonial textual and pictorial sources as well as pre-invasion works of art and material culture, this talk explores how Mesoamerican history might look different if it departed from emic categories of identity rather than the colonial frameworks that we have inherited—and how this might help re-integrate Mesoamerican history with the rest of Native North America.

    About the Speaker
    Claudia Brittenham is Professor in the Department of Art History and the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. She is also Director of the Center for Latin American Studies. Her research focuses on the art of Mesoamerica, with interests in the materiality of art and the politics of style. She is the author of Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, as well as The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico; The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak (with Mary Miller); and Veiled Brightness: A History of Ancient Maya Color (with Stephen Houston and colleagues). Her next book focuses on the interconnectedness of the ancient Mesoamerican world.

  •  Location: Zoom

    Event Update: This event will now be held via Zoom to accommodate students unable to join on campus. Register by emailing mmuf@brown.edu to receive Zoom login details.

    Are you interested in funding your self-designed research project? Interested in graduate school? Committed to diversity and equity issues?

    We invite you to register for this Application Writing Workshop on October 24th 4:00-5:00pm for guidance on the application process, required materials and to provide clarification on questions related to organizing your application.

    Register by emailing mmuf@brown.edu.

    Eligibile candidates are:

    • Second semester sophomore concentrators in the humanities or social sciences who are committed to eradicating racial disparities in higher education and pursuing research careers
    • In good academic standing having a minimum equivalent of 3.0 grade point average in eligible field of study
    • Are intending on pursuing independent research during their junior and senior years within their concentration.
    • Applications are particularly encouraged from students who are African Americans/of African heritage, LatinX, Native Americans, as well as those from marginalized backgrounds (first generation college student, low-income, etc.).

    MMUF staff is eager to help you with every stage of the process. Interested students are strongly encouraged to attend one of our information sessions, review the Brown MMUF application portal and to reach out for an advising appointment as soon as they begin thinking they might apply.

    The Mellon Mays Mission:

    The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) is committed to supporting a diverse professoriate and to promoting the value of multivocality in the humanities and related disciplines, elevating accounts, interpretations, and narratives that expand present understandings.

    Mellon Mays Fellows benefit from undergraduate research, cohort community engagement, faculty and staff mentoring and financial support, including stipends and loan repayment, throughout their fellowship.

    The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship application opens in UFunds on Friday, December 6th.

    Learn more about eligibility and how to apply
  •  Location: Rhode Island HallRoom: 008
    PEC welcomes Graduate Students interested in Early Cultures to join us for our next Grad Forum: “If I knew then what I know now…”.
    Graduate Students Max Peers (JIAAW), Tali Hershovitz (Religious Studies) and Morgan Clark (Anthropology) will share their thoughts, experiences, and answer questions about getting the most out of graduate school.
    Please RSVP by end of day, October 17th to book your free lunch.
    RSVP
  •  Location: Manning HallRoom: Gallery

    Join the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology as we welcome Christopher Sockalexis (Penobscot), Penobscot Nation Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, he discusses where his work intersects as a tribal official, cultural tourism guide, artist and archaeologist.

    In addition to his work as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Penobscot Nation, Chris is currently conducting research for his Masters of Science degree at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute, with his thesis work focusing on Cultural Identity and Maritime Adaptation in Frenchman Bay, Maine. Chris is also artist, and cultural tourism guide, and is one of the lead singers of the RezDogs, an intertribal powwow drum group based out of Indian Island, Maine. He serves on the Abbe Museum Board of Trustees and is also an avid canoe and kayak paddler who loves being out in the Maine woods and on the waterways that his ancestors have traveled for thousands of years.

    This program is part of the Haffenreffer Museums 2024-2025 Programming Initiative to highlight Indigenous professionals working in the fields of tribal historic preservation and repatriation work, to discuss the intersection and overlap of these professions and how museums such as the HMA can best work to support them.

    6:00 pm | Reception

    6:15 pm | Lecture begins

    Supported by generous donors to Shepard Krech III Lecture Fund.

  •  Location: 128 Hope Street (Giddings House)Room: 103

    This event is part of Anthropology’s Fall 2024 Colloquia Series

    *Please note that this is the only event in our Fall Colloquia Series held on a Wednesday. All other talks will take place on Tuesdays at noon. 

    Speaker: Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist and Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. 

    Long Covid is an old story linked to a new virus. ChronicLyme. ChronicFatigue Syndrome. ChronicPain. These contested conditions are interpreted with trepidation—in many cases throughout history they have been considered unreal or imagined among medical professional: a cry for help from a hysterical woman. Though, their prominence is patterned throughout history and takes center stage in famous literature, social science, and medical humanities. Because women are centered as those most afflicted by these conditions, they have become largely feminized and dismissed, regardless of who they are. Yet, the long history of symptoms that are defined as “unexplained” or “complex” or “contested” tell us more about medicine than they do about people. These symptoms may be physical—such as pain in the back, extremities, or the base of the neck. They may be psychological—such as dissociation, brain fog, or lack of focus. They may be emotional—such as deep sadness or anxiety. It is important to listen to these complex bundles of symptoms and try to decipher them: not only through the arc of someone’s life but also a cultural history through which they have emerged, shifted, and transformed. In this talk, Mendenhall tracks this history, beginning with hysteria, and leading us to the present-day.