Student News Archive

For a look at new and archived publications by Archaeology students and faculty – including material submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals, book chapters, monographs, excavation reports, laboratory reports, magazine articles, and more, please see the NABO webpage.

Archaeology students Frank Feeley and Megan Hicks have been awarded NSF Dissertation Improvement Grants for their research in Iceland at Gufuskalar and Myvatn respectively. In a different NSF grant, Ramona Harrison received post-doctoral support for three years. (posted 6/12)

Cultural Anthropology student Jonathan Stillo’s dissertation research is profiled on the Department of State Romanian Embassy website. (posted 9/11)

Andrew Newman, who recently received his Ph.D. and has accepted a job as assistant professor at Wayne State University beginning this fall, has been chosen by the Office of Student Affairs at the Graduate Center to deliver the remarks on behalf of all graduating students at this year’s commencement. The event will take place on May 27, 11 a.m., at Avery Fisher Hall. (posted 5/11)

Physical students Caley Johnson and Brian Shearer have received NSF Graduate Fellowships in the recent competition providing 3 years of student support over the next five years. There were only about 15 such awards in physical anthropology this year, so getting two of them in one program is quite a coup! (posted 4/11)

The title for our book art installation was chosen by student survey from among suggestions provided by students. The winning title, “Technologies of the Shelf,” was contributed by Shana Lessing. The runner-up was “Triste Chromatiques,” provided byJustin Bracken; and the third place title was “The Prism Notebooks” by anonymous. (posted 1/11)

Maggie Dickenson, Harmony GoldbergMichael Polson and Maryia Radeva have won Wenner-Gren Fellowships for their dissertation research in the most recent competition. (posted 11/10)

Andrea MorrellStephanie Campos and Karen Williams have won the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology (SUNTA) 2010 Annual Award for the Best Student Panel submitted and accepted by SUNTA for the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans for their panel “The Anthropology of Mass Incarceration: Global Ethnographic Perspectives on Prisons and Policing”. (posted 11/10)

Michael Polson recently wrote the cover story for In These Times magazine on the political economy of the drug war and marijuana in California, titled Tending ‘the Grow’: Marijuana at a crossroads. (posted 02/10)

Christine Folch published an article entitled “Stimulating Consumption: Yerba Mate Myths, Markets, and Meanings from Conquest to Present” in Comparative Studies in Society and History (January, 2010). Previously, her research report “Fine Dining: Race in Prerevolution Cuban Cookbooks” was published in Latin American Research Review 34(2): 205-224. (posted 1/10)

Five anthropology students received Wenner-Gren grants in the recently completed cycle: Daisy DeomampoKareem RabieSophie StatzelKaja Tretjak, and Analia Villagra. (posted 10/09)

A collective of eight anthropology students, Akissi BrittonRisa CromerChris GroveCarwil JamesMartha LincolnMichael PolsonSophie Statzel, and John Warner edit a regular column for Anthropology Now. Their column, Findings, offers reviews and other pieces that highlight emerging anthropological research that has the potential to reshape contemporary social and political debates. Follow their work at Findings.(posted 10/09)

Michael Boyle has won a 2008-2009 Wenner-Gren Foundation fellowship in the amount of $17,869. This fellowship will assist his dissertation research on “Declining City, Born-Again Citadel: The Evangelical Reconstitution of Urban Life in Postindustrial America.” His project examines the ways in which evangelical social service ministries are meeting needs and reconstituting community relations in postindustrial Canton, Ohio, a city recently designated by Forbes magazine as one of the “fastest dying” in America. In July 2009, Michael was named as a recipient of a Horowitz Foundation Award. (posted 08/09)

Saygun Gokariksel is a recipient of a 2008-2009 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Pre-Dissertation Award from the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. The award in the amount of $4,000 will aid in research on accusatory practices and the lustration law in post-socialist Poland. In addition, Saygun won a 2009 Dissertation Fieldwork grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. (posted 5/09)

Carwil James won a FLAS grant for language study during the summer. (posted 5/09)

Martha Lincoln has won an IIE Fulbright to support her dissertation research on climate change and public health in Vietnam. (posted 05/09)

Nada Moumtaz won a 2009 National Science Foundation grant for dissertation research in Beirut, Lebanon. (posted 5/09)

Laura Kym Neck won a 2009 National Science Foundation grant for dissertation research on the Texas-Mexican border. (posted 5/09)

Ceren Ozgul is a recipient of a 2008-2009 Society for the Anthropology of Europe (SAE) Pre-Dissertation Award in Anthropology from the Fellowship Committee of the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. The award in the amount of $4,000 will aid in research on religious conversion to a minority religion in secular democracies as part of her dissertation fieldwork entitled “From Muslim Citizen to Christian Minority: Legal Implications of ‘Double-Conversion’ in Turkey.” Ceren also received a 2009-2010 Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation in the amount of $15,000 to support her dissertation research entitled “From Citizen to Minority: Legal Reform and ’Double-Conversion’ in Turkey.” It is jointly funded by the Cultural Anthropology and Law and Social Sciences divisions. In addition, Ceren won a 2009 National Science Foundation grant for dissertation research in Turkey. (posted 5/09)

Kareem Rabie won a 2009 National Science Foundation grant for dissertation fieldwork research on Israel/Palestine. (posted 5/09)

Mariya Radeva won a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council Award for 2009. (posted 5/09)

Analia Villagra has won an IIE Fulbright for fieldwork in Brazil. (posted 05/09)

Sarah Freidline won a 2008–09 Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research to support work on her dissertation and a two-year fellowship from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology to work in Leipzig with Katerina Harvati and her colleagues. She also won a National Science Foundation grant and a LSB Leaky Foundation grant for 2009. (posted 4/09)

Second year Anthropology student Amiel Melnick has won a lucrative four year National Science Foundation grant to support her doctoral studies. (posted 4/09)

Jonathan Stillo has received grants from the IIE Fulbright, National Science Foundation, and Social Science Research Council for his dissertation research on tuberculosis in Romania. (posted 4/09)

Nomi Stone was interviewed on National Public Radio about her first book of poetry,Stranger’s Notebook, which was inspired by her time living in one of the last cohesive Jewish communities in North Africa. Listen to the interview, “Jewish/Muslim Life on the Tunisian Island of Djerba.” (posted 3/09)

First year student Michael Partis won the 2008 Pickren Award for outstanding historical/qualitative research at the 20th Greater New York Conference on Behavioral Research on November 14, 2008. (Posted 12/08)

Slobodan Mitrovic‘s article “Fresh Scars on the Body of Archaeology” is being published in Boric, D. & J. Robb (eds.) Past Bodies: Body-Centered Research in Archaeology, Oxbow books. Click here for a feature on Slobodan’s article! (posted 12/08)

Five anthropology students hold lucrative two-year Writing Across the Curriculum Fellowships. The students are Andrew NewmanSiobhan CookeAndrea Morrell,Claudine Pied, and Janette Yarwood. Two anthropology students, Chris Caruso andLynn Horridge, hold Instructional Technology Fellowships. (posted 10/08)

Raja Abillama won a 2008-2009 Mellon Dissertation Fellowship/The Center for the Humanities ($18,000 + in-state tuition) to pursue work on Secular Sensibilities: Articulations of Family Laws, Religion and Morality in Lebanon. (posted 10/08)

Alessandro Angelini won a 2008-2009 International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in the amount of $25,000 (funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) as well as a Wenner-Gren fellowship in the amount of $21,000. These fellowships will assist him in his dissertation research on favelas (squatter settlements) and the production of urban knowledge in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Jessica Brinkworth won a 2008-2009 NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in the amount of $15,000 and a 2008-2009 Wenner-Gren fellowship in the amount of $22,959 to support her research on The Evolution of the Human Immune System: Landscape Specific Pathogen Exposure and Human AIDS. (posted 10/08)

Christine Folch won a 2008-2009 IIE Fulbright to support one year of research as well as a grant of $24,450 from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. These awards will support her dissertation research on Paraguay’s political culture, state formation, national identity, and geographic imaginary at the Triple Frontera, the border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. (posted 10/08)

Harmony Goldberg, previously a Chancellor’s Fellow for two years, was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The award covers three years of tuition and a living stipend, and allows her to concentrate on her pre-dissertation studies and explore possibilities for future research. (posted 10/08)

Christina Honjo Harris received a B. Altman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship ($18,000) for the academic year 2008-2009 and has also received a Dissertation Fellowship from the Center for Humanities, Great Issues Forum.  Tina is also a Helen Wallis Fellow at the British Library and was a member of the 2008 doctoral student jury awarding the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Horizons Prize. (posted 10/08)

Nathan Jones has won several awards to support his dissertation research during 2008–09: an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (average grant amount is $20,000) and an IIE Fulbright. Previously he held an International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) IARO fellowship in Russia. He is using these grants to study how ethnic understanding and identity are produced and lived among people of German descent in Russia and Kazakhstan. (posted 10/08)

Baris Mehmet Kuymulu received a fellowship from the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics for 2008-2009. (posted 10/08)

Congratulations to Ryan Mann-Hamilton, who has won a very competitive multiple-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his doctoral studies for the years 2008-2011. (posted 10/08)

Shea McManus received a 2008-2009 Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support dissertation research entitled “Ethics and Practical Justice: Muslim Responses to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.” It is jointly funded by the Cultural Anthropology and Law and Social Sciences divisions.  She has also received a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace to support Arabic study at Middlebury College during the summer of 2008. It covers tuition and living expenses and carries an additional stipend and travel allowance. (posted 10/08)

Andrew Newman is co-recipient of a grant from the Bourse de Recherche of the city of Paris.  This grant will fund part of Andrew’s dissertation fieldwork, a six-month case study of a neighborhood movement centered around a public garden in northern Paris.  Andrew writes “It is also part of an effort to put together kind of ‘social atlas’ of Paris’s changing public spaces with a comparative eye on New York.”   He has also received a 2008-2009 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant to support this work. (posted 10/08)

For field research in Summer 2008, Ted Powers won a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship.  He is working in affiliation with the Africa Center on a dissertation entitled “Producing Informality in a Post-Apartheid Township: An Investigation into the Relationship between HIV/AIDS and Informal Urban Settlements in South Africa.” Ted has also received a fellowship from CUNY’s Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. (posted 10/08)

Jeremy Rayner, who currently holds a Wenner-Gren, has won a 2008-2009 NSF in the amount of $1,640 to support his dissertation research on “The ICE is Not for Sale: Property, Value, and Telecommunications Privatization in Costa Rica.” (posted 10/08)

Jill Schennum has won a 2008-2009 NSF grant of $14,000 to support her dissertation on the topic of “Bethlehem Steelworkers: Working Class Families in a Post-Fordist City.” (posted 10/08)

Victoria M. Stone won a 2008-2009 MAGNET Dissertation Fellowships ($20,000 + in-state tuition) to support her dissertation research: Social Impact of Transnational Migration and Remittances in Cañar, Ecuador. (posted 10/08)

Steven Wang, won a 2008–09 Graduate Center sponsored dissertation Writing Fellowship fellowship in 2008-2009.  Previously he won a 2007–08 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant ($11,690) and a Wenner-Gren Foundation dissertation grant ($15,705) to support research on Testing the continuity of Middle and Late Pleistocene hominins in Asia. (posted 10/08)

Nathan Woods has won two grants for the 2008–09 academic year: $4,000 from the American Philosophical Society, and $15,000 from the National Science Foundation. They will support his research on “Integrating Innovation: Academic Innovation, Professional Networks and Scientific Regionalism in the Environmental Sciences.” (posted 10/08)

Janette Yarwood has been named the 2008-2009 Northeast Consortium for Faculty Diversity Visiting Dissertation Scholar at Monmouth University ($32,000). This In-Residence fellowship also provides computer and library privileges, office space, health insurance, and a cordial faculty liaison. There are no work or teaching requirements, and she will have the opportunity to network with fellows and faculty from other network schools (Northeastern, Colgate, Allegheny, Middlebury, University of Vermont, University of Rochester, and others). (posted 10/08)

Igor Argelino Rodriguez Calderon was recently the recipient of a Smithsonian Latino Center Fellowship in Museum Studies, entailing a series of seminars and a practicum with the Smithsonian Center in Summer of 2008. (posted 10/08)

In Summer 2008, Archaeology graduate students Frank Feeley, Aaron Kendall, and Konrad Smiarowski participated in a special arctic survival and wilderness medicine course run by Polar Services Inc. for NSF in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Subsequently, all three survived a six-week season in Greenland working with Danish and Greenlandic colleagues on Konrad’s doctoral project on Norse Greenland. (posted 10/08)

Martha Lincoln received a 2008 Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (SSRC DPDF) and an Anthropology Program Summer Travel Grant for field research in Vietnam.  She was also a member of the 2008 doctoral student jury awarding the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Horizons Prize. (posted 10/08)

Analia Villagra has won an Social Science Research Council (SSRC) pre-dissertation summer research grant in the amount of $5,000 to support her research on human-animal interactions and the way conceptions of nature affect conservation practice. (posted 10/08)

Many other students received funding from a range of sources, including various grants by the National Science Foundation, NSG-AGEP, the Social Science Research Council, the Doctoral Student Research Grant, the PhD Program in Anthropology travel fellowship, and others.  Students carrying out summer research included Elan Abrell (South Africa),Alessandro Angelini (Venezuela), Scott Blumenthal (Kenya) Sam Byrd (American South/Southeast), Risa Cromer (US-California), Daisy Deomampo (India), Carwil James (Bolivia/Ecuador), Esteban Kelly (Brazil), Baris Kuymulu (Jamaica), Janny Llanos (Dominican Republic), Ryan Mann-Hamilton (Dominican Republic), Michael Polson (California),  Kaja Tretjak (South Africa), Preeti Sampat (India), Sophie Statzel (US-Colorado), Yunus Telliel (Syria), and Ana Vinea (Egypt). Katrina Scottcarried out dissertation research in New Orleans. Physical anthropologists Siobhan Cooke and Steve Wang were in the field for dissertation research. (posted 10/08)

Ramona Harrison got an NSF Office of Polar Programs Arctic Social Sciences program dissertation improvement grant ($30,000 for 2007-2008) for her collaborative project in Eyjafjord in northern Iceland, and had a very successful season of excavation and survey. She will be working closely with her long- term Icelandic and UK collaborators and taking other CUNY students into the field. (posted 10/08)

In summer 2007, anthropology students Risa CromerDaisy Deomampo, and Kate Griffiths carried out fieldwork in South Africa on an NSF grant (Prof. Ida Susser, PI) on “South Africa’s Civil Society Organizations and AIDS Treatment Access.” (posted 10/08)

A group of CUNY archaeology students organized and carried off a special session at the 2008 Society for American Archaeology meetings in Vancouver, Canada, with papers bySeth Brewington, George HambrechtRamona Harrison, Aaron KendallAlbina Palsdottir, and Konrad Smiarowski. The session was packed and attracted a lot of favorable attention. George Hambrecht has organized a follow-on (expanded) publication project for the new online Journal of the North Atlantic (JONA) focusing on post-medieval archaeology and paleoecology in the North Atlantic. (posted 10/08)

Archaeology graduate students Seth Brewington, Ramona Harrison, Ruth Maher,and Konrad Smiarowski presented papers at the 2008 NABO meetings at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom in September 2008.  All were well received and Konrad’s poster won the award for “best data” in a very competitive field. (posted 10/08)

Stephanie Campos is currently in Peru conducting preliminary research for her dissertation on neoliberalism, gender and incarceration. (posted 10/08)

In Summer 2008, archaeology graduate students Frank Feeley, Aaron Kendall, and Konrad Smiarowski participated in a special arctic survival and wilderness medicine course run by Polar Services Inc. for NSF in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Subsequently, all three survived a six-week season in Greenland working with Danish and Greenlandic colleagues on Konrad’s doctoral project on Norse Greenland. (posted 10/08)

Martha Lincoln published an article entitled “Black Hole, Gulag, Country Club: A Map of Guantanamo Bay,” as well as a review of Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums in the journalSocialism & Democracy.  She has also reviewed Alexander Hinton’s “Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide,” in American Anthropologist, and Kaushik Sunder Rajan’s “Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life,” which is forthcoming inSocialism and Democracy.  Her article “Biopower, Bodies…The Exhibition, and the Spectacle of Public Health,” co-authored with Hsuan L. Hsu, is forthcoming in Discourse: A Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, Winter 2008. (posted 10/08)

Adrienne Lotson’s sermon “The Moment of Truth: Leaving the Garden” has been published in The African American Pulpit’s 10th anniversary special edition issue (Summer 2007) celebrating the best works published over the past ten years.  She shares this honor with, among others, Harvard theologian Peter J. Gomes and renowned sociologist Dr. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes. The African American Pulpit is a quarterly journal that serves as a repository for the very best of African American preaching. (posted 10/08)

In 2008, Gail Perry-Ryder attended the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on “African American Civil Rights Struggles in the 20th Century,” organized by the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.  (posted 10/08)

Jolie Preau has published an article entitled “Gentrification in Tourist Cities: Evidence from New Orleans Before and After Hurricane Katrina” in Housing Policy Debate 19:1. (posted 10/08)

Katrina Scott has been been in New Orleans since late summer 2008 conducting her dissertation research. Her research looks at the role and the impact of the local news media in the redevelopment of New Orleans post-Katrina. She was an organizer of the Black Feminisms conference, sponsored by the Africana Studies Group, at The Graduate Center on March 12, 2004. (posted 10/08)

Rob Siebert is the student representative to the New York Academy of Sciences’ Anthropology Section.

Amy Starecheski is the author of three review articles, respectively titled “In Our Own Words: Portraits of Vietnam Veterans, Brooklyn Historical Society,” forthcoming in theJournal of American History; “Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians: An Anthology of Oral History Education,” forthcoming in The Public Historian, and, with Vincent Russo, “Sin Patrón: Stories from Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories and Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina,” forthcoming in the Oral History Review. (posted 10/08)

Nomi Stone is publishing her first book.  Entitled Stranger’s Notebook, the volume of poetry is based on Nomi’s fieldwork in a Jewish community in North Africa.  It is forthcoming in November 2008 from TriQuarterly Books at Northwestern University Press. (posted 10/08)

Jose Vasquez is conducting dissertation research on the politics of veteran status in contemporary American society.  With Iraq Veterans Against the War, Jose has been active as an organizer of a campaign called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, collecting veteran and civilian testimony regarding wartime atrocities.  Additionally, Jose is the author of an article entitled “Seeing Green: Visual Technology, Virtual Reality and the Experience of War,” published in a special issue of Social Analysis.  Berghahn Books will publish this volume as a book called An Anthropology of War: Views from War Zones, forthcoming in November 2008.  Additionally, Jose headed up the verification team of the Winter Soldier organizing committee and represented Iraq Veterans Against the War in the editing process for a volume entitled Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, published by Haymarket Books and based on transcripts of the Winter Soldier event in March 2008. (posted 10/08)

Janette Yarwood presented a paper entitled Negotiating Coloured Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa at The Northeast Workshop on Southern Africa (NEWSA) in October 2008.  She has also recently published two articles, the first of which is entitled “Deterritorialized Blackness: (Re)making Coloured Identities Among Youth in Post-Apartheid South Africa” and appears in Transnational Blackness.  Janette’s second article is entitled “Deterritorialized Blackness: (Re)making Coloured Identities in South Africa,” and it appears in Postamble. (posted 10/08)

 

Students – we’d love to know your news! Please contact anthro.news@gmail.com with any updates regarding your latest activities.

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