Grad Student Matt LeDuc Receives Fulbright Award to Work in India

Matt LeDuc (MA 2010) was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research in India. He will explore the politics of cultural heritage and the effects of tourism in the town of Hampi, India. Once the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hampi provides an important case study of the overlapping and sometimes competing interests of cultural heritage preservation, economic development, and “archaeological tourism.”

Matt, an International Development concentrator and teaching assistant, got his B.A. degree in Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Heather Dingwall Wins Gamow Fellowship to Research Evolution of Human Gait

Heather Dingwall, a double major in Biological Anthropology and Archaeology, has received a George Gamow Fellowship to study what ancient footprints tell about the origins of human gait. Prof. Brian Richmond is her advisor. Heather is looking forward to going to Kenya, where a team that included Dr. Richmond discovered 1.5-million-year-old hominin footprints at Ileret.

More on Gamow Fellowships: http://www.gwu.edu/~fellcent/gamow.htm

More on Ileret footprints: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;323/5918/1197

Warren Awards Announced; Eight Students Funded for Summer 2010

The Departments of Anthropology and of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations are pleased to announce the 2010 winners of fellowships for archaeological research. This year, all the students will be working in Israel or Jordan. The winners are:

Joseph DiVirgilio (B.A. candidate, undeclared): Megiddo, Israel

Amanda Kemble (B.A. candidate, Anthropology): Megiddo

Samantha Malone (B.A. candidate, undeclared): Megiddo

Joseph Mazzariello (B.A. candidate, Archaeology): Megiddo

Clara Merchant (B.A. candidate, Anthropology): Megiddo

Katie Paul (M.A. candidate, Anthropology): Megiddo

Kyle Tomanio (B.A. candidate, Anthropology): Megiddo

Jonathan Warner (B.A., undeclared): Bir Madhkur, Jordan

This is the third year Warren awards have been made. The endowment was created by a generous gift from William Warren, a retired Foreign Service Officer, who received a B.A. in 1967 from what is now the Elliott School of International Affairs. He was American Consul in Adana, Turkey, served as Charge d'Affaires of the American Embassy in the Solomon Islands and in Samoa, and held other overseas posts. Warren established two awards, the Thomas and Ola Herbert Reidling Undergraduate Award for B.A. or B.S. candidates and the Zelma Reidling Warren Bannister and William Warren Graduate Fellowship Award for M.A. and Ph.D. candidates.

For more information, visit the Warren Fellowship page of the Anthropology Department website: http://www.gwu.edu/~anth/atgw/warren.cfm

Profs. Grinker, Lubkemann are co-editors of new book on Africa

The second edition of Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation has just been published by Wiley-Blackwell. Editors are R. Richard Grinker, Stephen C. Lubkemann, and Christopher B. Steiner. It contains 46 articles illustrating the way scholars have described and understood African history and culture over the past several decades.

Details: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444335227,descCd-tableOfContents.html

New M.A. concentration in Medical Anthropology approved

The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce that Columbian College has approved a new concentration in Medical Anthropology for our M.A. Program, joining our successful concentrations in Museum Training and International Development. To support this program, we have also created a new graduate course, Anth 255: Topics in Medical Anthropology, to complement the existing medical anthropology seminar (Anth 254). Several courses in Public Health are options within the concentration.

Medical Anthropology will be a 15-credit hour concentration within the 36-hour MA in Anthropology. It will be a very distinct entity within the world of anthropology graduate study, since very few schools have medical anthropology programs and those few seldom offer an M.A. degree. The program is expected to appeal to people who have earned or are working toward graduate degrees in complementary fields, such as Public Health, Public Administration, or Medicine, and who seek to add training in medical anthropology.

The concentration officially becomes available in fall 2011. Interested students should contact Prof. Barbara Miller, barbar@gwu.edu.

Derek Wildman of Wayne States speaks March 31 on evolutionary genomic perspectives on human evolution

Derek E. Wildman of the Wayne State University School of Medicine speaks on "Evolutionary Genomic Perspectives on Human Evolution" in an event sponsored by the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology and the GW Anthropology Society. Dr. Wildman's laboratory has two main areas of research focus: the evolutionary history of birth and labor and the evolution of primates in general. Regarding humans, it investigates "the evolution of phenotypic features such as the emergence of the greatly expanded anthropoid primate neocortex, the evolution of labor and birth, and the evolution of aerobic energy metabolism."

Dr. Wildman has appointments in the Wayne State Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. For more on him and his research, click here.

Talk, March 24: Why there is no 'European Islam'

Prof. John R. Bowen speaks on "Why there is no 'European Islam': Contrasting contours of Islam in England and France." Bowen, who is the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses contrasting histories of migration, church-state relations, and political philosophy to account for the sharp divergences in Muslim experiences in England and France (with a passing nod to the United States). A focus of the talk will be the possibilities afforded in England for Muslims to construct 'shari'a councils, paralegal mediation or arbitration bodies dealing with family law and commercial disputes.

Location: 1957 E St., room 214
3 p.m.

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Middle East Studies.