News

Sarah is mentored by Dr. Aaron Blackwell, with whom she will be doing her senior thesis research with next year.

This year's Anthropology Graduate Student Symposium will be held this Friday, May 20th, and you are all cordially invited. Please join us for podium presentations and flash talks throughout the day from Anthropology graduate students across cohorts and subfields.

 

The symposium will kick off with a midday session (11-12:30 in HSSB 2001A) and then follow with an afternoon session (3-6 in the Graduate Student Association Lounge). This year's program is bifurcated to make the symposium available to those with only morning or afternoon availability. Refreshments and snacks will be served throughout the program.

This year's Anthropology Graduate Student Symposium will be held this Friday, May 20th, and you are all cordially invited. Please join us for podium presentations and flash talks throughout the day from Anthropology graduate students across cohorts and subfields.

 

The symposium will kick off with a midday session (11-12:30 in HSSB 2001A) and then follow with an afternoon session (3-6 in the Graduate Student Association Lounge). This year's program is bifurcated to make the symposium available to those with only morning or afternoon availability. Refreshments and snacks will be served throughout the program.

Spring 2016 Graduate Colloquium

 

Practically all researchers use photography as part of their standard documentation during fieldwork. However, rather than its use as a mere scientific implement, photography has the power to bring voice and narrative to a project. While stratigraphic profiles and scaled artifact shots are important in the methods of archaeology, photography can also be a powerful tool to impart a level of humanity and an emotional connect to material culture. For cultural anthropology, there are techniques that allow researchers to capture the essence of their subject instead of more banal pictures that often only have meaning for the person behind the lens. Highly thought out and well composed photographs help to “sell” a project, as they draw both overt and subconscious interest. This presentation will have two main components. First, it will address the mental game of photography and the important steps to consider before ever taking a shot. Second, while not necessarily a technical seminar on camera function and jargon, this discussion will present a foundation for understanding the dynamics of composition, angle, lighting, and editing. While the goal of the talk is aimed at photography in the field, it will also be useful for those who just want to learn how to take better shots.

 

Brent Leftwich, Principal Investigator and Owner, Leftwich Archaeology

 

Chimpanzees are humankind’s closest living relatives, and like us, they display considerable behavioral diversity.  While genetic, ecological, and cultural factors are traditionally invoked to explain behavioral variation in chimpanzees, the demographic context is often overlooked as a contributing factor.  For the past 21 years, I have conducted a long-term field study of an extremely large community of chimpanzees at Ngogo in the Kibale National Park, Uganda.  With over 200 individuals, the Ngogo chimpanzee community is significantly larger than other chimpanzee groups that have been studied in the wild.  My observations provide new insights into the hunting and territorial behavior of chimpanzees.  In this talk, I review some of my findings in this regard.  I include a discussion of some recently completed demographic analyses that reveal one reason why the Ngogo chimpanzee community is so large.

 

John Mitani is primate behavioral ecologist.  During the past 38 years, he has conducted field research investigating the behavior of our closest living relatives, the apes.  His current research involves a long-term study of an unusually large community of chimpanzees at Ngogo in the Kibale National Park, Uganda.

This presentation explores the intersections of photographic images, family history, tourism, and Ho-Chunk survivance through an examination of two photographic collections housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society: the Charles Van Schaick Collection and the H.H. Bennett Collection. The Van Schaick collection includes nearly taken between 1879-1936, and the H.H. Bennett Collection is comprised of hundreds of images of tribal members taken from 1865-1960. Also contained within the Bennett Collection are film reels of the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial, a major tourist attraction that employed tribal members in Wisconsin Dells, WI from the 1920s through the 1960s. The stories that these images convey of the importance of kinship, place, modern labor, cultural performance, settler colonialism, and survivance are the central themes of the Ho-Chunk experience in the 20th century, and my presentation will address these intersecting themes and the ongoing meanings that these images have for contemporary tribal citizens.

 

Sponsored by the UCSB Public History Program, the Department of Anthropology, and the Department of History.

 

Amy Lonetree, a member of The Public Historian editorial board, is author of Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), and co-editor with Amanda Cobb of The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations. (University of Nebraska Press, 2008).