Vanderbilt Anthropology Department

Mark your calendar for this upcoming presentation!

Check out this visiting lecture event today!

Don’t miss this guest lecture by forensic anthropologist Dr. Jesse Goliath!

Don’t miss this candid roundtable conversation!

In the upcoming roundtable faculty from different disciplines- ranging from anthropology, sociology, and communication studies, and gender and s*xuality studies -will demonstrate academic freedom and encourage critical thought on issues related to s*x, gender, and scientific authority. Ultimately, this event is to help make VU a place that makes space for different viewpoints and supports all people regardless of how they identify- this is an event about community. Please come, bring a friend, and join in on the dialogue.

Congrats to Dr. Young!

Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Calynn Dowler and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Michelle Young for receiving the Wenner-Gren Foundation Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship!

The fellowship is awarded to emerging scholars whose work has the potential to transform our understanding of what it means to be human. It provides resources to support nine months of full-time writing.

Dowler will use the fellowship for her manuscript, which examines how people experience, conceptualize, and respond to transformations in the ecologies of the Sundarbans, a low-lying archipelago of islands that spans the India-Bangladesh border. These ecologies encompass people, animals, plants, waters, sediments, and different forms of supernatural power, such as deities, ghosts, and spirits.

Young will use the fellowship for her manuscript, which analyzes the results of her excavations at Atalla, a Chavín megalithic site in the Central Andes. Young’s excavations have provided a substantial dataset to reinterpret the nature of the “Chavín Phenomenon,” or the development and organization of these communities, and its relationship to interregional interaction, ritual practice, and social transformations in south-central Peru in the 1st millennium BCE.

Congratulations on your accomplishment!

Don’t miss this national coverage by the New York Times of VISR’s local geophysical survey work to identify the cemetery of enslaved people at the Hermitage.

Enslaved People’s Graves Discovered at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage (Gift Article) The burial ground at the former American president’s home in Nashville is the latest to be discovered at a presidential site.

We are proud to congratulate Professor Tiffiny Tung on this recognition of her work!

https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2024/11/12/tiffiny-tung-named-senior-fellow-for-harvards-dumbarton-oaks-pre-columbian-studies-program/

Please join us for a book discussion from the author Tasha Rijke-Epstein from the Dept. of History at Vanderbilt University. We will meet Friday, Nov. 15th at noon in Wilson 113 for this talk entitled “Animate Archives: Built Forms, Materiality, and Contested Urban Belonging in Madagascar and the Southwestern Indian Ocean.”

Join us on Friday November 8th for another edition of Anthro Hour featuring Doctoral student Marion Perrin! Marion comes all the way from France and is specializing in q***r postcolonial studies in Nigeria and the Caribbeans. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on the figure of the shadow in Nigerian and Caribbean religious systems as depicted in local

Room 200 Center Building. Snacks and wine will be provided!


“Ogbanje, chi, duppy, and other ‘shadows’: an interdisciplinary study of Nigerian and Caribbean beliefs in contemporary postcolonial novels”

Shadows are powerful recurrent motifs in religion, philosophy, art, and literature. This talk will examine the significance of shadows within Caribbean and Nigerian belief systems, while analyzing how postcolonial authors grapple with this theme in their narratives. By centering their works on spiritual figures such as the ogbanje, the chi or the duppy, writers explore the literary potential of shadows. In so doing they confront the European perspective associating the motif with fear, moral corruption, ignorance and superstition.

Looking for a graduate program in Anthropology? Consider joining our department. Applications are due December 1.

Don’t miss Céline Erauw’s talk, “Understanding Animal-Human Interactions in the Central Coast of Peru (1000-1470 CE)” this Friday, October 18th in The Center Building 200 from 3pm-4pm.

The short research presentation will be followed by Q & A and mingling over wine and cheese. Colleagues and students from other departments are encouraged to attend.

Congratulations to Dr. Wernke for receiving NSF support for this significant and impactful project.

Vanderbilt professors Wernke, Huo win $625K NSF grant for largest-ever archaeological survey Professor Steven Wernke's groundbreaking archaeological mapping project has secured its most substantial funding yet: a $625,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence, Wernke and his team are mapping archaeological sites across the Andes Moun...