Conference Participants
Darnisa Amante (Brandeis ‘06) is majoring in Anthropology, History, and French. She is interested in the dynamics that exist within South Africa, and has done research amongst local art communities in Johannesburg.
Mark Auslander (discussant, Brandeis University) is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in African Arts and Aesthetics at Brandeis. Dr. Auslander (Ph.D. 1997, University of Chicago) has done fieldwork on ritual, politics, landscape and memory in Southern and Central Africa and in African American communities in Georgia.
Sebastián Chaskel (Tufts University '07) is a sophomore at Tufts University majoring in Anthropology and International Relations with a focus on Global Conflict, Cooperation and Justice. He is from Bogotá, Colombia and his research has been focused on the experience of Latinos in the U.S. He is currently working on a research project on Colombian immigrants in East Boston. At Tufts, he is an Active Citizenship and Public Service Scholar and through this program interns with the Somerville Community Corporation.
Alice K. Chen (Wellesley ’05) is a senior at Wellesley College where she is pursuing a degree in History. Following graduation she plans to attend an MFA program in creative writing at either Columbia or the University of Iowa.
Elizabeth Ferry (discussant, Brandeis University) is assistant professor of Anthropology at Brandeis. She is the author of the book, Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value and Collectivity, to be published this fall by Columbia University Press. She is currently working on a historical ethnography of mineral specimen collecting in Mexico, Britain and the United States.
Andrea Fox (Brandeis University) is a Master's student in Anthropology and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. She is interested in the use of the body as expression, especially in categories that are deemed aberrant by Western culture. She is also interested in women's roles in traditional Chinese culture.
Charles Golden (discussant, Brandeis University) is a Mesoamerican archaeologist, with a focus on the Prehispanic Maya area of southern Mexico and Central America. His interests include the significance of architecture for the construction of understandings of time, history, and social memory, the semiotics of material culture, the development of political boundaries and frontiers in complex societies, the social impact of archaeology in modern Latin America. He is the co-editor of "Continuities and Changes in Maya Archaeology," and "Piedras Negras Archaeology, 1931-1939."
Meg Grady-Troia (Brandeis University) is in her first year of graduate study. Her background is in architectural history and urban studies; at Brandeis she is focusing on aesthetics and identity performance with regard to space and place, in the contexts of both urban and virtual environments.
Denise Ho (Tufts University ’05) is a senior majoring in Economics and International Relations, with a focus in International Finance. She harbours a personal interest in media. She was born in Hong Kong and has lived in Taiwan, Canada and the United States.
Júlia Kirst (Brandeis University) is a second year doctoral student in the Anthropology Department at Brandeis University. Júlia is currently interested in the production and consumption of information about adolescence. Her work examines popular and scholarly models of adolescent development from a critical medical anthropology perspective.
Sarah Lamb (discussant, Brandeis University) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis. Her research in India and the United States focuses on aging, gender, personhood, families and modernity. Her publications include White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender and Body in North India and (as co-editor) Everyday Life in South Asia.
Christina Leoutsakos (Brandeis University) is a second year doctoral student in cultural anthropology. Her topical interests include religion, identity, material culture, memory and historical anthropology. Her regional focus is on the Mediterranean, particularly the area once occupied by the Ottoman Empire.
Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray (Tufts University ‘05) is majoring in Anthropology. She has researched about the Central American Solidarity Movement in Greater Boston in the 80s. Last spring, she spent a semester in Cuba studying at the University of Havana where she researched about the Chinese community and means of cultural preservation. She is interested in working in applied anthropology in the area of rural development.
Keridwen Luis (Brandeis University) is currently a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology and took her M.A. in Anthropology and Women's Studies at Brandeis as well. Her Ph.D. research involves examining how culture is created and changed in women's intentional communities, and her research interests involve women's studies, gender studies, medical anthropology, identity, and ghost stories and belief.
Caitrin Lynch (discussant, Brandeis University, Olin College) is a Visiting Research Associate in Anthropology at Brandeis, and an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Olin College of Engineering. Dr. Lynch (Ph.D., anthropology, University of Chicago, 2000) does research on gender, labor, nationalism, and globalization in Sri Lanka and the United States.
Clare McBee-Wise (Wellesley College ‘05) is an anthropology major at Wellesley College. Her sub-field concentration is socio-cultural anthropology, and she is most interested in Tibetan culture, transgender issues, and public interest anthropology.
Sally Engle Merry (discussant, Wellesley College) is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Anthropology at Wellesley College. Her book, Colonizing Hawai’i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton Univ. Press, 2000), received the 2001 J. Willard Hurst Prize from the Law and Society Association. Her most recent book is Law and Empire in the Pacific: Hawai’i and Fiji (co-edited with Donald Brenneis, School of American Research Press, 2004). She is a past-president of the Law and Society Association.
Aduei Riak (Brandeis University ‘07) was born in Juba, Sudan. At the age of three, Aduei and her family were forced to leave Sudan because of civil war and become refugees in Ethiopia. She is currently a sophomore attending Brandeis University as a Louis Brandeis Scholar, and serves as the sole representative of the 89 Sudanese “Lost Girls” in the United States. Aduei speaks five languages and enjoys sharing her cultural traditions with fellow students.
Bekka Saks (Brandeis University ’06) is majoring in anthropology/archaeology. She has spent time in Oaxaca, Mexico exploring pre-hispanic aesthetics. She is also interested in researching the dynamic between the factions of the Jewish community in Puebla, Mexico.
Rosalind Shaw (discussant, Tufts University) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University, where she teaches and conducts research on the anthropology of mass violence and recovery, social memory, religion, and West Africa. She is the author of Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and is co-editor of two volumes, Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis (with Charles Stewart; Routledge, 1994), and Dreaming, Religion and Society in Africa (with M.C. Jedrej; E.J. Brill, 1992).
Catherine Stanton (discussant, Tufts University) recently received her Ph.D. from the Tufts University Interdisciplinary Doctorate Program, where she focused on cultural anthropology and heritage/museum studies. Her dissertation, "The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City," is forthcoming as a book from the University of Massachusetts Press. She is currently a lecturer at Tufts University and Suffolk University and is also serving as a consulting ethnographer for the National Park Service.
Avantika Taneja (Tufts University ’05 ) Avantika Taneja (Tufts '05) is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Child Development. These disciplines have enabled her to pursue her interests in ethnic identity development, youth program evaluation, multicultural curriculum building, literacy development, and recovery of youth in crisis situations from an academic reference point. In the long-run, she hopes to engage in development-related work at home in Indonesia.
Alison Warren (Brandeis '05) is a senior at Brandeis University with majors in Anthropology and English. She studied anthropology and Scottish literature at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland during the 2003-2004 academic year and is interested in research about identity, liminality, and Scotland.