2006 Annual Student Conference Abstracts
Panel 1 - Ritual and Naturalization
Arielle Aaronson (Tufts) "A Masculine Identity Among Male Distance Runners"
Abstract: This paper explores how masculinity is manifested in male long distance runners. Endurance sports are often construed as "feminine" due to their lack of physical contact. Furthermore, cross country and distance track programs are often combined coeducationally with women competing on similar levels as men in certain cases. A typical distance runner's body type is tailored to the sport; generally the lighter the body, the less weight to bear and the faster the performance. Elite male runners often strive to attain this ideal body type using different means of controlling food intake, which are methods most often perceived as problems in the world of femininity. For those runners who are in the elite or strive to be so, emasculating their bodies, not to be confused with feminizing their bodies, may lead to success. In this paper I explore different definitions of masculinity as compiled by male runners themselves as well as analyze the role that masculinity plays in their decisions about their bodies.
Kimberly Allegretto (Brandeis) "Adopting Maize in the Eastern Woodlands of North America"
Abstract: The adoption of maize as a staple crop represented an important technological and social change in Eastern Woodland societies in North America. The earliest maize remains date to the Middle Woodland period (60 B.C.-A.D. 200). Maize, one of several crops, played a relatively minor role in the diet until the Late Woodland Period (ca. A.D. 1000) when it became the major crop. Much research has focused on identifying the particular type of maize and the time at which it appeared and became a major crop. The symbolic role of maize as a factor in its acceptance by peoples in the Eastern Woodlands has been largely overlooked until recently. Conceptualization of technological processes in other societies can differ greatly from the Western perspective. Identifying the meanings associated with technology is essential in understanding why it was shunned or embraced by the receiving cultures. In this paper I will present the results of a study intended to better document the timing of the rapid increase in maize in the diet in the Late Woodland period and to explore the ways in which the new crop was conceptualized by the cultures that adopted it. In order to investigate maize consumption in the Late Woodland period, stable carbon isotope ratios were measured in human remains from three Albee Phase (A.D. 800-1300) sites in Indiana and two Riviere au Vase phase (A.D. 750-1000) sites in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. A comparison of maize imagery and ceremonialism in between Mesoamerica and the Eastern Woodlands will be used to identify symbolic elements associated with maize that were adopted along with the crop. Ultimately, it is hoped that this research will contribute to understanding the way in which maize production and consumption was conceptualized by the peoples of the Late Woodland period, and how those meanings may have affected its acceptance in the Eastern Woodlands.
Mara Judd (Tufts) "The Modern Bar Mitzvah Ceremony: The After-Party as Counter-Ritual"
Abstract: American Jews continuously wrestle with compromising their ancient traditions with assimilated life. The tension between these two factors is clearly seen in the bar mitzvah ceremony, which has existed since the second half of the 16th century. There is a large amount of modern discourse among rabbis and religious leaders regarding the emphasis that is now placed on the "bar mitzvah party," rather than the coming-of-age ceremony of the bar mitzvah itself. Because of the definitions of adulthood in secular American society, the bar mitzvah ceremony is no longer the absolute ritual to finalize adulthood for the participating child, as it is intended. The now-emphasized after-party is completely arranged by and obsessed over by the parents, who use it to regain their son or daughter as a "child" after he or she is proclaimed an "adult." The significance of puberty is not to be underestimated. The differences in what puberty meant in ancient times and what it means now has directly affected the addition of the after-party as an intricate part of the bar mitzvah ritual. The after-party, in fact, is a counter ritual to the bar mitzvah, responding to the demands that modern definitions "age" and "adulthood" places on the ancient ceremony. This paper will use research at a Boston-area synagogue, the writer's own experience, and the views of Victor Turner, to show how the bar mitzvah ceremony is still a dynamic "coming-of-age" ritual for the Jewish people, while exposing the new element of after-party's "counter-ritual" which occurs as an assimilation tool.
Panel 2 - Social Medicine & The Politics of Health
Vera Belitsky (Tufts) "Culture, Politics, & Health: Approaches to Tuberculosis Control in Russia & the United States"
Abstract: Health interventions are not dictated solely by science or by concern for the patient, but are influenced by culture, politics, economics, and power relations. This presentation illustrates the idea by considering the $150 million World Bank loan to the Russian Federation for the control of TB and HIV/AIDS, approved in 2003. Underlying the several years of debates surrounding the stipulations of the loan was a divergence in diagnostic and treatment methods. The WHO pushed for directly observed treatment, short course (DOTS), whereas Russian authorities were unwilling to give up the methods that had been developed under the Soviet Union, honed over the past century, and through which TB rates were successfully kept low until the Soviet dissolution. For instance, DOTS can be called "democratic," whereas Soviet TB control methods seem to express Soviet centralized control through and through. In comparing the two knowledge systems contested during the negotiations, I will demonstrate how these health promotion techniques are, respectively, an expression of American and Russian political and economic practices, medical philosophies, and power struggles.
Amy Silverstein (Brandeis) "Disease Etiology & Treatment Choice of the Tsimane'"
Abstract: Although every human being in the world has some level of health, how one responds to themes of well-being brings insight to their cultural identity and beliefs. Treatment choice is integral to the understanding of the health beliefs and disease etiologies of a population. If a culture elects their treatment in terms of a distinct etiology, the belief of the illness's origin would be proven fundamental. In this manner, I explore how the Tsimane' incorporate themselves into the environment around them, how this outlook is integrated into their unique disease etiology and in turn, how these beliefs affect their choice of treatment. The Tsimane' people inhabit the lowland region of the Amazon basin in Bolivia, in the south-central Beni Department. Villages are congregated along the winding Maniqui River and contrast in levels integration into the country's larger market villages and formal economies. While a variety of research has been completed in the Beni region, published works do not include studies of Tsimane' spiritual beliefs, nor has an investigation or categorization of illnesses been completed. This study, based on 8 weeks of fieldwork completed during the summer of 2005, combines ethnographic information about the perceptions of disease causation with objective measures of treatment choice. Fieldwork focuses upon illnesses attributed to spiritual causes and the ethnomedicinal treatments used to treat them.
Laurn Contreras (Wellesley) "Cancer Incidence among California Farmworkers"
Abstract: Cancer clusters are one of the most frightening and frustrating experiences a community can encounter. The McFarland case is a prime example of when a cancer cluster is suspected or identified. It reads parallel to a complicated murder mystery. The crime: at least 16 children, all of which come from farmworker families, stricken with nine different cancers. The scene: a small rural community in Kern County, California. The prime suspect: pesticides. The theory is that some environmental aberration occurred in McFarland. As is true of most cases of environmental poisoning, it wasn't the public agencies that identified the cancer cluster, but the local people who had to convince officials that this wasn't simply random chance. The accumulation of circumstances became so overwhelmingly unusual that public officials finally declared McFarland to be the site of a childhood cancer cluster. As the largest agricultural producer in the nation, California makes it possible for people to reap the benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. The National Cancer Institute estimates that one-third of all cancer deaths may be diet related. Fortunately for us, many of the common foods found in grocery stores that we enjoy naturally contain cancer-fighting properties. But the production of many of these labor-intensive crops requires a great need for laborers. California farmworkers, a group who remains relatively poor and uneducated, are predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American. On a daily basis these Latino farmworkers are exposed to different types and chemical classes of hazardous pesticides, those of which have been classified as having sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity. Studies, which public agencies have attempted to refute, showed that Latino farmworkers are more at risk for certain types of cancer. The actions taken by public agencies to protect California farmworkers seem to have proven ineffective. When hired farm workers face significant health risks, there are major disparities in the attention and protection of this occupational group.
Panel 3 - Urban Sites & Social Locations
Philana Woo (Wellesley) "Chinatown: Site of Eternal Deviance"
Abstract: In 2005, the New York City based audio walking tour company Soundwalk produced a 50-minute tour of Manhattan Chinatown that costs $13 and can be purchased in various venues throughout the city, or via the Internet. The bright red CD case cover reads: "Opium Dens, Sweatshops, Buddhist Temples, Chinese Mob" and features a young Asian woman looking at the camera while taking a suggestive bite out of a cherry. A long history of such Chinatown "tours of vice" exists in the United States, starting from the late 19th century when groups of white Americans went through Chinatown to witness the purported deviance of opium dens and overcrowded living conditions, among others, reported by authorities and in newspapers. While some participants were motivated by the desire to promote social reform within Chinatown, many more tourists seized upon the voyeuristic ventures for purely recreational pleasures. What is new about the Soundwalk tour is its audio component. Furthermore, the creators make a unique claim to authenticity by choosing a "Chinatown native" as the guide and narrator. Altogether, Soundwalk promises a tour unlike any other. I analyze the non-verbal soundtrack, replete with Oriental aural motifs like the banging of a gong, and discuss the role of sound in texturing and informing American mainstream perceptions of Chinatown and everything it represents, from Chinese culture and Asia to Asian Americans. Agency also figures strongly. While the tour Orientalizes Chinatown, its guide and the Chinatown community itself partake in self-Orientalizing as well, and to great monetary gain. The politics of representation are also at work. Who gets represented? The narrator happens to be a second generation Cantonese American male. This tour reflects some of the linguistic and cultural tensions within Chinatown. Finally, Chinatowns in the U.S. have held a strong and recurrent role in Asian American history. What are the implications of the tour's representation of Chinatown on the current state of Asian America, and does it matter?
Loretta Stein (Brandeis) "Modelo Juan XXIII: Managing the Effects of the Export-Manufacturing Industry on Urban Health in La Zona de Santiago, Dominican Republic"
Abstract: The political and economic history of the Dominican Republic from Spanish colonization in 1492 has established an inherent sense of patriarchy and entrenchment of the male breadwinner model throughout Dominican society. However, the recent political and economic restructuring of the nation has led it to become dependent on external sources for economic recovery, namely export-manufacturing for U.S. companies in free trade zones. This transformation from agriculture and patriarchy to employing large numbers of laborers, most females, has greatly influenced changes in female and male gender roles and family structure, and subsequently, the health of the population. Based on fieldwork conducted in La Zona Sur de Santiago, Dominican Republic during the summer of 2005, in conjunction with current anthropological findings on gender and family in the Dominican Republic, I will explore the effect of the export-manufacturing industry on urban life, particularly health, and how the community-based healthcare delivery system of La Zona Sur, called Modelo Juan XXIII, is working to manage and mitigate the effects of this strong influence on the community through community-health workers, education, preventative medicine, and the promotion of health as a human right.
Shoshana Maxwell (Wellesley) "The Influence of Location on Infertility Social Perspectives & Treatment Strategies in Senegal"
Abstract: This study focused on the influence of location on infertility social perspectives and treatment strategies in communities of Dakar and Kédougou, urban and rural locations of Senegal. Formally structured interviews with 25 randomly selected people from the general population of Dakar and Kédougou were conducted. A series of predetermined questions regarding infertility perspectives and treatment strategies were used for the interviews. Infertility was examined because of the social implications for childless couples in a society that highly values children. Furthermore, a woman only attains social authority after she has proven herself with children. The influence of location is important concerning the incidence and prevalence of infertility. Education, economic stability and health care access encompass areas that affect the development of the condition. Education empowers members of the community with knowledge particularly about healthy lifestyles that include information concerning STD prevention, which is essential since gonorrhea is a prominent cause of infertility. The amount of capital available to a family (or woman independently if she is independently seeking assistance) influences the treatment options for a couple. Furthermore, the accessibility of health care varies greatly between urban and rural areas. Most traditional healers work in rural areas near nature. While most physicians practicing Western medicine that include assisted reproductive technologies are near large cities. Informants in Dakar believe women are responsible for the incidence of infertility and they indicate divorce as a social consequence of the illness. Informants in Kédougou believe either a man or a woman is responsible and they perceive infertile individuals as normal members of society. General knowledge concerning the biological or social causes of the condition was difficult to ascertain since most informants responded that the condition was a result of 'the will of God.' Treatment strategies were similar in both urban and rural areas - infertile individuals in rural areas consulted both healers and physicians to treat their condition, similar methods were employed in urban areas. The expense of treatment failed to hinder ones desire to find a solution to infertility. The differences in perceptions concerning infertility in urban verses rural areas are a result of colonialism, religion and education. Dakar remains closely connected with its former French colonial power through language, politics and educational structures. The social construction of masculinity in urban areas is influenced by European models of patriarchy that perpetuate the incidence and negative perceptions of infertility. Rural areas maintain pieces of pre-colonial ideologies in which matriarchy and dual-leadership of both the husband and wife were elements that formed the structure of the family. Through the patriarchal model enforced by colonialism, men in urban areas refuse to believe that infertility can affect their domain, which often prevents them from seeking analysis or treatment for suspected infertility. Thus, the cycle of female inequality in regards to infertility and childlessness continue as witnessed in Dakar.
Panel 4 - Interactive Technology & Community
Caroline Ong (Wellesley) "RedQuEEn! From Virtual to Actual: An Enquiry into an Online Imagined Community"
Abstract: The subject of inquiry in this extended essay is the online community of RedQuEEn!, a group based primarily in Singapore. The e-mailing list is a women-only online forum for lesbian, bisexual and queer identified women. Currently, the community consists of an e-mail list, an official website, IRC chat channels, e-counselling service, regular offline occasions and smaller subsidiary lists. Due to the intangible nature of the setting in cyberspace, "traditional" fieldwork techniques used in acquiring information has, to some extent, been altered and adapted. The methods used and the process involved in modifying these methods are discussed and their advantages and disadvantages are analysed to provide a greater insight into the mechanics of this study. This investigation focuses on the identification of RedQuEEners as an imagined community within the larger heterosexually-defined world and the cultural traits that have allowed them to create, sustain and legitimise their community both on and off the realm of the internet. Subsequently, the findings demonstrate the community's need for visibility in the eyes of the dominant majority and the various means in which RedQuEEn! attempts to mediate the transition from an invisible group to an unmistakable community.
Drew Harry (Olin) "Bridging Worlds: How Offline Relationships Affect Online Sociality in World of Warcraft"
Abstract: Online sociality is rapidly becoming a part of everyday life for people around the world. Whether email, message boards, social networking websites, or instant messaging, these tools enable complex and significant interaction. Online synthetic worlds are one such new tool. As a technology, synthetic worlds have been around since the mid 1970's, but for a variety of reasons the number of people who spend time in these worlds has exploded in the last ten years. A rich scholarship in the study of these worlds is also growing, assembling academics from many fields, most notably economists, sociologists, media theorists, and legal scholars. With this work, I wanted to add the methods and insights an anthropological background could provide. In particular, I studied World of Warcraft, and I describe the ways in which relationships from outside the game are concentrated inside the game, and the profound effect that has on sociality within the world, particularly group formation and the resolution of conflict. This is a significant finding, because it is different from how older synthetic worlds (often called MUDs or MOOs) were perceived in the literature. They have been described, most notably by Turkle and Dibbell, as an emancipatory space in which people are free to experiment with new personas or express parts of their personality they might otherwise hide. Because of the way World of Warcraft is organized, both in terms of rules in the world, as well as advertising and promotion, I found that this description of synthetic worlds as spaces for identity play has become less accurate.
Alex Toplansky (Brandeis) "Framing Play: Early Thoughts on Interactive Environments"
Abstract: Different art traditions partition space differently. In Italian Renaissance art we find strict adherence to the frame. In Moche pottery, we find the image limited by its own wrapping around a vessel. Chinese calligraphers often allow images to fade off into space, leaving extensive amounts of blank canvas around their paintings, a sharp contrast to the horror vacui one finds in Chavín stelia and Tlingit art. For the purposes of the paper, this discussion of structural strategies for partitioning space will be called Framing. Presently, the computer medium is a hotbed for artistic production, recently manifesting in the form of interactive games. It will be shown that structural considerations in game framing are not dissimilar from those in the framing of other art styles, a conclusion which will open the door to further structural analysis of game designs as a semiotic and artistic theory pursuit. Although interactive worlds are limited in scale, the player can be made to perceive the world's size differently. I will explore several of these strategies. Afterwards, the focus will shift to a specific substyle (2nd generation FPS). We will see that there are preferred aesthetics in recent games, methods of symbolic substitution that can convey different meanings about space to a player. These include strategies which make the scale of the world appear larger than an area accessible to the player. The semiotics involved in conveying that the player has "hit the edge" of the environment will be the main thrust of the paper. I will also conclude that because the game world is not only concerned with spatial presentation but spatial interface, framing in games represents a radically new paradigm for artistic production, one that may be more similar to theater than Western paintings.
Sean Munson (Olin) "Internet Meetups & Community"
Abstract: Rural
Panel 5 - Visual Dimensions of Cultural Expression
Robin Hancock (Brandeis) "Bye Bye, Time to Go Home: Paintings from the Kakuma Refugee Camp"
Abstract: When the government turned against them, the people of Southern Sudan fled persecution and almost certain death. As dispute turned to civil war, its people have suffered psychologically as well as physically in the numerous surrounding refugee camps. In Kakuma camp, men have begun painting their memories of a life, now gone, and of the horror they have encountered in the war and within the camps on large canvas sheets. These images illustrate unspeakable crimes against humanity. Starvation, a lack of basic healthcare, and the loss of the only homeland some of the men have ever known have caused them to look at the world with a critical eye. But the paintings also speak of political awareness, hope for the future and a renewed sense of self that retains a deep pride in their tradition, the very thing that others sought to eliminate. After living through an ordeal in which their own traditions, their own lifestyle and their own voice was forbidden, the desire to create art is slowly turning into a movement based on the voice of the disenfranchised of Southern Sudan. My research focuses on the use of art as therapy to ease trauma and to rouse consciousness using the paintings created in Kakuma refugee camp. My sources include primary informants such as Atem Aleu, a former Kukama refugee who teaches a class on art in Kakuma each year, Aduei Riak, a refugee and now an undergraduate at Brandeis University, and various other former refugees in the Boston area as well as the artists themselves about their experiences. Using these works of art as my model, this paper synthesizes the use of art to heal psychological wounds and provide firsthand evidence of otherwise unknown atrocities as well as to relate the imagery used to the retention of indigenous cultural tradition and Christianity.
Jefferson Arak (Brandeis) "Voice Through Film: A Visual Study of Indigenous Media in Southern Mexico"
Abstract: Since 1998, the Chiapas Media Project (or Promedios in Spanish) has been working in Southern Mexico with an affiliate office in the US, providing video equipment, computers and training to marginalized indigenous and campesino groups, allowing them to create their own media in hopes of educating those outside their communities about their lives. They are currently distributing 16 indigenous films worldwide. Promedios is a unique organization because they work directly with the good government juntas of the Zapatistas, but the phenomenon of indigenous media stretches well beyond this particular organization. Southern Mexico typifies the type of environment in which indigenous media can thrive, having a large Mayan population, a hub of intellectual and volunteer organizations in San Cristobol de Las Casas, and a history of subjugation coupled with a recent political paradigm shift. During the summer of 2005, I received a grant from Brandeis' Latin American Studies department to do research in Chiapas while interning with Promedios. I went into the project with enthusiasm and a full backpack of my own video equipment, hoping to make a short film about indigenous media and its effects on indigenous life. Some of the themes that emerged as I became familiar with the subject were: social effects on the indigenous media activists resulting from their incorporation of technology and the necessary element of travel into their lives; ways that indigenous media can help disseminate information within communities as well as to other parts of the world; the international community's response to groups like Promedios; and the views of those members of NGOs working with indigenous communities and their methodology and opinions about the role that indigenous media has the potential to play on both the micro and macro level. A short film will be shown in place of a paper.
Arnaud Lambert (Brandeis) "The Cosmological Significance of the Scroll Motif in the Rock Carvings of Chalcatzingo"
Abstract: Iconographic studies of ancient Mesoamerican art have consistently shown a link between scroll motifs and images of water, clouds, vapors, serpents, and jaguars among both Classic and Postclassic period peoples. Based on comparisons with the iconography of these later time periods, Formative period manifestations of the scroll motif in Olmec-style art have usually been interpreted as part of a similar symbolic set. This paper argues that such simplistic comparative approaches fail to acknowledge the problem of iconographic disjunction and reveal little about how scroll imagery was actually used in specific Formative period communities.
Based on field research conducted during the Summer of 2005, this paper offers an alternative approach by analyzing the archaeological contexts and iconography of scroll motifs in the rock carvings of Chalcatzingo, a Formative site in the Central Highlands of Mexico. Instead of relying on Classic period analogies, this analysis focuses on stylistic conventions well-known in Olmec-style art and represented in many of the monuments at Chalcatzingo. During the course of this investigation, it is found that scroll motifs had a great deal of cosmological significance at Chalcatzingo, serving simultaneously as fundamental elements in cosmographic imagery and as markers of elite status.
Panel 6 - Memory, Commemoration & Performance
Jerzy Wieczorek (Olin) "'Highly Evolved:' Managing the Accordionist's Identity in America"
Abstract: Starting in the late 19th century, waves of immigration brought the accordion to
Sarah Bettigole (Tufts) "Holocaust Memorialization and Genocide Intervention: Contradictions in the United States"
Abstract: Memorializing the Holocaust has taken a very prominent position in American life. All Americans are expected to have knowledge of the Holocaust, and are actively encouraged to visit one of myriad commemoration sites. Experiencing the Holocaust has evolved into a rite of passage, a threshold which all Americans must cross to affirm, by their mutual disgust, the shared ideals of democracy and freedom. This paper examines the interplay between Holocaust commemoration and genocide prevention in the United States, particularly the ritualized aspects of Holocaust commemoration and why they actually obstruct action on contemporary crises rather than making Americans more sensitive to contemporary atrocities. The museums, monuments, films, voice, and video recordings of survivors, and concentration camps represent accepted confining symbolic gestures through which to experience the Holocaust. Within the collective memory of the Holocaust is the need to recognize its unparalleled ferocity, which inherently places restrictions on the creative potential to extend and apply Holocaust symbols. This places the Holocaust in a sort of vacuum, with its meanings and lessons difficult to extend to contemporary genocidal crises. In the pseudo-religious devotion to preserving and upholding Holocaust memory, Americans have become desensitized to modern violence, content to ignore similarly horrific, though smaller scale, crises.
Stephan Edwards (Brandeis) "'He Sits on the Rock of Joy:' Epic Voice, the Kalevala, and the Genesis of Finnish Nationalism"
Abstract: The critic and theorist Mikhail Bakhtin makes a general distinction between two kinds of discourse: that of authoritative, or epic, discourse, and that of internally persuasive, or dialogic, discourse. The dialogic voice is the voice of the novel and of subversiveness and resistance to the epic monologism of authority. However, the mythologized voice of authority present in the Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot's collection of Finnish epic poetry, plays a central role in the birth of Finnish nationalism and resistance to Russian domination during the nineteenth century. This paper explores how Lönnrot, through the Kalevala, co-opted a highly dialogic oral poetic tradition and from it generated a monologic, authoritative voice which served as the bedrock of Finnish national consciousness. Even rebellious, subversive national movements need authoritative voice to give them direction and purpose. By writing down a valorized mythological past in what would become standardized, literary Finnish, Lönnrot drew the boundaries of the Finnish nation and launched revolutions in education, literacy, publishing, and, finally, politics. The dialogic voices of hundreds of illiterate peasants gave rise to a shared monologic literary tradition that previously had never existed, but that by the close of the nineteenth century redefined the Finnish national past and future.