Department of Anthropology

Anthropology Welcome Reception
September 5, 2025
Time: 4-5 pm
Location: Schwartz 103 and the adjoining foyer

Preparing and Presenting Conference Papers

with Beth Derderian, Brian Horton and Sargam Sharma

  September 19, Schwartz 103

Preparing Successful PhD Applications

with Janet McIntosh and Sarah Lamb

September 26, Schwartz 103

Colloquium: Pinky Hota, Smith College 

Ecofantasy as Indigenous Erasure: Conservation and Tourism in Adivasi India

  October 3, Schwartz 103

This talk focuses on conservation and tourism efforts in indigenous geographies in India. In Odisha, adivasis speak of themselves as less-than-animal to articulate their rights within a local landscape shaped by charismatic species conservation and ecotourism.  Tracing a unifying logic that continues from state as agent of ecological destruction and state as ecological steward is a morphed capitalist logic predicated on indigenous displacement and erasure, I describe how where once lands were subject to aggressive development, they are now subject to a new form of nature capitalism in which a carefully cultivated nature is commodified, including through the introduction of charismatic species. In such a context, adivasis describe themselves as less valuable than animals to the government to draw attention to their rights, emphasizing the continuities between extraction and ecotourism.

Writing Grants

with Sarah Lamb and Yesmar Oyarzun

  October 10, Schwartz 103

Colloquium: Michael Berman, Brandeis University

Heart of a Heartless World: Alienation, Compassion, and the Negative in the Making of Secular Japan

 October 24, Schwartz 103

Michael Berman will be reading the prologue and portions of the introduction of his book manuscript, Heart of a Heartless World, an ethnography that traces histories of the work done by religious professionals in Japan after the 2011 tsunami and earthquake. The manuscript intervenes in academic and popular conversations on the nature of alienation and compassion by arguing that they produce each other. Simply stated, Heart of a Heartless World argues that a transformation of compassion into altruism breaks down long-standing institutions of belonging, including, surprisingly, organized religions. Aimed at anthropologists and critical theorists interested in alienation, religion/secularism, and Japanese studies, the book develops the analytic framework of “negative semiotics” to demonstrate that voluntarily sharing suffering not only hurts, it can also drive people apart in the very ways that it brings them together. During the Q&A, Berman will also be happy to share reflections on the fieldwork and writing process for this book.

Book talk: Casey Golomski (Brandeis PhD ‘13), University of New Hampshire

God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End—from immersive fieldwork to creative nonfiction

  November 7, 2025, Schwartz 103

Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life's lessons, God's Waiting Room (Rutgers U Press, and Wits U Press)—a 2025 awardee of the Victor Turner Prizes in Ethnographic Writing—considers what matters in the end for older white adults and the younger Black nurses who care for them. An innovation in creative ethnographic nonfiction, Casey Golomski's story of his years of immersive research at a nursing home in South Africa, thirty years after the end of apartheid, is narrated as a one-day, room-by-room tour. For BARS, he’ll share both overall findings and the creative process and toast to Brandeis Anthropology colleagues that helped to make it happen.

Colloquium: Gareth Doherty, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Landscape Fieldwork: How Engaging the World Can Change Design

  November 14, Schwartz 103

Landscape fieldwork combines landscape architects’ projective skills and tools for site analysis (drawing, measuring, photographing, remote sensing) with the ethnographic methods of anthropologists (participant observation, unstructured interviews, and writing reflexive fieldnotes), all as an integral part of a design process. When we do thick description, it leads us to thick prescription.  Gareth Doherty takes a human-centered approach to design and theory that aspires to shape environmentally and socially just landscapes—drawing on research on designed landscapes across the postcolonial and Islamic worlds, primarily in the Arabian Peninsula, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the African continent. Doherty is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

PhD Comprehensive Exam and Dissertation Proposal: Options and Strategies

with  Sarah Lamb

  December 5, 2025, Schwartz 203

September 3, 2024: Graduate Student Orientation

September 6, 2024: Anthropology Welcome Reception

September 17, 2024: Navigating the Hidden Curriculum with Professor Jon Anjaria

September 20, 2024: Research Seminar by Ramyar Rossoukh

September 24, 2024: From Fieldnote to Book with Professors Jon Anjaria, Grazia Deng and Dan Souleles

September 27, 2024: Research Seminar by Cheryl Makarewicz

October 1, 2024: Preparing Successful PhD Applications with Professor Jon Anjaria

October 18, 2024: Behind the Scenes of Academic Book Publishing wiht Caitlin Tyler-Richards from the U of Washington Press

October 25, 2024: A Glimpse of a Climate-Justice Future: Lessons from Gina Lopez's 10-Month Tenure as the Philippines' Secretary of the Environment with Professor Bradley Cardoza

October 29, 2024: Creating a Five-Year Plan

November 5, 2024: Developing an Effective Writing Workflow with Professor Jon Anjaria

November 8, 2024: Musical Specimens: Indian Instrument Collections and Colonial Science, 1880-1920 with Professor Aruna Kharod

November 15, 2024: Research Seminar by Andreana Cunningham

December 3, 2025: Applying to Conferences with Professor Jon Anjaria

• January 19, 2024: Planning for Your Comprehensive Exam and Dissertation Proposal with Jonathan Anjaria and Sarah Lamb
• January 26, 2024: An Archaeological Examination of Pre-Reservation Diné History in the U.S. Southwest - Wade Campbell, Boston University
• February 2, 2024: Proposal Writing for the Wenner-Gren Foundation with Danilyn Rutherford
• February 9, 2024: Publishing in Academic Journals, with Professors Anjaria and Ferry
• February 28, 2024: Extreme Gender Roles: A Discussion, led by the UDRs
• March 1, 2024: Alumni Careers Panel with  Olivia Spalletta, PhD '21; Aneil Tripathy, PhD '21; and Mengqi Wang, PhD '18
• March 8, 2024: Graduate Student Research Presentations: Hui Wen, Care beyond Profit: Consuming Health Products in Aging China; Kimcraig, Man seeks wife, woman seeks better; Taha Kaleem, Desiring Whiteness: Race and Queer Intimacies in Qatar; Yura Yokoyama, A (De)fortified National Future: Exposing Local Youth to Crypto-Working Opportunities in Rural El Salvador
• March 18, 2024: Care as Literature, Care as Praxis - Brandeis English Department Conference - featuring talks by anthropology doctoral students Sargam Sharma and Hui Wen.
• March 20, 2024: Get Curious! Trans Justice, with Profs. Brian Horton and AJ Murphy.
• March 20, 2024: Global Community Engagement presents Dr. Alexander Hinton speaking about "Perpetrators: Genocide and the Dark Side of Humanity", sponsored by ENACT and cosponsored by Anthropology.
• March 22, 2024: Landscapes of Suspicion: Minefields, Peace Laboratories and (Post)War in Colombia: Diana Pardo Pedraza
• April 2, 2024: Law, Legality & Social Identity: An Event with Mandel Grant Graduate Winners, featuring doctoral student Sarah Han.
• April 3, 2024: What Can YOU Do With An Anthropology Degree? UDR-hosted alumni and graduate student careers panel, featuring Ayush Thacker '23, Nina Kumar '23, and Skyler Inman, PhD candidate.
• April 5, 2024: Egalitarian Paradox: Dalits and the State in South India -- Jayaseelan Raj, Kings College, London.
• April 11, 2024: Mrs. Columbo's Anti-Politics Machine, with Aneil Tripathy, PhD '21, David Wood, and Elizabeth Ferry.
• April 12, 2024: Conference on Community-Engaged and Public-Facing PhD Research, organized by Jon Anjaria.
• April 16, 2024: Anthropology Thesis and IRB Info Session, led by Sarah Lamb and Janet McIntosh.
• April 19, 2024: Craft Session: Unwind While Winding! Led by Patricia Alvarez Astacio and Elizabeth Ferry.
• May 1, 2024: Anthropology Senior Research Day.
• May 3, 2024: The Politics of Affect: Multimodal Explorations, with Patricia Alvarez Astacio's ANTH 208: Documenting Cultures.
• May 10, 2024: ANTH 130: Filming Culture Documentary Shorts Screening

• September 1, 2023: Anthropology Graduate Student Orientation
• September 8, 2023: Making a 2- or 6-Year Plan, with Jon Anjaria
• September 8, 2023: Anthropology Welcome Reception
• September 22, 2023: Hunt Lecture in Economic Anthropology - Mythri Jegathesan, Santa Clara University
• September 29, 2023: Pedagogy Discussion on Creating an Inclusive Classroom, with PhD students Medha Asthana and Gowthaman Ranganathan
• October 5, 2023: Brownies in Brown - Open House
• October 6, 2023: Normative Collusions and Amphibious Evasions: Contested Politics of Queer self-making in Ghana: Kwame Edwin Otu, Georgetown University
• October 13, 2023: IRB Workshop with Professor Sarah Lamb
• October 20, 2023: How to Write in Graduate School
• November 1, 2023: Explore the Anthropology Major
• November 3, 2023: The Memory of Fruits: Artist Talk and Arts Research Creation Workshop by Claudia Claremi
• November 10, 2023: Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine - Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Bard College
• November 30, 2023: Disclosure Imperatives and (Non-)Disclosures: Women’s Experiences of ‘Self-Illness’ (Nafsānī bali) in a Culture of Trauma Testimony - Anu Ahmed, Medical Anthropology Job Talk
• December 1, 2023: Anti-Black Devices and Acceptable Failures: Race, Dermatology, and Technoscientific Knowledge - Yesmar Oyarzun, Medical Anthropology Job Talk
• December 4, 2023: The Cosmopolitics of Health: Healing and Radical Resurgence in the Andes - Lucía Stavig, Medical Anthropology Job Talk
• December 6, 2023: The Boundary: Medicaid Governance and Care in the U.S. City - Tali Ziv, Medical Anthropology Job Talk
• December 11, 2023: Hidden Labor, Floating Dreams: Chinese Miners Living the Socialist-Capitalist Duality in Colombia - Changhong Zhang Dissertation Proposal Defense

• Jan. 27, 2023: Social Event and Alumni Roundtable on Careers in Anthropology with Manny Moss MA '13, Mrinalini Tankha PhD '13 and Nicole Welk-Joerger MA '14
• Jan. 30, 2023: Storytelling Performance and Workshop with Chandreyee Lahiri, Writer and Storyteller. Hosted by ANTH 122b — We Are All Ears: Power, Politics and Ethics of Storytelling
• Feb. 10, 2023: Interested in Joining an Archaeological Excavation? Co-sponsored by Classical and Early Mediterranean Studies.
• Feb. 10, 2023: Public Scholarship at Brandeis: New Directions: Professor Émilie Diouf (English), Professor Elizabeth Ferry (Anthropology), Professor Sara Shostak (Sociology) and Gowthaman Ranganathan (Anthropology) with Angel Queentus. Co-sponsored by Mandel and COMPACT.
• Feb. 13, 2023: Anthropology Graduate Alumni Celebration. Hosted by GSAS.
• Feb. 15, 2023: Storytelling Performance and Workshop with Dzidzor Azaglo with Baban Gida— Performance Poet, Educator, Curator. Hosted by ANTH 122b — We Are All Ears: Power, Politics and Ethics of Storytelling
• March 10, 2023: Presenting your research at academic conferences
• March 13, 2023: Storytelling Performance and Workshop with Jomion & the Uklos — African Jazz Musical Ensemble (with MusicUnitesUs). Hosted by ANTH 122b — We Are All Ears: Power, Politics and Ethics of Storytelling
• March 17, 2023: Ethnographic Data Analysis Workshop with Daniel Souleles
• March 17, 2023: Hunt Lecture in Economic Anthropology — Daniel Souleles: Whoosh Goes the Market: Algorithms, Automation and Alienation
• March 31, 2023: From Research Idea to Dissertation and Publication, with Jon Anjaria, Maya Dworsky, Elizabeth Ferry and Emily Ibrahim
• April 17, 2023: Senior Thesis and IRB Info Session
• April 18, 2023: kimcraig's Dissertation Proposal Hearing, "Bare Sticks: Stories of Male Reproduction, Rural Masculinity and Social Exclusion among Chinese Rural Bachelors"
• April 19, 2023: What does English-language hegemony mean for the academy? Part of the series on "Toward Language Justice in Higher Education" sponsored by the Ethics Center.
• April 19, 2023: Storytelling Performance and Workshop with Norah Dooley, storyteller, author, educator. Hosted by ANTH 122b — We Are All Ears: Power, Politics and Ethics of Storytelling
• April 21, 2023: Care, Narrative and Community: Silence and Sacrifice in Troubled Times with Merav Shohet, Boston University
• April 24, 2023: Moriah King's Dissertation Proposal Hearing, "Our Own Food and Shelter: Examining the Social Processes of Learning and Landscape Management Practices of Black Farmers in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area."
• April 28, 2023: Graduate Student Research Presentations featuring Kalie Jamieson, Sophie Katz, Gowthaman Ranganathan, Julie Scesney and Yura Yokoyama
• May 4, 2023: Senior Research Day
• May 17, 2023: Sarah Han's Dissertation Proposal Hearing, "Baloch Women & the Aesthetics & Infrastructures of Citizenship in the United Arab Emirates."
• May 17, 2023: Nhi Le's MA Project, "Making, Materiality and Embodied Knowledge."

• Aug. 26, 2022: Anthropology Graduate Student Orientation
• Sept. 9, 2022: Welcome Reception
• Sept. 16, 2022: Benson Saler Lecture: Emily Ibrahim — "Folded Speech: A Semiotics of Uncertainty in an Accra Zongo"
• Sept. 21, 2022: Peace, Justice, and Knowledge-Production in Yemen. Co-sponsored event hosted by Crown Center for Middle East Studies
• Sept. 22, 2022: Explore the Major with the UDRs
• Sept. 23, 2022: IRB workshop with Professor Sarah Lamb
• Sept. 30, 2022: Grants Workshop with Professors Charles Golden and Sarah Lamb
• Oct. 14, 2022: Crosstown Connectivity: Brandeis and Boston University Social Gathering
• Oct. 21, 2022: Hope and Despair: Field Notes from Queeristan with Parmesh Shahani. Sponsored by Mandel Center for the Humanities, co-sponsored by Anthropology.
• Oct. 21, 2022: Aja Lans — A Bioarchaeology of the Self
• Oct. 26, 2022: Untangling Equity and the Environment: The Future of Conservation and How We Get There, with Tanner Yess of Groundwork Ohio River Valley
• Oct. 28, 2022: Lisanne Norman: Creating Diversity & Inclusion in UX Research & Design
• Nov. 17, 2022: Ethics in Research: Tales from the Field — UDR-hosted panel with Jonathan Anjaria, Charlie Goudge and Sarah Lamb

• Jan. 28, 2022: Anthropology Ingathering
• Feb. 4, 2022: Paige Henderson, Sierra Dakin Kuiper, Brittany Lee Long: Alumni Roundtable — Career Diversity
• Feb. 11, 2022: Elizabeth Ferry and Janet McIntosh: Preparing for Your Comprehensive Exam
• Feb. 17, 2022: Emily Cohen Ibañez: Fruits of Labor (cosponsored)
• Feb. 18, 2022: Paja Faudree: Magic Mint: The Rise of the Global Salvia Trade (or, this is your mind on Pollan)
• March 4, 2022: Ayana Omilade Flewellen: The Will to Adorn: Black Women and Sartorial Choice Post-emancipation
• March 11, 2022: Elizabeth Ferry, Caitrin Lynch, Sarah Pinto, Steven Gonzalez and Casey Golomski: Anthropologists Writing Creatively
• March 18, 2022: Charlie Goudge: The Scars Of Colonial Intent: Embodied archaeological legacies of chemical, ecological and ideological violence in the British Caribbean
• March 25, 2022: Sarah Lamb: IRB Workshop
• March 31, 2022: Anthropology UDRs Ji Chen '23, Margo Sobel '22, Ayush Thacker '23: Explore the Anthro Major
• April 1, 2022: Gideon Singer: Trash Talk: Practicing garbology in the private and public sectors
• April 8, 2022: Sonia Jurado: Discrimination, Harassment and Sexual Misconduct
• April 12, 2022: Sarah Lamb: Senior Thesis Info Session for Anthro and WGS majors
• April 29, 2022: Kalie Jamieson, Yelim Lee, Katie Tinch: Graduate Student Presentations
• May 4, 2022: Anthropology Senior Research Day

• Sept. 10, 2021: Isar Godreau: Non-Sovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, and Disaster are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities
• Sept. 24, 2021: Anita Hannig and Janet McIntosh: Applying to Doctoral Programs
• Oct. 8, 2021: Benson Saler Lecture: Jacqueline Fewkes: American Mosques, The Sacred and The Mundane
• Oct. 22, 2021: Jon Anjaria and Anita Hannig: Nuts and Bolts of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology
• Nov. 5, 2021: Brian Horton: Shimmers in the Dark: On the Possibilities of Intimate Touch in Bombay’s Queer Sexpublics
• Nov. 12, 2021: Elizabeth Ferry and Anita Hannig: Writing Op-Eds
• Dec. 3, 2021: Gemmae Fix: Exemplifying Anthropology Through Practice

• Feb. 5, 2021: Professional Development Seminar: Translating a Qualitative PhD to a User Experience Job
• Feb. 12, 2021: Mark Auslander: Decolonizing the Museum World: Anthropological Interventions and Career Prospects
• Feb. 26, 2021: Professional Development Seminar: Social Justice-Oriented Qualitative Research Jobs
• March 5, 2021: Alex Blanchette, Tufts University: Off-Animals and Other Late Industrial American Creatures
• March 12, 2021: IRB Workshop
• April 9, 2021: Krysta Ryzewski: The Blue Bird Inn, Detroit: Historic Preservation and Jazz Archaeology
• April 30, 2021: Krystal Smalls, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Digital Body-Snatching: TikTok, Utilitarian Anti-Blackness and the Entextualization of the Black Body in Social Media

• Sept. 25, 2020: Workshop: Grant Writing. Offered by Professors Jon Anjaria and Charles Golden. Offered by Professors Ellen Schattschneider and Javier Urcid
• Oct. 2, 2020: Workshop: Applying to PhD Programs.
• Oct. 9, 2020: Laurence Ralph, Daunasia Yancey and Karlene Griffiths Sekou: Black Lives Matter: Connecting Academia and Activism
• Oct. 16, 2020: Lauren Santini — First Archaeological Identification of Nixtamalized Maize
• Oct. 23, 2020:Film Screening of Border South. Comments by Raul Paz Pastrana and Ieva Jusionyte, PhD '12.

• Oct. 30, 2020: Applying Material Culture to your Research: Faculty Panel
• Nov. 6, 2020: Archeologist David Freidel.
• Nov. 10, 2020: "Out There Without Fear" — A Film Screening and Panel Discussion on Jamaican Dancehall Culture
• Nov. 13, 2020: How Anthropological Expertise Can Live in Industry with Professor Jon Anjaria and Ingrid Ramón Parra.
• Nov. 20, 2020: Dealing with the Emotional/Psychological Stresses of Academia. Offered by Professors Patricia Alvarez and Brian Horton

• Feb. 7, 2020: Adrienne Keene: "I just had to be there: Experiences of Indigenous students in the #NoDAPL movement"
• Jan. 17, 2020: Discrimination, Harassment and Sexual Misconduct — Sonia Jurado, Office of Equal Opportunity

• Dec. 9, 2019: Landscapes of Inequality. Annie Danis
• Dec. 6, 2019: Environments of British Caribbean Rum Production. Charlotte (Charlie) Goudge, Bristol University
• Nov. 19, 2019: Excavating Empire: The Material World of Precolonial, Colonial, Postcolonial and Decoloniality. Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Hampshire College
• Nov. 15, 2019: Archaeologies of Whiteness from the West Indies to West Africa. Matthew Reilly, City College of New York
• Nov. 8, 2019: My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File. Katherine Verdery, City University of New York
• Oct. 25, 2019: The Rules of Friendship and Debt in Jakarta's New Economy. Doreen Lee, Northeastern University
• Oct. 18, 2019: Workshop — Integrating Theory.
• Oct. 11, 2019: Workshop — Grant Writing.
• Sept. 6, 2019: Department Welcome Reception.
• Aug. 30, 2019: Workshop — Strategies for Grad School Success

• May 3, 2019: Anthropology Senior Research Day
• April 5, 2019: ;Pursuing Diverse Careers: a Panel Discussion with Alt-Ac Alumni

  • Brittany Long MA’13, Research Associate, The Rescue Agency

  • Shawn Dunlap MA’17, Health Science Specialist, US Dept of Veterans’ Affairs

  • Aneil Tripathy ’12, MA’14, Executive at the Climate Bonds Initiative and current PhD student

  • Donny Slater PhD’14, Teacher, Philips Academy Andover School

• March 15, 2019: Graduate Student Open House
• March 8, 2019: The Archaeology of Indentured Labor: Domestic Landscapes and Everyday Life on a Mauritian Plantation. Julia Haines, University of Virginia
• March 1, 2019: Greening the Hunt. Richard Schroeder, Brandeis University
• Jan. 18, 2019: Grant Writing Seminar

• Dec. 5, 2018: The State of the Individual: Biometric IDs and the Founding of a New "Digital India." Vijayanka Nair, A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Dec. 3, 2018: On the Way: Digital Infrastructures and Imperial Legacies in Iceland. Alix Johnson, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University, Ontario, Canada
• Nov. 30, 2018: Cannibalizing Race: The Queer Lives of Anti-Black Racism in Urban India. Brian Horton, PhD Candidate, Brown University 2019
• Nov. 28, 2018: Citizen Forces: Topologies of Policing and Afterlives of Reform in Turkey. Hayal Akarsu, Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University
• Oct. 12, 2018: Images of the Gods at the Postclassic Maya Urban Capital of Mayapan: Ritualized Production, Use, and Disguise. Marilyn Masson, Professor of Archaeology, University at Albany, SUNY
• Sept. 21, 2018: The Planetary Imagination: Digital Maps, Virtual Presence, and Being on Other Worlds. Lisa Messeri, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Yale University