Past Events
Fall 2020
September 25, 2020
Offered by Professors Jon Anjaria and Charles GoldenOctober 2, 2020
Offered by Professors Ellen Schattschneider and Javier Urcid
October 9, 2020
The Dept of Anthropology has invited Laurence Ralph, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton, Daunasia Yancey, a leader of Black Lives Matter Boston, and Rev. Karlene Griffiths Sekou, a grassroots community public health practitioner, strategist and organizer, to participate in a digital discussion and Q&A for our October 9th BARS (Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar) event. Ralph is the author of the powerful recent book The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence, based on archival work and interviews with officers and victims of the Chicago Police Department’s long history of torturing young men of color. Yancey has been a strategist and organizer since her teen years when she worked for the Boston Alliance of LGBT Youth, and most recently has been organizing direct action and community building opportunities as a leader of Boston BLM. Sekou is a scholar, public theologian and speaker, community organizer, and human rights advocate active in the Black Lives Matter Movement. These inspiring individuals will come together to engage in a zoom dialogue between scholar and activist, responding to a number of questions formulated by anthropology graduate students.
October 16, 2020
Presentation of the first direct archaeological evidence of nixtamalization, a chemical process that improves the nutritional value of maize, among the ancient Maya people of Guatemala. Analysis of microbotanical remains recovered from two chultuns, or pits cut into bedrock, in a Late and Terminal Classic period residential group at the site of San Bartolo, Petén, Guatemala, provides the first archaeological recovery of maize starch spherulites, a unique byproduct of nixtamalization, and thus the earliest direct evidence of that process in the archaeological record. The presence of helminth eggs within the same contexts indicates that the pits were used as latrines and as middens for the disposal of domestic refuse, including wastewater from nixtamalization. These findings shed light on the daily lives of ancient Maya commoners and inform discussions of subsistence and waste management in Maya cities.
October 23, 2020
On October 23 at 2 PM the film Border South will be screened, with comments by Raul Paz Pastrana and Ieva Jusionyte, PhD '12. Raúl Pastrana’s compassionate film rides with a Nicaraguan migrant trying to cross into America, and a US researcher seeking traces of others who never made it.October 30, 2020
Faculty PanelNovember 6, 2020
Professor Freidel studies the emergence and fluorescence of government institutions among the lowland Maya of southeastern Mexico and Central America. Currently he is directing long-term research at the royal city of El Perú, ancient Waka’, in northwestern Petén, Guatemala.
November 10, 2020
Film screening and discussion with director Joelle Powe, Dr. Carolyn Cooper and Latonya Style. "Out There Without Fear: Jamaica's Dancehall" explores the global impact of Jamaica's Dancehall dancers and their struggle for local recognition. This is a documentary about art, dance, classism, violence, sexuality, the empowerment of women, the church, blackness, roots, tourism and intercultural exchange.
November 13, 2020
Professor Jon Anjaria and Ingrid Ramón Parra, a design anthropologist and founder of Power of Anthropology, discuss how academically-trained anthropologists have succeeded in industry. Ingrid will present real-life examples of people who have made the transition from academics to an industry job.
November 20, 2020
Offered by Professors Patricia Alvarez and Brian Horton
Spring 2020
Adrienne Keene: "I just had to be there: Experiences of Indigenous students in the #NoDAPL movement"
February 7th 2020
Discrimination, Harassment and Sexual Misconduct - Sonia Jurado, Office of Equal Opportunity
January 17th, 2020
Fall 2019
Landscapes of Inequality
Annie Danis
Monday, December 9th, 12:00 pm, Schawartz 103
Environments of British Caribbean Rum Production
Charlotte (Charlie) Goudge, Bristol University
Friday, December 6, 2:30 pm, Schwartz 103
Excavating Empire: The Material World of Precolonial, Colonial, Postcolonial and Decoloniality
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Hampshire College
Tuesday, November 19, 4:00 pm, Shapiro Science Center LL16
Archaeologies of Whiteness from the West Indies to West Africa
Matthew Reilly, City College of New York
Friday, November 15, 2:00 pm, Schwartz 103
My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File
Katherine Verdery, City University of New York
Friday, November 8, 2:30 pm, Mandel G-3
The Rules of Friendship and Debt in Jakarta’s New Economy
Doreen Lee, Northeastern University
Friday, October 25, 2:30 pm, Schwartz 103
Workshop: Integrating Theory
October 18, 2:30 pm, Schwartz 103
Workshop: Grant Writing
October 11, 2:30 pm, Schwartz 103
Department Welcome Reception
September 6, 2:30 pm, Schwartz 103
Workshop: Strategies for Grad School Success
August 30, 2:30 pm, Schwartz 103
Spring 2019
Anthropology Senior Research Day
May 3, 2019
Pursuing Diverse Careers: a Panel Discussion with Alt-Ac Alumni
April 5, 2019
- 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
Graduate Student Open House
March 15, 2019
The Archaeology of Indentured Labor: Domestic Landscapes and Everyday Life on a Mauritian Plantation
Julia Haines, University of Virginia
March 8, 2019
Greening the Hunt
Richard Schroeder, Brandeis University
March 1, 2019
Grant Writing Seminar
Jan. 18, 2019
Fall 2018
The State of the Individual: Biometric IDs and the Founding of a New "Digital India"
Dec. 5, 2018
Talk by Vijayanka Nair, A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Wisconsin, Madison
On the Way: Digital Infrastructures and Imperial Legacies in Iceland
Dec. 3, 2018
Talk by Alix Johnson, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University, Ontario, Canada
Cannibalizing Race: The Queer Lives of Anti-Black Racism in Urban India
Nov. 30, 2018
Talk by Brian Horton, PhD Candidate, Brown University 2019
Citizen Forces: Topologies of Policing and Afterlives of Reform in Turkey
Nov. 28, 2018
Talk by Hayal Akarsu, Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University
Images of the Gods at the Postclassic Maya Urban Capital of Mayapan: Ritualized Production, Use, and Disguise
Oct. 12, 2018
Talk by Marilyn Masson, Professor of Archaeology, University at Albany, SUNY
The Planetary Imagination: Digital Maps, Virtual Presence, and Being on Other Worlds
Sept. 21, 2018
Talk by Lisa Messeri, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Yale University