Department of Anthropology established the Advances in Anthropology Fund in 1996 which was made possible by the generous financial support from an anonymous donor. Drawing upon this fund, the department invites key scholars in the field to the campus to give public lectures and interact with the students and faculty

Dr. Thomas Arcury (Oct. 2005)

Thomas A. Arcury is Professor/Research Director of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where he focuses on environmental and occupational health of African American and Latino agricultural workers. He is also involved in a project to improve the occupational health of Latino poultry processors and has participated in a series of studies on the health of rural older adults.

During his presentation "Reducing Pesticide Exposure to Latino Farmworker Children: Research and Intervention," Dr. Arcury discussed pesticide exposure among Latino farmworker families and the knowledge and beliefs of women in these families concerning this exposure. He also emphasized strategies for policy development and health education interventions regarding pesticide exposure for farmworker families. Dr. Arcury has published more than 140 scholarly articles and serves on four editorial boards, and has received extensive funding from the National Institutes of Health. He was honored with the Praxis Award from the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (WAPA), and was recognized as an Outstanding Researcher by the National Rural Health Association

Dr. Lewis Binford (April 2004)

Dr. Binford is Professor in the Social Science Division of Truman State University. He gave a lecture on "Ethnographic/ethnoarchaeological Research in the Study of Prehistoric Hunter-gatherer Populations." Dr. Binford has conducted archaeological work in Eastern North America but is best known for his research on Neanderthal communities in Europe, having published extensively in these areas. He has also done ethnographic studies of the Nunamiut Eskimo, living with and recording the way these caribou hunters of north Alaska produce an archaeological record, and has carried out similar field studies with Australian aborigines as well as research among the hunter-gatherer peoples of Africa's Kalahari Desert. Dr. Binford is the author of  In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record (2002), Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (1981), For Theory Building in Archaeology (1977), An Archaeological Perspective (with G. I. Quimby, 1972), and New Perspectives in Archeology (with S. R. Binford, 1968)

Dr. Sassaman is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida at Gainsville. He gave a talk on "Landscapes of Structure and Communities of Practice in the Archaic Southeast." Professor Sassaman's primary research interest is the prehistory of hunter-gatherer societies in the American Southeast,  particularly aspects of their social organization, technology, and monumentality and he is a recognized expert on the Archaic period in Southeastern U.S. archeology. He conducts the St. Johns Archaeological Field School on the St. Johns River in Florida, offering students unique research experience. Dr. Sassaman is the author of many articles and has written, edited, or co-edited several texts on archaeology, including The Archaeological Northeast (2000), The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast (1996), Archaeology of the mid-Holocene Southeast (1996), and Native American Interactions: Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretations in the Eastern Woodlands (1995)

Dr. Stack, trained as an anthropologist, is Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California at Berkeley. She employs an anthropological perspective in her research on urban youth, migration, rural and urban families, service sector employment, and other facets of the social context of education. Dr. Stack gave a talk about her book, Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South (1996), a moving chronicle of the reverse migration of African Americans from the Rust Belt to counties in the South where their families have historical ties. Call to Home won the Victor Turner Award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. Dr. Stack's other books include Why Work? The Meaning and Dignity of Work in the Lives of Minority Youth (in press); Holding on to the Land and the Lord (with R. Hall, 1982); and a classic study in urban anthropology, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (1974)

Kathryn S. Oths is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama.  Dr. Oths, a well known medical anthropologist, gave a talk on her work on domestic violence entitled "Give Me Shelter: Temporal Patterns of Women Fleeing Domestic Abuse." Her research on this growing public health concern in the U.S. examines the temporal patterns of crisis line and safe house use and explores women's motivations for seeking help. Dr. Oths' other research interests include comparative medical systems and treatment decisionmaking; traditional and alternative healers, health beliefs, and health behaviors; reproductive health; gender, ethnicity, and health; and public health issues. In addition to her work on domestic violence, Dr. Oths has conducted research on practitioner-patient interactions in a chiropractic clinic, health-seeking behaviors in highland Peru, the social value of food in Brazil, and psychosocial factors in low birth weight in the southern United States. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in these areas and also co-edited (with Servando Hinojosa) A Cross-Cultural Primer for Manual Medicine (in press)

Dr. Mark Nichter is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and holds a joint appointment in UA's College of Public Health in Family and Community Medicine.  He gave a lecture on "Trajectories of Tobacco Use and Dependence: What Has Culture Got To Do With It?" He is coauthor (with Mimi Nichter) of Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies (1996) and the editor of Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnomedicine (1992). Dr. Nichter studies health and illness as it relates to behavior, comparative medical systems and the production of knowledge, and aspects of ethnomedicine. He also researches modes of production and consumption, cultural definitions of normal and abnormal behavior, and gender and power. A past president of the Society for Medical Anthropology, Dr. Nichter received the AAA's Margaret Mead Award in 1990 and the Rudolph Virchow Award in 1992

Dr. Nichter is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and holds a joint appointment in the UA College of Public Health. Her lecture addressed adolescent girls' perception of dieting and body image, detailed in her book Fat Talk: What Girls and Their Parents Say About Dieting (Harvard University Press, 2000).  Dr. Nichter is also coauthor (with Mark Nichter) of Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies (1996).  In addition to work on adolescents and body image, she has also conducted research on tobacco use among youth and school-based prevention programs as well as tobacco use in Asia. Dr. Nichter is the recipient of the 2002 Margaret Mead Award from the AAA

Dr. Baer is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He presented a lecture on "Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America: Issues of Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender," based on his latest book of the same title. Examining medical pluralism in the U.S. from the period of the Revolutionary War through the end of the 20^th century, Dr. Baer marshals a vast array of information on healing systems as diverse as Christian Science, osteopathy, acupuncture, Santeria, evangelical faith healing, Southern Appalachian herbalism, and traditional Navajo medicine. He is the author or editor of eight books on anthropological aspects of race, religion, medicine, and East German society, including Encounters with Biomedicine: Case Studies in Medical Anthropology (1992)

Dr. Barrett, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, gave a talk on issues of racism in Canadian society. His research interests include race and ethnicity in Canada, religion and development in Nigeria, community studies in rural Ontario, gender and violence in Corsica, expatriate communities in the Mediterranean region, and theory and methods in anthropology. Dr. Barrett has done fieldwork on three continents -- Africa, Europe, and North America. Some of his books include Paradise: Class, Commuters, and Ethnicity in Rural Ontario (1993), Is God a Racist? The Right Wing in Canada (1987), The Rebirth of Anthropological Theory (1984), and The Rise and Fall of an African Utopia:  A Wealthy Theocracy in Comparative Perspective (1977)

Dr. Lee is University Professor of Anthropology and formerly chair of the African Studies Program at the University of Toronto. He is internationally recognized for his extensive research and fieldwork on hunting and gathering societies, particularly among the San of Botswana and other foraging communities in Tanzania, Namibia, Alaska, Australia, and the Canadian territories. Dr. Lee's research interests include cultural ecology, African Studies, indigenous peoples, and the history and politics of culture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and past president of the Canadian Anthropology Society and author of over 100 journal articles and book chapters as well as several books, including The Dobe Ju/'hoansi (1993), Politics and History in Band Societies (1982), and Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers (1976)

Dr. Price is affiliated with Columbia University, where she received her PhD in 1969. Her research interests include ecological anthropology, ethnohistory, cultural evolution, anthropological theory, Latin America, and Mesoamerica. She is the author (with William T. Sanders) of Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization (1968), a widely used text on the topic.  Dr. Price recently published an essay (co-authored with William T. Sanders) on “The Native Aristocracy and the Evolution of the Latifundio in the Teotihuacán Valley, 1521-1917” in Ethnohistory (2003)

Dr. Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Social & Political Thought and Director of the Health and Society Program at York University, in Toronto. Her research interests include women and the environment; social reproduction; aging and caregiving-women; family, health, and social change. Dr. Rosenberg has published numerous articles in these areas in anthologies and journals and is the author of Un Mondo Guadagnato? Antropologia, Storia Locale e Storia sulle Alpi (1999), La Diplomatie Paysanne, Abriès en Queyras: Trois Siècle D'Accommodation (1998), and co-author of Through the Kitchen Window (expanded second edition, 1990)

Dr. Sanders is Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Archaeological Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on cultural ecology and ancient settlement patterns in Mesoamerica, especially the Valley of Mexico, the Copan Valley in Honduras, and Guatemala, with special emphasis on the origin and development of prehistoric urbanism and cultural evolution. Dr. Sanders has published widely on Mesoamerican archaeology, including The Gardens of Prehistory:  The Archaeology of Settlement Agriculture in Great Mesoamerica (1992), The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization (co-written with J. R. Parsons and R. S. Santley, 1979), and Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization (1968). In 1985, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences for his definitive contributions to the field of anthropology

Dr. Helms teaches anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She gave a presentation on her work on the art and iconography of pre-Columbian Panama. Dr. Helms' current research interests also include studies of the symbolic significance of the European medieval cloister garden as a sacred space. Dr. Helms has conducted fieldwork in the Miskitu Coast of eastern Nicaragua. Her books include Access to Origins:  Affines, Ancestors, and Aristocrats (1998), Creations of the Rainbow Serpent: Polychrome Ceramic Designs from Ancient Panama (1995), Craft and the Kingly Ideal: Art, Trade, and Power (1993), Ulysses' Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge and Geographical Distance (1988), and Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power (1979)

Dr. Agar, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Maryland, currently works at Ethknoworks in Tacoma Park, Maryland. He is also Senior Research Scientist at the Friends Research International in Baltimore, directing an NIH-funded project to explore illicit drug epidemics. He has researched and published on drug issues since the 1960s and authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters in areas as diverse as ethnographic theory and method, intercultural communication, public health, and organizational culture. Dr. Agar's most recent books include The Professional Stranger:  An Informal Introduction to Ethnography (1996, second edition), Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation (1993), and Interpreting Discourse: Coherence and the Analysis of Ethnographic Interviews (1980). Prior to his agent-based theoretical approach, he spent several years collaborating with the artificial intelligence on discourse analysis of ethnographic interviews

Dr. Whitehead, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Cultural Systems Analysis Group at the University of Maryland, gave a lecture entitled "The Incarceration Epidemic of Young Black Males as a Community Health Problem." His primary area of expertise is the employment of ethnographic and qualitative methods to perform community assessment research and program evaluation. Dr. Whitehead has broad research experience in the U.S., Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, conducting projects on AIDS, cancer, hypertension, food and health, adolescent motherhood, and evaluation of community health programs. Dr. Whitehead has written over thirty journal articles and book chapters and is also co-author (with Barbara V. Reid) of Gender Constructs and Social Issues (1992) and (with Mary Ellen Conaway) Self, Sex, and Gender in Cross-Cultural Fieldwork (1986)

Dr. Williams, Peabody Professor of Archaeology and Ethnology Emeritus at Harvard University, gave a lecture on the history of archaeology in the Lower Mississippi Delta. He was Director of the Lower Mississippi Survey of Peabody Museum from 1958-1993, when he retired from Harvard.  Dr. Williams is the author of Fantastic Archeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (1991) and co-author (with David Browman) of New Perspectives on the Origins of Americanist Archaeology (2002). He is also the co-author of numerous publications on lower Mississippi Delta archeological excavation