Spring 2000
Vol. 5, # 1
Layout/Design: Robyn L. Wingerter
By Danny Pine, '85
I graduated from Grinnell College in 1985, having completed a major in anthropology. Looking back on the past 15 years, it is fascinating to see how my path through Grinnell, winding circuitously through the Anthropology Department, foreshadowed my path in recent years. I entered Grinnell with the goal of becoming a pediatrician, and while I completed an internship in pediatrics, after medical school at the University of Chicago, I changed by specialty from pediatrics to child psychiatry. My experiences at Grinnell had taught me the importance of "not closing doors" and remaining open to multiple perspectives, both on one's academic interests and persona life. These experiences serve me well in my current daily life.
I have spent the past 10 years at the College of Physicians and Surgeon's of Columbia University, where I currently am an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Director of the clinical Core of our NIH Intervention Research Center in pediatric mental illness, and Director of Developmental Biological Research. The bulk of my time is spent in research activities. I am an active researcher who specializes in pediatric anxiety disorders. I currently run three NIH-funded studies, one of which supports work on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a second of which supports work on treatment studies in pediatric anxiety, and the third of which supports work on the nature of risk for anxiety transmitted from parents to children. In recent years, I have become particularly interested in the utility of fMRI. This noninvasive technique allows scientists to actually watch the living brain in action, as it performs so many of the intricately complicated processes that makes us humans the unique organisms that we are. This technique uses sophisticated technology to perform these feats in a non-invasive fashion that is ideally suited for work with children. Much of my current work examines developmental differences in parts of the brain that process emotion in adolescents. For example, my group recently completed a study that uses standard facial expressions of emotion, presented too rapidly in a subliminal fashion to be perceived consciously. This study revealed evidence of greater plasticity among adolescents for the rapid processing of threat stimuli. Other work in my group is seeking to discover the best methods for preventing and treating anxiety in children. Anyone who spent time with me at Grinnell will no doubt find some humor in my current set of activities: anxiety was something for which I always had a great intuitive sense.
Beyond my time in research, I spend a fair amount of time teaching medical students, graduate, and undergraduate students. To be honest, much of this time involves simply working in and directing large teams of individuals to best meet the needs of children who are suffering with emotional problems. I was struck by the amount of teaching involved in these activities during a recent visit with a Grinnell student, Jessica Krueger, to our group. I also lecture regularly in the medical school, as well as on a national and international level.
Finally, I spend a fair amount of time directly providing care for children who are suffering from mental disorders. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most satisfying aspects of my life, as it provides the rare opportunity to directly apply the insights learned in research to help children.
Without question, my training in anthropology at Grinnell has shaped everything that I do in my current job. Without this training, I doubt that I would ever have ended up in a field, such as psychiatry, that holds principles so dear that are central to anthropology. Moreover, even if I had, I know I would never have approached the field with the same sense of wonder, excitement, and enthusiasm that I currently enjoy. My recent contacts both with Jon Andelson (affectionately known as Johnny A by my peers during Grinnell times) and with Jessica Krueger have brought this home to me in a vivid fashion. I look forward to future opportunities to share some of this excitement with other past/current members of the Grinnell community.
Anthro in London
By John Whittaker
Kathy Kamp and I are back on campus this spring after spending fall semester on the Grinnell-in-London program, and London life is fading into memory. It is a pleasure to be back where the air lacks that savour of soot that puts black smudges on your handkerchiefs, and to enjoy a back yard again. On the nostalgia side, we do not get to see weekly theatre performances, or choose between Afghan, Brazilian, and Thai restaurants, or stroll along the banks of the churning, fetid, vital Thames. The program has other even more important advantages. Donna Vinter and Lisa Bowers-Isaacson are two of them. While teaching literature and history courses respectively, they run the smoothest, best-organized off campus program we have ever encountered. Donna had the entire program over to her house for an American Thanksgiving. We saw the Lord Mayor's Show parade with Lisa and her husband, Paul. After years of experience, they have it choreographed to perfection, and we patted the horses and chatted with the postillion while the mayor’s coach was harnessed, then moved to a perfect vantage point to see the whole thing, and concluded the evening watching a gigantic fireworks show over the Thames.
In the first ten weeks, Kathy taught Ethnographic Field Methods, with an emphasis on youth culture, and we taught together "Museum as Text," which served as an excuse to see all sorts of things. The last five weeks, I taught British Prehistory, while David Campbell taught a course on the environmental history of Britain, so we did all our field trips together. Late fall is not the prime season for touring sites. We visited Stonehenge in a cold windy drizzle and walked the trails in the surrounding country, where our bus driver assured us that none of the hundreds of other groups he had taken to Stonehenge had ever gone. A long train ride took us to Scotland, where we also got wet, but saw ancient landscapes at Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, and spent a couple days in the valley of Kilmartin, wandering among Neolithic cairns, Pictish hill forts, and spongy peat bogs.
The current teaching site is in Florida State University's building just down the street from the British Museum, but the museum is in chaos now with a major remodeling program that has caused the removal (we hope temporarily) of many of their most famous exhibits. The section on British Prehistory, always rather weak, is now a mere token, disgraceful in the country's most important museum, so it was not as much use for my class as hoped. Anyone interested in prehistory will do much better at the Museum of London, which has one of the best prehistoric, Roman, and historic displays anywhere.
Alum News
Mike Galaty '91 is now teaching in the Sociology/Anthropology Department at Millsaps College, in Jackson Mississippi, a small college much like Grinnell. John Whittaker visited to give a public lecture on "The Curse of the Runestone: Archaeological Frauds and Fantasies" and to plan for this summer. Mike, one of the leaders of the Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Program, a joint Albanian/American survey project, has convince John to spend a couple of weeks test excavating a small Paleolithic site in the Albanian countryside.
Steve Nash '86, in the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, gave John Whittaker an eye-popping tour of some of the treasures under his care when John visited Chicago to give a flintknapping demonstration under the totem pole in the museum and collaborate with Anna Roosevelt on some African stone tools.
Sharon Joy Lite '92 is doing research on vegetation communities on the San Pedro River in Tucson, AZ.
Tina Popson '97 graduated from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Graduate School in Museum Studies and was recently hired as Director of Education at Salisbury House in Des Moines, IA.
Courtney Birkett '99, now pursuing a graduate degree in Historical Archaeology at William and Mary reports: "Our classes this semester are cultural theory, which I already had at Grinnell, but it's required; artifacts with a zombie-like professor, which so far has been things I learned in field school; Cultural Resource Management, which will probably be the most useful class and we get to dig later; and historical archaeology, which so far has involved reading really boring stuff about capitalism that hardly mentions archaeology. It will get better though, because the books include Uncommon Ground and A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves, which I already have. The class isn't in one of the college buildings, though. We have to walk half way across town because the prof also works for Colonial Williamsburg. There are ravines all around town, so I have to walk uphill both directions.
Megan Bryant '91 is the Registrar/Collections Manager and also Interim Director of Interpretation at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas (where JFK was assassinated). She is on the Program Planning Committee for the 2000 meeting of the Texas Association of Museums. She recently visited Vicky Michener '91 in Washington DC, and "dragged" her through a micro-detailed visit to the National Gallery's Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology exhibit. Megan plans a vacation in England this June, where no doubt the British Museum will come under her critical scrutiny. If only they would listen to her!
Lesley Kadish '99 has been working at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, and making friends at the Hopi village of Old Oraibi.
Bill Eichman '97 returned in the Fall from two years of teaching English in Hungary, and has been doing woodwork with Byron Worley in town, while planning to go to graduate school in anthropology and archaeology next year.
The flintknapping circle in the basement of Goodnow has now expanded, partly through the efforts of Byron Worley and Bill Eichman '97 to include not just John Whittaker and those two alumns, but several current students, two non-students from Newton and Des Moines, one student and one faculty from UNI. We will be giving a public demonstration during "Buffalo Day" (June 10) at the Neil Smith Nature Wildlife Preserve and Prairie Learning Center near Des Moines.
Jon Till '89 has returned to school in the graduate program at University of Colorado, Boulder. At this writing, he is about to take his comprehensive exams, focusing on archaeological method and theory. Give'em hell!
Celebrating the New Millenium in Shanghai
By Mansir Petrie '99
On the first day of the new millenium, I ate lunch with friends in Shanghai. We talked about the prospects that in our life time planes/shuttles would fly in subspace and take passengers across the world to Beijing, Jakarta, Moscow, Tokyo....in a 4-5 hours-'Progress', development, fast and seemingly relentless. Such ponderings made me feel a little lost. All the Chinese I have talked to here are really excited about China's recent induction into the WTO. They talk of owning cars as Americans do and getting more exposure to Western technology. They seem so incredibly eager to develop. How will the world (China) operate when these five hour flights are possible? Granted, the movement at which things are changing makes my 22 year old mind feel old. I looked at Shanghai on New Year's Eve and saw a city that has, for the most part, completely remodeled itself in the last 15 years. The beautiful European/German architecture of the 18th and 19th Century fill in the ground layer and sub-canopy, while teenager skyscrapers do their thing in the high canopy. In only two months since my last visit, I noticed new structures. So on January 1st, I am again reminded of what my 94 year old grandmother has said religiously since I have known her: "accept and adjust."
Forty-five minutes before the 21st Century, my friends and I were making deals with a few of the countless Chinese crowd control police spread out all over down-town. They wore new editions of the classic People's Liberation Army uniform from China's Cultural Revolution - a long, green coat with badges, metals, and a fur collar. yes, I am glad they were there. There were people everywhere, though they were more tame than a group of Americans this size would be at the eve of the new Millenium. Very little yelling, a few funny outfits, and one or two women wore premature bursts of confetti. The guards just took orders, and we were soon let through only to begin again with another line of police. We discussed more. I thought of all the taxi drivers in Shanghai. In some places the traffic was completely blocked. They were destined to spend it with a stranger while the meter ticked, only to drive again the next day for 12-14 hours. We were let through and made it, with a half hour to spare, to our Hotel, the Pu Jiang Hotel. This hotel overlooks Shanghai's Bund and harbor. Foreigners enjoyed this view when the Pu Jiang was the first hotel in Shanghai. We climbed old creaking well-worn wooden steps. The hallways were wide and everything was solid. I thought of all the workers who probably could barely imagine the 20'th Century, let alone, the 21st Century. We joined friends in a three-room corner suite overlooking the harbor, the blocked streets, and all the Chinese people. CNN played in the background. Champagne and smiles, friends and good-feelings, and the Millennium came. We had practice because someone's watch was five minutes fast. The real thing did arrive and all of us looked across the harbor over the skyline at fireworks. They thundered. I wasn't sure if it was Y2K or the boom of gun powder. We gazed in awe in the first moments of the new Millennium. The world did not unbuckle in front our eyes. The fast paced signs of modernity still flashed, whether I wanted them to or not. I was a child gazing at old fireworks, entertained as ever. I was also a young adult gazing at the future ahead of me. The night was simply glorious.
I walked with a friend at four a.m. It was rush hour. People and buses moved everywhere. The streets were cluttered with snack food refuse. In a few hours, the street cleaner shifts(with their well-worn uniforms) would come to work, and the mess would be cleaned. People were everywhere on January 1st. The trains worked, and even the computers that kept our score when we went bowling that day made it through to the new millenium.
Publications
Whittaker, J.
1999 Alonia: The Ethnoarchaeology of Cypriot Threshing Floors. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12(1):7-25.
Whittaker, J. and M. Stafford
1999 Replicas, Fakes, and Art: The Twentieth Century Stone Age and its Effects on Archaeology. American Antiquity 64(2):203-214.
Galaty, Michael, '91
Nestor's Wine Cups: Investigating Ceramic Manufacture and Exchange in a Late Bronze Age Mycenean State. British Archaeological Reports, International Series, Oxford, 1999.
Galaty, Michael, '91
Rethinking Mycenean Palaces: New Interpretations of an Old Idea. (edited with W. Parkinson). UCLA Institute of Archaeology Monograph 41, Los Angeles, 1999.
Kamp, Kathy
Village to Tell: Household Ethnoarchaeology in Syria in Near Eastern Archaeology and have Where Have All the Children Gone?: The Archaeology of Childhood forthcoming in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.
Gibel Azoulay, Katya
"Racial Categories and Public Identities" has been accepted for eds. Lisa Tessman and Ami Bar-On Jewish Locations: Traversing Racialized Landscapes (Rowman & Littlefield) to be published in 2000.
Katya Gibel Azoulay has also been invited to write a review essay for the American Anthropologist on the following books: From Immigrant to Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia by Rakhmiel Peltz; A Portrait of the American Jewish Community by Norman Linzer, David J. Schnall, and Jerome A Chanes, eds; How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America by Karen Brodkin; and Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants Across America by Jack Glazier.
Andelson, Jon
Jon wrote the entry on "Ebenezer Society" for the multi-volume ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK STATE, to be published this year by Syracuse University Press. The Ebenezer Society near Buffalo, N.Y., was the first American home of the Amana Society in the 1840s and '50s.
Andelson, Jon
He is working on an article solicited by the UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY and tentatively titled, "Ecology, Economics, and Adaptation in Rockville, Utah, 1862-1970." This paper draws on a paper he delivered at a conference in September on ethnographic and ethnohistorical research that he did in the summer of 1970.
Public Presentations
Katya Gibel Azoulay:
Wed 22 March -- "Myths of Identity" sponsored by American Jewish Committee -- Milwaukee Chapter and America's Black Holocaust Museum. Katya was a guest on Bob Bach's AT TEN on WUWM, a local affiliate of NPR as well as live on Eric Von's "The Morning Magazine" WMCS two mornings in a row.
Thurs. 30 March -- "E-racing the Past and the Politics of "Mixed-race" in the 21st Century" Women Writers Series of the African American Studies and Research Center, Purdue University.
9-12 April, "Historicizing 'Mixed-race' and Post-Modern Amnesia," International Symposium, "The Challenge of Difference: Articulating Gender, Race and Class" organized by The Social Science Postgraduate Programme of the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil.
31May -2 June, "Historicizing Mixed-Race, Multiculturalism and Race Preferences. Alumni College, Grinnell College.
John Whittaker:
At the 12th International Rock Art Congress in Ripon, Wisconsin, May 1999, John Whittaker presented a paper "Some Experiments in Petroglyph Technology," written with Sarah Koeman and Rachel Taylor. Grant McCall 01 presented a paper on his work in southern Africa, "Ars Gratia Artis? A Case Study in Rock Art Interpretation."
Gautam Ghosh:
Gautam was invited to give a talk at Dept of Anthropology, Uni versity of Iowa in November. He was also invited to Chair and present on a Presidential Panel at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, in Chicago in November. In March, Gautam was invited to present a paper to the Deptartment of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania and invited to present a paper to dept of Historical Sociology at SUNY Binghamton. Gautam will be presenting a paper to International Conference on Religion and Violence, University of Amsterdam, in May. He has also been selected to participate in a workshop at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, July and August. He has been invited to contribute papers to forthcoming volumes,, one on "Globalization and South Asia," and the other on "Refugees and Temporalities." Gautam has been offered a tenure-track position in anthropology at University of Pennsylvania.
Jon Andelson:
In July he will give a paper at the 17th North American Prairie Conference titled, "An Experimental Multidisciplinary Program in Prairie Studies at the College Level," describing the origin and goals of the college's new Center for Prairie Studies.
Iowa Academy of Science Meetings
are Venue for Many Presentations
Grinnellians presenting papers at the Annual Meeting of the Iowa Academy of Sciences in Des Moines in April will include Anthro students Lara Ratzlaff, Sarah Silberman, Christina Hanson, and Grant McCall. Professors John Whittaker and Ken Christiansen (Biology) will give presentations in a symposium on teaching evolution. Jon Andelson will present a paper titled, "Interdisciplinary Place-Based Learning Through the Study of County Historical Ecology at the College Level." This paper is an outgrowth of the senior seminar in Environmental Studies he is teaching, "An Environmental History of Poweshiek County." His presentation will describe the nature of his experimental course, its successes and challenges, and will serve as a prelude to the student papers that will be presented as poster papers at the same conference, including posters by anthropology majors Angela Crowley-Koch, Christina Peters, and Alex Rosenthal..
Society For American Archaeology
Annual Meetings, 2000
Kathy Kamp and John Whittaker attended the SAA meetings in Philadelphia, April 6-9. Kathy had organized a symposium on Childhood in the Prehistoric Puebloan Southwest, and presented a paper entitled "Child Labor in the Prehistoric Southwestern Pueblos: Necessary, Not Evil." Kristin Sobolik, who has been teaching here this past year while on sabbatical from University of Maine, presented "Childrens Health in the Prehistoric Southwest" in the symposium.
A number of other Grinnellians were at the meetings, and several enjoyed dinner together at an appropriately exotic Burmese restaurant. Rob Brubaker, 86 is finishing dissertation work at the University of Michigan. Mike Galaty, 91 presented a paper (with several colleagues) on "The Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Project, Central Albania: Results of the 1998-1999 Survey Seasons." Jon Till , 89s poster presentation (with colleague) "Rock Art as Road Markers in the Northern Southwest" came from his research in Southeast Utah for his masters thesis at University of Colorado. Steve Nash 86 spoke on "Not So Talkative Tree-Rings: Why Did Archaeologists Wait for an Astronomer to Establish Tree-Ring Dating?" Jon Van Hoose, '92, who is in graduate school at the U. of New Mexico, presented "Information Transmission and Technological Change in Pottery Producing Systems." Mike Nealey 84, who is teaching at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, was seen in the distance. Bill Green, 74, Iowa State Archaeologists paper was "Native Cartography and Historical Memory: Integrating Ioway Archaeology and History." Barry Brenton, who taught here 1994- 1996 and is now at St. Johns University, continues with his interests in Native American foodways: "The Archaeology of Alkali Processing Technologies Among New World Maize Horticulturalists."
Hingtgen Speaks on Gay Marriage
In March, Steve Hingtgen, Anthropology graduate from the class of 1988, made a return visit to Grinnell to talk about his recent work formulating the countrys first law allowing same sex couples to establish legal unions, similar to those of a marriage contract. This is ground-breaking legislation, so we were particularly lucky to get to hear about it from the vantage point of someone at the front lines.
In the fall of 1998 Steve ran as a Progressive Party candidate and was elected to the Vermont State House of Representatives where he was appointed to the Judiciary Committee. Normally this is a pretty marginal committee (thus a good assignment for someone new from an out-of-power party), but in December the Vermont high court ruled that same-sex couples were being unconstitutionally denied the benefits of marriage. This decision thrust upon the legislature the task of amending state laws to either allow gay marriages or create some kind of domestic partnership status.
After many public forums, reading mountains of mail, and talking to a variety of interested parties, the Judicial Committee came up with the idea of a "civil union." Civil unions would provide gay couples with some 300 state benefits or privileges already available to married couples, including such areas as inheritance, property transfers, medical decisions, insurance and taxes. After committing to a civil union, in order to break up a couple would have to go through a legal dissolution process similar to a divorce. The major difference between the civil union and a marriage is portability, since more than 30 states have passed laws denying recognition to same-sex "marriages" performed in other states.
The ending to the story, as most of you are probably already aware, is a happy one. On March 16 the civil union bill was approved by the Vermont House in a 76-69 vote.
If any of the rest of you are involved in interesting social or political issues or activism, let us know. It is certainly fun for old friends to hear about your activities, and the Rosenfield Program has some funding available for speakers like Steve, whose activities concern either human rights or international relations.
Virtual Primates
Vicki Bentley-Condit
With the help of Alex Wirth-Cauchon, the media and technology specialist for the Social Studies division, I have developed an Olive Baboon Virtual Fieldwork CD for use in my 200-level primate course. We have actually been working on this project for more than a year and have just recently gotten it to the point where I could use it in a course. My idea behind creating this CD was to provide students with some sort of "hands-on" experience with nonhuman primates (in a locale where hands-on experience with nonhuman primates is not easy to get). I saw the CD as being a culminating experience to the primate behavior course. We would spend the semester examining various primates and their behaviors and then the students would have an opportunity to apply what they had learned via the interactive CD. All of the information (text, photos, video clips) on the CD is specifically about olive baboons. I collected the photos and video footage over the past three summers at the SFBR in San Antonio. The CD is arranged so that the student will work through various sections sequentially. First, there is a general introduction to olive baboons. Second, there is a section where one learns to distinguish various age and sex categories. Third, the student works through the ethogram (a behavioral repertoire) of the baboon, learning definitions, codes, and watching short clips of the various behaviors. The fourth section is a short quiz where a student can test her/his knowledge and receive a score before proceeding to the fifth section - the virtual fieldwork. It is this section that is the coup de grâce of the CD. Here, the student is asked to watch several video clips ranging in length from just over 1 minute to approximately 5 minutes and to record behavioral data from the perspective of different individuals or using different methodologies. In total, the student collects approximately 40 minutes of data that she/he can then use as the basis of a research paper. Alex and I are still refining the CD. There are some things I want to change, more clips I want to add, etc. Overall, though, the CD and its use was a great success. My students enjoyed it, learned a lot about primate behavior, and discovered just how difficult it is to do this type of research. Alex and I are hoping the rest of the world finds this project equally exciting as we have submitted to it several publishers. Watch for Virtual Baboons in a bookstore near you!
A Message From the Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Many of the programs and opportunities which academic departments (including the Anthropology Department) are able to offer results from generous alumni support of the Grinnell Annual Fund.
Gifts to the annual fund give Grinnell the flexibility to develop and enhance many valuable programs. For example, this summer, 68 students will participate in funded internships. In addition, annual fund gifts help support the new Alumni Scholars Program, which brings recent graduates to campus to speak with students about their graduate school research. Your support makes it possible for Grinnell to continue offering these innovative programs.
A portion of the funds allocated to individual departments each year also comes from annual fund contributions. These funds allow departments to send students to conferences, purchase library resources, and hold social events for majors.
Gifts need not be large to make a real difference in the lives of students. Granting organizations often weigh the percentage of alumni who give as they decide which schools deserve funding. Ranking services, such as U.S. News and World Report, use alumni giving percentages as a measure of satisfaction.
Please give Grinnell your vote of confidence with your gift to the annual fund before the fiscal year ends on June 30. Please call 800-241-5084 to make a gift or pledge, or try our secure web site at www.alumonline.grinnell.edu.
Nieka Apell '93
Associate Director of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving
Office of Alumni Relations and Development
Grinnell College
PO Box 805
Grinnell, IA 50112
800-241-5084