Fall 2022
MESSAGE FROM OUR CHAIR
Hello all! As the fall semester begins, campus finally feels like the before times, and we are learning to live with COVID and thrive. However, the lessons learned during the last two years are on display with some students and professors still opting to wear masks and get outside for their business. We also have developed skillsets using virtual tools to augment our teaching and the way we convene and work. Things feel good.
This newsletter spotlights the remarkable Kathy Galvin. She was honored this spring with the CSU’s top faculty award, the University Distinguished Professorship. Kathy joins Kate Browne in this select group of university scholars, marking the second anthropologist to receive recognition. I know you will join me in offering Kathy heartfelt congratulations. Teaching and research successes continued to accrue this year with the publication of Adrienne Cohen’s new book and the convening of Andrew Du’s multidisciplinary, multi-institution 3-day workshop, among other highlights. This newsletter describes many other events to celebrate as we return to the engagement and student training in which we take so much pride.
Don’t be strangers!
Best, Mica
DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS
Galvin Wins University Distinguished Professor Award
A pioneer in interdisciplinary anthropological research, Professor Kathleen Galvin has been recognized with the highest academic honor given to faculty at CSU, recognizing her 30-plus-year career integrating anthropology and conservation and serving campus.
READ MORE about Galvin’s University Distinguished Professor Award
Cohen Explores Power of West African Dance in Award-Winning Book
Assistant Professor Adrienne Cohen has won the 2022 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award from the Dance Studies Association for Infinite Repertoire (2021), her book exploring the enduring and evolving connections between Guinea’s vibrant dance scene and the country’s politics. Cohen spent four years on and off, living, working, dancing and researching in Guinea.
READ MORE about Cohen’s book and work in Guinea including an excerpt
HEAR Cohen speak about the book and her research (Conversations in Atlantic Theory podcast)
Department Hosts Host Paleoecology Summit
Assistant Professor Andrew Du and colleagues convened a three-day Hominin Paleoecology Workshop at CSU this May. The meeting brought together nearly 30 paleoanthropologists and researchers from CSU and around the world to launch a more coordinated approach to paleoecological modeling and studies.
READ MORE about the Paleoecology Summit
New Fossil Cast Collection Offers Fascinating Teaching Materials
An impressive, new collection of fossil casts donated to the department will provide students and professors with an exciting new set of teaching and research materials. Doctoral candidate Alex Pelissero spent the summer identifying and organizing the new casts and shares a few of his favorite and most surprising specimens.
READ MORE about the Frayer Collection
UPCOMING EVENTS
September 28 Anthropology and Geography Seminar Series: Whitney L. Duncan, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado
Lory Student Center 324, 2:00-3:00pm. Open to the public
October 15 International Archaeology Day Expo, Colorado Parks & Wildlife
Roxborough Intermediate School, Littleton || Program Information
October 15 Rocky Mountain Biological Anthropology Association 2022 Annual Meeting
YMCA of the Rockies, Estes Park || Meeting Information and Registration
October 22-23 Colorado Archaeological Society Annual Meeting
Embassy Suites by Hilton, Loveland || Meeting Information and Registration
November 16 Graduate Student Showcase
Grand Ballroom, Lory Student Center
December 2 Anthropology and Geography Seminar Series: Grace Veatch, Postdoctoral Fellow, Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution
Lory Student Center 304-306, 4-5pm. Open to the public
December 16 Fall 2022 Commencement
Visit our homepage to stay posted on new seminar talks and event details
NEWS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Clark Building Slated for Expansion
This spring, CSU and the College of Liberal Arts received news that the state legislature and governor approved $38 million for an expansion and transformation of the Clark Building, home to our department, Archaeological Repository, and other labs.
READ MORE in CSU SOURCE
Department Exhibition Gallery and Student Lounge Opens
ANTHGR has opened a new public exhibit space and student lounge inside the Clark Building, with materials, display cases, and a series of illustrated posters created and curated by students and professors.
Furthering Perspectives Journal Published
Furthering Perspectives: Anthropological Views of the World is the annual, peer-reviewed journal of the Anthropology Graduate Student Society. Volume 11 (2022) collects original research by undergraduate and graduate students.
Heading Off Vaccine Hesitancy
When FEMA asked why people in rural communities were hesitant toward COVID vaccines, the agency turned to CSU Professor Emeritus Kate Browne, graduate student Joshua Bauer, and other CSU cultural anthropologists to help gather answers and solutions
READ MORE via CSU SOURCE
MORE ACHIEVEMENTS!
- Our Seminar Series hosted researchers and speakers from CSU, University of Colorado, and University of Northern Colorado this past spring. Watch Zack Throckmorton's April 2022 talk on Homo naledi, its 2014 discovery in South Africa, and implications for understanding the evolution of bipedalism in hominins via ANTHGR YouTube.
- Professor Jason LaBelle spoke with the Coloradoan's "The Way It Was" podcast about the history and migrations of the Folsom peoples who lived and moved across northern Colorado thousands of years ago. Listen to the podcast via SoundCloud.
- Amanda Kowalski won the Best in Show - Oral Presentation Award at the CURC (Celebrate Undergraduate Research and Creativity) Symposium for the second straight year! Amanda presented on research she has conducted as a student at CSU on the disturbance patterns and impacts caused by the interactions of bark beetles and wildfires in Colorado and Southern Rockies forests. Her advisor is Dr. Jason Sibold. After completing a double major in Anthropology and Geography this spring, Amanda is now a master's student at CSU in the GDPE program, again working with Sibold.
- CSU Anthropology students swept the student awards at this year's Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists annual meeting in Denver! Ph.D candidate Kelton Meyer won the graduate student paper award for his work on the Reddin (Folsom Culture) site in southern Colorado. Riley Limbaugh won the award for best undergraduate student poster on his work at the Julesburg, Colo. historical site. Robert Madden, graduate student, won for the best graduate student poster for his studies of the Busse Cache, a collection of stone blades likely dating to the Clovis people.
- The Talking Anthropology and Geography Trunk Show participated with and hosted several school outreach groups and events so far in 2022. Thanks to Poudre High School and Dunn Elementary School in Fort Collins, and to Windsor Archaeology Day for letting us share what our fields and careers are all about! Contact us if you'd like to arrange a school visit, field trip, or lesson for the coming year!
SELECTED FACULTY RESEARCH & ENGAGEMENT
Edward Henry
- Associate Professor
Edward Henry is a lead investigator on a National Science Foundation award to create a "21st-Century atlas" of Cahokia, the prominent "mound-building" Mississippian Culture site in North America. The project will be a collaborative effort with other universities, governments, and tribes. Prof. Stephen Leisz is also part of the project, which will conduct a magnetometer survey using GIS and geospatial analysis to model Cahokia's rapid development and expansion, in the 10th and 11th centuries C.E.
Carrie Chennault
- Assistant Professor
Carrie Chennault is a co-investigator on a $100,000 NASA Equity and Environmental Justice Grant to map environmental injustices that occur at U.S. prisons. Chennault is also partnering with Sociology Professor Joshua Sbicca to map the nationwide trends in prison agriculture and to understand how prison conditions contribute to racial capitalism. Chennault and Sbicca won a 2022 Ann Gill Faculty Development Award for Collaborative Projects from the College of Liberal Arts for their work.
Adrienne Cohen
- Associate Professor
With funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Adrienne Cohen has interviewed and studied U.S. climbers and their "posthuman intimacies" with rock and place. In an essay for Climbing Magazine, she asks whether climbers' feelings toward rocks as animate and even sentient objects suggest a new and nuanced view of boulders and stone deserving of heightened legal protection.
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass
- Professor
Jeffrey Snodgrass has studied the effects of social media and online (and offline) communities on people's well-being, disease risk, and immunity levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, receiving funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Foundation for Psychocultural Research. Snodgrass, with CSU graduate students and other colleagues, has published findings in the journal Psychoneuroendrocrinology. Snodgrass also has forthcoming text publishing this fall, The Avatar Faculty.
Andrew Du
- Assistant Professor
Andrew Du has coauthored recently published articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which individually examined the importance of meat-eating and the role of climate change in driving human evolution over millions of years, using fossil data and other records. The findings were covered by NBC News, Wired, and other media.
Michael Pante
- Professor and Chair
Lauded for his field-shaping, "game-changing" research and innovation in paleoanthropology and zooarchaeology, Michael Pante won the 2022 Celebrate! CSU Scholarship Impact Award, Recent Achievement. Pante was recognized for his contributions to the fields from the renowned Olduvai Gorge site in Tanzania to his campus lab.
Chris Fisher
- Professor
Chris Fisher spoke with the Wall Street Journal this summer about archaeologists' use of LiDAR, a new discovery of ancient pyramids and settlements in the Bolivian Amazon using LiDAR, and how the technology is transforming the field and enabling new findings that can benefit conservation and cultural preservation around the globe. Read the WSJ story and read Fisher's commentary on the Bolivian findings in the journal Nature.
Emily Wilson
- Senior Instructor
This summer, Emily Wilson co-led an Education Abroad course (ANTH/HIST 382) that took students to England to trek the length of Hadrian's Wall and to learn about Roman history and archaeology in the United Kingdom. Students spent 10 days in England and continue course work on campus this fall. Wilson has also co-developed and will co-lead a course to visit the ruins at Pompeii (ANTH/HIST 392) during the Spring 2023 semester.
Find more faculty research, publications, grants & awards
at our Department Scholarship page
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Department Email cla-anthro_info@mail.colostate.edu || Phone 970-491-5447