2019 Anthropology Senior Thesis Colloquium

SENIOR THESIS COLLOQUIUM

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2019 TOZZER 203, 21 DIVINITY AVE

PROGRAM 10:00

WELCOME

10:05 - 10:20

MARTY BERGER ADVISOR: GEORGE PAUL MEIU BEYOND “SEX OFFENDERS”: DECONSTRUCTING THE SPACETIME OF SURVEILLANCE

10:20 - 10:35 DANIEL WOOD ADVISORS: PHILIP KAO AND COURTNEY WITTEKIND

WRITING AGAINST THE “BENGALI CRISIS” TRACING THE REPRODUCTION OF PRECARITY AND ROHINGYA BARE LIFE IN MYANMAR LANGUAGE MEDIASCAPES

10:35 - 10:50

VICTORIA BOLAÑOS ADVISORS: IEVA JUSIONYTE, DAMINA KHAIRA, FRANCES HAGOPIAN, MANUEL MELENDEZ (GOV.) GOD SAVE THEIR SOULS: AN ANALYSIS OF CORE CONSTITUENCIES, CHURCHES, AND GANG VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR

10:50 - 11:05

BREAK

11:05 -11:20

ESMÉ TRAHAIR ADVISOR: ARTHUR KLEINMAN “THE SONS OF ALL AUSTRALIA”: MASCULINITIES, MENTAL HEALTH, AND THE ‘AUSSIE BLOKE’

11:20 - 11:35 ISA LAPUERTA ADVISORS: PHILIP KAO AND YOSVANY TERRY (MUSIC)

“CANTAR MIS VERSOS DEL ALMA”: HOW MUSICIANS NAVIGATE IDENTITY, COMMODIFICATION, AND PERSONHOOD IN CUBA’S TOURISM INDUSTRY 11:35 - 11:50

IFEOLUWA OBAYAN ADVISORS: ARTHUR KLEINMAN, OMAR SULTAN HAQUE, DANIEL NEEDLEMAN (BIOENGIN.) ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY: ETHICAL AND ECONOMIC INQUIRIES WITHIN THE LABORATORY

11:50 - 12:05

BREAK

12:05 - 12:20

BRITTANY ELLIS ADVISOR: MATTHEW LIEBMANN EXCAVATING ETHICS: COMMUNITY-BASED ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

12:20 - 12:35

NORMAN STORER ADVISORS: DIANA LOREN AND AMBROGIO CAMOZZI PISTOJA (ROMANCE LANG. & LIT.) “L’AGO E ‘L FUSO E L’ARCOLAIO”: A LITERARY ARCHAEOLOGY OF GENDERED OBJECTS IN THE ‘DECAMERON’

12:35

CLOSING REMARKS

MARTY BERGER Beyond “Sex Offenders”: Deconstructing the Spacetime of Surveillance Faculty Advisor: George Paul Meiu

This thesis revolves around three for-profit mobile home parks in Orlando, Florida that house almost three hundred men convicted of sex crimes. State law bars them from establishing residency within one thousand feet of schools, parks, playgrounds, and daycares. These restrictions last until they die, as does the circulation of their personal information and criminal histories in a public database. The few anthropological works about the “sex offender” primarily draw their data from closed and controlled environments: prison, therapy sessions, and the archive. I supplement this literature by focusing on my interlocutors in everyday life as they negotiate space, time, kinship, and financial exchange. This thesis argues that the indeterminacy of sex thwarts the efforts of surveillance practices to give the “offender” a locatable and containable form. By tracing the intersubjective processes that produce the “sex offender,” I denaturalize the category while exploring its power to organize social life.

Marty Berger concentrates in Social Anthropology with a secondary in African American Studies.

At Harvard, he has served as Interviews Editor for the Harvard Political Review, as well as a research assistant for Professor Laurence Ralph and Professor Aisha Khan from New York University. Next year, he will travel to Quito, Ecuador to conduct ethnographic research for a project about the globalization of exoneration work. Marty aspires to become a public interest attorney and join the fight for a more compassionate and equitable criminal justice system.

VICTORIA BOLAÑOS

God Save Their Souls: An Analysis of Core Constituencies, Churches, and Gang Violence in El Salvador Faculty Advisors: Ieva Jusionyte, Damina Khaira, Frances Hagopian, Manuel Melendez (Government)

In 2015, El Salvador was named murder capital of the world. Gang violence, one of the consequences of the Civil War that ended in 1992, affects all areas of the country: its politics, economy, health care system, economy, and society at large in various ways.

Throughout the years, the government has taken different approaches to try to solve the issue. However, most of these have been unsuccessful. On the other hand, the Catholic and Evangelical Church have successfully been able to stop gangs’ recruitment and have given active gang members a “way out” through rehabilitation and reinsertion programs.

In a country with a population that is 90% religious and people trust religious institutions the most, the Catholic and Evangelical Church have the potential to help mitigate gang violence. This project explores how and to what degrees they are able to. It explores the relationship between gang violence and these religious institutions: what are the Catholic and Evangelical Church doing to help mitigate the problem, and what are some of the limitations to their work.

Victoria is a joint concentrator in Social Anthropology and Government with a citation in French.

She was born in El Salvador and lived all around Central America and the Caribbean. Living in so many different Latin American countries inspired her passion for the region, and further instilled in her the passion to pursue a public service career in her home country of El Salvador. She pursued these interests on campus, not only through academic work like her thesis on gang violence in El Salvador, but also through organizations like Harvard Cultivating Interamerican Democracy (HACIA). She was also part of Harvard’s Student Mental Health Liaisons (SMHL) and Yearbook. After graduation, Victoria will continue to pursue her interests in Anthropology and Politics specifically in regard to Latin America through a master’s program in Latin American Studies in Oxford University.

BRITTANY ELLIS Excavating Ethics: Community-Based Archaeological Research in Theory and Practice Faculty Advisor: Matthew Liebmann

Lauded as redressing archaeology’s colonial history and enduring legacy, community-based research claims to redistribute power by centering stakeholders’ perspectives and adopting methods and research questions informed by and beneficial to host communities. Shaped by feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial studies as well as broader political movements, models of community-based research have proliferated in archaeology but also across disciplines ranging from development to ecology. In this thesis, I trace the development of this methodology and offer an ethnographic analysis of a community-based archaeological project in Jordan, where I conducted fieldwork. Drawing from my observations and interviews with researchers and community members, I analyze the daily practices and interactions on the project, revealing a host of competing expectations between researchers and local residents as well as broader issues relating to labor, power, and language. My fieldwork illuminates both a pervasive theoretical divide among the foreign researchers over the role and responsibilities of the researcher in the field and structural inequities and exclusions that ultimately undermine the project’s mission.

Focusing on the on-the-ground practice of community-based research at this particular project, this thesis highlights some of the challenges of such an approach and urges ongoing critique in order to avoid perpetuating colonial violences.

Brittany Ellis studies in the combined program of Social Anthropology and Archaeology with a foreign language citation in Modern Standard Arabic. Brittany was introduced to archaeology and anthropology in high school by one of her teachers and has been pursuing the subjects ever since.

At Harvard, she has become increasingly interested in the intersections between living communities and cultural artifacts, spaces, and institutions, like museums. As evidenced by her thesis topic, she is passionate about the involvement of source communities and other stakeholders in the fields of cultural research. After graduation, Brittany will be pursuing an MPhil in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology from Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. Outside of her classes, Brittany works as a Radcliffe Research Partner, serves on the Student Board of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, and captains the Kirkland Crew Team. She formerly worked as a reporter and later a news editor for The Harvard Crimson as well as helping to create the online resource AnthroWrites for the Harvard Anthropology Department.

ISA LAPUERTA “Cantar Mis Versos del Alma”: How Musicians Navigate Identity, Commodification, and Personhood in Cuba’s Tourism Industry Faculty Advisors: Philip Kao and Yosvany Terry (Music)

This thesis explores how musicians working in Cuba’s tourism industry understand and interact with the commodification of culture, and of music specifically, that occurs in cultural tourism.

It focuses specifically on musicians haciendo sopa - “making soup”, or playing in the backs of restaurants and bars - in Habana Vieja, the most tourist-heavy part of Havana. Understanding the music played in tourism as a reflection of tourists’ preconceived perceptions of Cuba, its culture, and its music, this thesis explores how musicians interact with this performed identity, as well as how it might complicate and contradict their own held notions of Cubanness and Cu-ban music.

It specifically explores themes of timelessness and personhood (or loss thereof), and finally, presents a possible alternative or future form of tourism in Cuba that could poten-tially resolve some of the main tensions musicians experience.

Isa Lapuerta is a senior at the college studying a joint concentration of Music and Anthropology, with a specific focus on Latin America. She lives with her wonderful family in New Jersey and is of Spanish and Cuban descent. In her free time, Isa sings a cappella with the Harvard Opportunes, teaches for CityStep, dances in Expressions, and works as a FOP leader.

IFEOLUWA OBAYAN Assisted Reproductive Technology: Ethical and Economic Inquiries within the Laboratory Faculty Advisors: Arthur Kleinman, Omar Sultan Haque, and Daniel Needleman (Bioengineering)

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) is the field of innovative methods used for the treatment of infertility. With the advantages come questions about ART’s moral and ethical implications in the way society thinks about human life and reproduction. My thesis particularly focuses on the perspective of scientists who do ART research as they play an integral role in the creation and advancement of this technology. I mainly sought to illuminate their moral reasoning in the work they do daily, especially investigating their consideration of the ethical status of the embryo. Additionally, I wanted to understand how economic concerns influenced research. By spending a year working in a lab where I studied the effects of mouse embryo hatching, a key aspect of preimplantation development, I found through participant-observation and interviews that research methodology, the use of animal models and the funding sources in the lab allow for a moral negligence of the ethical status of the embryo in the daily operations of scientists.

Researchers in the lab environment are driven by the intellectual pursuit of biological knowledge.

My findings in the laboratory were compared to the in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinical environment and the perspectives of physician-leaders who have collaborative research relationships with the lab.

Ifeoluwa Obayan is a senior in Leverett House, pursuing a joint concentration in Biomedical Engineering and Social Anthropology. As a premed student, she is interested in a career in the field of health and taking a comprehensive approach that addresses social issues to solving health disparities nationally and around the world. As a former Editorial Comp Director of The Harvard Crimson, Special Events Chair of the Black Students Association, and Vice President of the Nigerian Students Association, Ifeoluwa is passionate about self-expression through writing and building community. After graduation, Ifeoluwa will be joining Putnam Associates, a life sciences strategy consulting firm in Boston, as an Associate Consultant.

NORMAN STORER "L'ago e 'l fuso e l'arcolaio": A Literary Archaeology of Gendered Objects in the 'Decameron'

Faculty Advisors: Diana Loren and Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja (Romance Languages and Literature) While Boccaccio’s Decameron is widely studied as a literary text and historical document, it has not been used as a source for archaeological analyses. In this thesis I propose a literary archaeology in which I draw on the archaeological, historical, and visual records to analyze objects in the text to better understand archaeological artifacts. First, I analyze select object inventories in the Second Giornata of the Decameron, comparing them to archaeological assemblages. I then discuss clothing in novella II.5 in relation to the archaeological record and sumptuary laws, towards an interpretation of how deceitful appearances are closely tied to legislation and the text. Lastly, I analyze a forziere in novella II.9 in relation to locks, dowry chests, and regulations of women’s property leading to the interpretation that forzieri serve not only as a containers for objects, but also as containers of identity and agency.

Norman Storer Corrada is a senior in Quincy House pursuing a joint concentration in Archaeology and Romance Studies with a secondary field in Medieval Studies. He is interested in exploring the ways in which creative literature can inform archaeological and anthropological understandings of material culture. His other research interests include the development of capitalism and colonialism in the Atlantic world, the hispanophone Caribbean, medieval Italy, Latinx and Latin American studies, world folk music, and ethno-organology. After graduation, Norman will be working at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings through the Dumbarton Oaks Humanities Fellowship, after which he will pursue a masters in Historical Archaeology at UMass Boston.

ESMÉ TRAHAIR "The Sons of All Australia": Masculinities, mental health, and the 'Aussie bloke' Faculty Advisor: Arthur Kleinman

Nearly half of all Australians experience mental illness within their lifetimes, and rates of anxiety, depression, and substance-use disorders are rising. The burdens of suicide and mental health disorders are not distributed evenly across demographic groups, and there are significant differences in the mental health experiences of Australian men and women. This thesis investigates how cultural and social understandings of masculinities and gender affect men with mental health issues in Australia. This research proposes that mental health and masculinities have constant, dynamic bearings on one another and can become integrated into blended experiences. Furthermore, it demonstrates that Australian men exhibit a variety of responses to mental health challenges, illustrating how men can emerge from negative mental health experiences with new, reappropriated definitions of masculinity. The ways in which mental health experiences and masculinities affect one another in modern Australian contexts has yet to be comprehensively investigated, and this project demonstrates the suitability of an anthropological lens.

Esmé is a senior in Quincy concentrating in Social Anthropology, with a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy. She discovered her love of medical anthropology during her sophomore year of college in a course called “Deep China: What Medical Anthropology and Psychiatry Contribute to the Study of China Today” taught by Professor Kleinman. She is particularly interested in mental health, and her thesis aimed to assess biosocial and biomedical understandings of mental health alike through ethnography. Her topic was also personally motivated - Esmé was born and raised in England, but her mother is American and her father is Australian. Her insight into Australian culture and familial ties within the country inspired her to focus on Australian men’s mental health issues. In the future, Esme plans to attend medical school.

DANIEL WOOD Writing Against the ‘Bengali Crisis’— Tracing the Reproduction of Precarity and Rohingya Bare Life in Myanmar Language Mediascapes Faculty Advisors: Philip Kao and Courtney Wittekind

This project addresses the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar’s westernmost Rakhine state through the lens of media anthropology. Joining fieldwork with journalistic experience, I explore the ways that Myanmar language newsmakers and political actors frame violence in the Rakhine state. In contrast to persistent news coverage of state violence abroad, Myanmar’s largest media producers tend to ignore or contest the victimhood of over one million Rohingya Muslims who currently exist along Myanmar’s western border without basic rights or citizenship. Despite a recent "democratic transition," the end of pre-publication censorship and the rapid rise of social media, the Myanmar military continues to use the targeted prosecutions of journalists to maintain control over national mediascapes. This research examines censorship and Buddhist nationalism on a quotidian level by sharing the perspectives of people who refuse to use the name Rohingya in fear of a “Bengali crisis;" within this state-authorized frame of violence, Rohingya people are not recognized as victims of violence but are instead perceived as "Bengali" illegal immigrants who threaten the livelihoods of the region’s Buddhist majority. I encourage readers to consider the trans-national flows of mediascapes, and the ways that frames of immigration, terrorism and security shape the limits of grief.

Daniel is a senior Social Anthropology concentrator in Quincy House whose research investigates Myanmar language reporting on the Rohingya crisis. Daniel has studied Myanmar language at Harvard, worked for the US Campaign for Burma in DC and with Mizzima Media Group in Yangon.