50th Anniversary Celebration

ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

2019 was a memorable year. An international team of astronomers including scientists from UMass Amherst succeeded in unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole. The U.S. women’s national soccer team won its second consecutive championship. Avengers Endgame became the highest grossing movie of all time. And, the UMass Department of Anthropology celebrated its 50th anniversary with Engaging Anthropology - an inspiring 4-day academic conference and festivities!

Our own Boone Shear both spearheaded the planning and organization of the conference, and participated in several panels. He, alongside Sue Hyatt and Vincent Lyon Callo undertook the monumental task of organizing the panoply of academic presentations. Others on the planning committee and involved with organizing were Christa Burdick, Tabitha

Dorshorst, Krista Harper, Erica Kowsz, Elizabeth Krause, Julie Hemment, Shannon Nelson-Maney, Beverly Morrison, Victoria Bochniak, Paul Oberheim, Ventura Perez, Shelley

Silva, and of course, Department Chair Jacqueline Urla. Additional assistance in guiding and facilitating the activities during the event was provided by a large team of amazing volunteers - grad and undergrad students and staff.

The event culminated in a celebratory dinner on Friday, October 5th, where department members past and present recounted memories of department happenings of yore, culminating in a hilarious presentation from

Jackie Urla

documenting the evolution of the beloved Mega Memo and how it reflected the department, its members, and their endearing quirks through time. Dancing and merriment followed dinner.

ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS

Lilith Mahmud, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California Irvine, spoke at the Plenary Distinguished Lecturer in the Anthropology of Europe (above). She specializes in critical European studies and feminist anthropology with particular expertise in the study of secrecy, transparency, migration, nationalism, gender, race, class, liberalism, and the Right. Her first book, "The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters: Gender, Secrecy, and Fraternity in Italian Masonic Lodges" (University of Chicago Press, 2014), was awarded the William A. Douglass Prize for best ethnography in Europeanist anthropology. She presented her talk in the ILC Hub to a standing-room only crowd.

Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, MacArthur Fellow Class of 2017 (at left, with Ventura Pérez), presented the plenary Soldiers and Kings: Visualizing Kinship, Race, and Violence on the Human Smuggling Trail, which focused on photoethnography to examine the daily lives of Honduran smugglers moving migrants across Mexico. He is known for his pathbreaking multidisciplinary work on migration from Latin America to the United States, and is the founder of the Undocumented Migrant Project, which includes academic publications, museum exhibitions, forensic field studies, and public engagement.

Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Amanda Walker along with Johnson, Dana-Ain Davis, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society, Graduate Center, CUNY, and Riché J. Daniel Barnes, Dean of Pierson College and Affiliate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University spoke at the Black Feminism Today Plenary Panel (at right, with PhD alumna Urma McLaurin). The exciting panel explored the intersection of race and gender through the lens of Black Feminism.

Boone Shear spoke at the Plenary Panel: Engaging the Present, Envisioning Futures with Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Arturo Escobar, Kenan Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Stephen Healy, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and member of the Community Economies Collective (at left). The Provost kicked off the panel with opening remarks and a nod to our Department Chair, Jackie Urla, for her strong, dynamic leadership. .

Jeremy DeSilva, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College (at right), presented the plenary Homo naledi and the Chamber of Secrets. He is a paleoanthropologist, specializing in the locomotion of the first apes (hominoids) and early human ancestors (hominins). His recent work has focused on the origins and evolution of upright walking in the human lineage. Additionally, he is part of the research team that has discovered and described two new hominin species: Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi. He has studied wild chimpanzees in Western Uganda and early human fossils in museums throughout Eastern and South Africa.

Ryan Rybka and Victoria Bochniak (at left) organized a roundtable session, Speculative Futures of Archaeological Research. Dedicated to discussing the recent changes in archaeological research, an artist was retained from Dpict, LLC to visually record this session to both synthesize the discussion in real-time and to demonstrate how this can be used as a form of knowledge mobilization. The amazing visual product of their session is shown in the photo. Also participating in the roundtable were Sonya Atalay, Haeden Stewart, Michael Blakey, College of William and Mary/UMass Amherst alumni, Kasey Diserens Morgan, University of Pennsylvania, Annie Danis, University of California, Berkeley, and Pasqualina Azzarello, Dpict artist.

Anthropology Majors Tiarra Fisher (above left) and Abby Salamon (above right) presenting their posters at the Undergraduate Poster Session organized by Victoria Bochniak (PhD student) during the Machmer Hall Open House on Saturday of the conferemce. Tiarra’s poster was entitled “Health Inequalities in Brazil’s Indigenous Populations and the Use of Community Organizing,” and Abby’s was, “The Effect of Cold Weather on the Biotic Taphonomic Agents of a Decomposing Macaque.”

An impromptu lunch meeting of scholars and conference participants from the Interdisciplinary Migration Working Group with Jason De Leon took place at the conference also (shown above). The focal topics of the discussion extended the issues De Leon presented in his talk and included more about his research and the challenges and successes of his recent installation work about the border.

THANKS TO THE PARTICIPATION AND CONTRIBUTION OF SO MANY AMAZING SCHOLARS, THE ENGAGING ANTHROPOLOGY CONFERENCE AND 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION WAS A STUNNING SUCCESS ENJOYED BY ALL . WE’RE SINCERELY LOOKING FORWARD TO OUR NEXT 50 YEARS!