Anthropology – Page 3

In her latest essay on The Huffington Post, Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse takes on the matter of U.S. foreign food aid policy vis-a-vis Haiti, which she writes is undermining farmers in the Caribbean nation. She focuses on mamba, the Kreyòl word for peanut butter, which she fondly recalls being made by locals when she was growing up in Haiti. "To me, mamba is as quintessentially Haitian as basketball is (North) American. Now, it faces risks as another charitable gift of food aid undermines Haitian autonomy by threatening to bench local farmers’ peanuts production, our cultural practices, and even our tastes," she writes. "This is not…

Gina Athena Ulysse, professor of anthropology, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, writes an "Ode to Haiti's Neo-Comedians" in The Huffington Post about Haiti's recently cancelled election runoff. The title of her essay refers to Graham Greene's The Comedians, a book whose description read: "Set in Haiti, amid an atmosphere of brutal force and terror-ridden love, three desperate people work out their strange destinies." Ulysse writes: Relevance of The Comedians is apparent in Haiti's recently cancelled election runoff that was set for this past Sunday. Indeed, until then, the outgoing president Michel Martelly, a chap with dictatorial tendencies who leads the "Bald Headed Haitian Party"—insisted on…

On Dec. 5, Wesleyan students, faculty and the local community gathered for a two-hour discussion on "Indigenous Middletown: Settler Colonial and Wangunk Tribal History." The event was sponsored by the American Studies Department, the Center for the Americas, and the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life. J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of American studies, coordinated the event, which stemmed from her Service Learning course, Decolonizing Indigenous Middletown: Native Histories of the Wangunk Indian People. The class is in partnership with the Middlesex County Historical Society. (more…)

In the 1920s, a team of scientists working in the Zhoukoudian cave system in Beijing, China unearthed Peking Man, a roughly 700,000 year-old sample of Homo erectus. After the communist revolution of 1949, Peking Man became a prominent figure in bringing science and the story of human evolution to the masses. As part of the required reading for the HIST 368 class, History of Science and Technology in Modern China, Ying Jia Tan, assistant professor of history, is having his students read The People's Peking Man, written by Wesleyan alumna Sigrid Schmalzer '94. The People’s Peking Man offers a skilled…

Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse received the Haitian Studies Association's Excellence in Scholarship award during the organizations' 27th annual conference Oct. 24. The conference centered around the theme "Haiti in the Global Environment: Presence, Representations, Performances" and took place at the Université de Montréal in Québec, Canada. Previous anthropologists awarded this honor include Paul Farmer (2001) and Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2003). While in Québec, Ulysse presented a talk on "Successfully Individuating Within Academia: Thoughts on Rebel Mentoring and Your Voice” at the Emerging Scholars pre-conference. Ulysse also will be recognized by her peers at the American Anthropological Association meeting next month for…

Gina Athena Ulysse, professor of anthropology, is the author of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2015. In this book, Ulysse, a Haitian-American anthropologist and performance artist, makes sense of her homeland in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. Mainstream news coverage of the catastrophic earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, reproduced longstanding narratives of Haiti and stereotypes of Haitians. Cognizant that this Haiti, as it exists in the public sphere, is a rhetorically and graphically incarcerated one, Ulysse embarked on a writing spree that lasted more than two years. As an ethnographer and a…

Writing for Africa is a Country, Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse reflects on the story of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who was arrested by a state trooper during a traffic stop in Waller County, Texas and was later found dead in her jail cell. Video footage from a dashboard camera found the trooper had threatened Bland with a Taser after she refused to put out her cigarette and the encounter escalated. Her death was found to be a suicide, though her family has doubts. Ulysse writes that she identified with Bland, and responded strongly to images and videos of the…

In a blog post on Africa is a Country, Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse reflects on two horrific stories in the news: the mass deportation of thousands of migrant workers and their families of Haitian background from the Dominican Republic, and the killing of nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The "ethnic purging" taking place in the Dominican Republic, writes Ulysse, "is a rejection of a certain kind of Black. Blackness that is too African." She continues: Despite our somatic plurality and the color gradations we encompass, Haiti and Haitians have always been portrayed and understood as that…

Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse was recently invited to guest edit a double issue of the journal e-misférica on the theme of Caribbean rasanblaj, to which three of her Wesleyan colleagues also contributed. The journal e-misférica is an online publication of New York University's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a "collaborative, multilingual and interdisciplinary network of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists throughout the Americas. Working at the intersection of scholarship, artistic expression and politics, the organization explores embodied practice-performance as a vehicle for the creation of new meaning and the transmission of cultural values, memory and identity." For several years, Ulysse has been involved with the…

In its most recent meeting, the Board of Trustees conferred tenure on Hari Krishnan, associate professor of dance. He joins seven other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring. In addition, seven faculty members were promoted to Full Professor: Mary Alice Haddad, professor of government; Scott Higgins, professor of film studies; Tsampikos Kottos, professor of physics; Edward Moran, professor of astronomy; Dana Royer, professor of earth and environmental sciences; Mary-Jane Rubenstein, professor of religion; and Gina Athena Ulysse, professor of anthropology. Brief descriptions of their research and teaching appear below. Associate Professor Krishnan teaches studio- and lecture-based dance courses on Mobilizing Dance: Cinema, the Body, and Culture…

#THISISWHY In this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with Kate Weiner from the Class of 2015. Weiner is an anthropology and environmental studies major. Q: Can you describe your thesis, “Reciprocity: Cultivating Community in Urban Agriculture”? A: My thesis is an exploration of how community, identity and belonging interact in urban agricultural spaces, with my hands-on fieldwork with East New York Farms! serving as a case study for examining urban agriculture as a political project. Through melding creative non-fiction, feminist theory, community politics and environmental studies, the intention of my thesis is to provide a framework for understanding the various social, natural, socioeconomic…

Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, wrote a tribute on the Tikkun Daily Blog to Karen McCarthy Brown, professor emerita of anthropology and sociology of religion at Drew University, who passed away earlier this month. "Reading Karen’s Mama Lola kept me in grad school. Vodou got a human face from her," Ulysses posted on Facebook after hearing news of Brown's death. She goes on to explain, "Mama Lola was published by the University of California Press in 1991. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted over a decade, Brown became an initiate of her subject, as a condition to deeper research and writing…

Ulysse’s Essay Says U.S. Foreign Food Aid Policy Undermines Farmers in Haiti

Ulysse: ‘Ode to Haiti’s Neo-Comedians’

Local Community Joins Discussion on Indigenous Middletown

Anthropology, Archaeology Collections Offer Hands-On Learning

Ulysse Honored with Excellence in Scholarship Award

Ulysse’s Author of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle

Ulysse Reflects on Sandra Bland’s Self-Possession, Neo-Black Codes of Conduct

Ulysse Reflects on Violence Against Blacks in Charleston, Dominican Republic

Ulysse Guest Edits Double Issue of Journal e-misferica

7 Faculty Promoted, 1 Awarded Tenure

Weiner ’15 Studies Urban Agriculture, Community for Thesis

Ulysse Writes Tribute to Anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown