Rabbi Judith Zabarenko Abrams, Ph.D (OC '80)

Elizabeth Jane Atack (OC '01) Program Coordinator for the Bringing Books to Life! program at the Nashville Public Library. The program promotes literacy awareness and reading readiness in pre-K programs in Metro Nashville through workshops for educators, in-class storyhours and marionette shows, and outreach to families. (4/07)

Bates, Chris (OC '94) is completing an MA at Oregon State University. He started studying in 2003 with his advisor from OSU's Anthropology Department. He was drawn back to anthropology by the applied program focused on natural resources and community values. Biodiesel is growing in popularity in the Pacific Northwest so he focuses his research on this phenomenon.

Brooke S. Bocast (OC '02) completed her Master in Anthropology at Brown University. Her thesis was entitled "Debating the Educated Body: Gender, Discorse, and Pedagogy in Abayudayan Village," following her fieldwork in Uganda. She is now teaching as an adjunct at Bridgewater State College in Southern Massachusetts. After a year of teaching she intends to apply to graduate schools in order to pursue a Ph.D. (8/05)

Morag Boyd (OC '97) received an MS in Library and Information Science in January 2001 from the University of Illinois and began work as a cataloger at Milner Library, Illinois State University. Since then, she has been promoted to head the serials department. She is working towards a master's degree in global politics and cultures at Illinois State University as a part-time student. Morag lives in Champaign, IL with her partner Josh Mullet (OC '99) and their daughter, Katia, who just graduated from preschool. Josh is working towards a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Illinois. (6/02)

Geoffrey Braswell, Ph. D. (OC '86) Last September, Geoff departed SUNY Buffalo for a position UC San Diego as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. A Maya archeologist, during 2002 he lived in San Benito Poite village, Belize, where he is directed the Pusilha Archaeological Project. The project focuses on the emergence of political complexity at secondary centers in the Maya region, as well as the effects of political coalescence and fragmentation on local economies. This was the second of a projected seven-year project at Pusilha that was co-directed by Dr. Jennifer Braswell (SUNY-Buffalo) and Dr. Cassandra Bill (Tulane). Funding for 2002 was provided by grants from the School of American Research, Wenner-Gren Foundation, NSF Archaeology Program, and the NSF International Research Fellowship Program. Recently, he has edited a much awaited book, The Maya at Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic interaction, published by the University of Texas Press in 2003. (1/04)

Elizabeth Breakstone (OC '99) just received her M.A. in Information Science from the University of Michigan and she is now the Social Science Reference Librarian at the University of Oregon in Eugene. There, she is currently developing the Anthropology Collection. (10/04)

Stanford Carpenter (OC '90) received his MA from Columbia University in 1995 and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Rice University in 2003. He was a Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in 1999; a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland David C. Driskell Center in 2003/04; and a Minority Scholar in Residence at Grinnell College in 2004. His research and teaching is based on ethnographic research among artists and media producers. He has taught at University of Maryland in 2004, Grinnell College in 2004, Rhode Island School of Design in 2005, and Johns Hopkins University from 2005 to present. He is a founding member of Critical Front, a collaboration between scholars begun in 2005 to create superhero alter egos as both a means of cultural criticism and as ethnographic fieldwork into cultural production. His dissertation research and current book project for Duke University Press address the intersection of identity, politics, and property relations in the production of comic books from the perspective of comic book creators. He is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.

Teresa Collins (OC '05) has been named Mellon Library Associate at Oberlin for the 2005-06 academic year. She will gain in-depth experience in several aspects of academic librarianship during the year. While a student at Oberlin, where she majored in anthropology with an art history minor, she worked as an Art Library assistant, as an undergraduate intern in the Mellon Librarian Recruitment Program, and as a docent at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. She intends to pursue a career in librarianship following her year as an Associate. She notes that her "ultimate goal is to become a special librarian who works to assist museum with exhibits and research requests or to assist television stations with film clips." This fall Teresa will begin graduate work at the University of South Florida, where she will pursue a master's degree in library science and a master's degree in anthropology. (11/05)

Caitlin Davis (OC '95) stopped by the department reception on commencement weekend. An English major as an undergrad, she just received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her dissertation is on the case and possessive suffixes in Sierra Miwok. (5/02)

Rebecca Deeb (OC '02) was awarded a University Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In fall 2004, she will begin working there toward her anthropology PhD, studying Mesoamerican archaeology. Ms. Deeb worked for the past year & a half as the Curatorial Assistant for the Cultural Anthropology and Visual Arts department at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. (6/04)

Penelope Eckert (OC '63, major in French) is a Sociolinguist and Linguistic Anthropologist. She teaches at Stanford University. She recently published a book (together with S. McConnell-Ginet) titled "Language and Gender," Cambridge University Press, 2003. (1/04)

Lisa Falk (OC '82) is the Director of Education at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/

Celeste Feather (OC '84) is the Associate Director of the Law Library at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She married Peter Murray in June, 2000, and they now have a baby daughter, Erin Laurel. (5/02)

Lynn Fisher, Ph.D. (OC '84) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In 2002 she received a Fulbright Fellowship for research and teaching in Germany. She worked with German avocational archaeologists to map and study Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic sites and taught at Tuebingen's Institute for Prehistory. Recently, she co-edited a volume titled, Lithic Raw Material Economies in Late Glacial and Early Postglacial Europe which was published by British Archaeological Reports (BAR), International Series #1093, 2002. Her research on retooling and lithic raw material economies in Southern Germany during this period appears in Chapter 5. (1/04)

Melissa Anne Gottwald (OC '97) received an M.L.I.S. (Master of Library and Information Science) from the University of Pittsburgh in August 2000. Since then she has been working as a Project Archivist in the Oberlin College Archives processing institutional records and manuscript collections (including the records of the Oberlin Consumers Cooperative/Coop Bookstore), and coordinating the Archives' contributions to the "American Context of China's Christian Colleges," a multi-institutional project based at Wesleyan University. (5/02)

Amy Greco (OC '01) has accepted a position as an assistant teacher in the Paul Cuffee School in Providence, RI. (6/02)

Jenn Smith Griffith (OC '95) is a production coordinator for Exhibit Resources, Inc. in Raleigh, NC. Her husband, Keven Griffith, is OC'94. (5/02)

Debbie Guest (Drelich) (OC '79)
I don't know how Oberlin is set up now, but when I went (75-79) the Sociology and Anthropology Department were merged. My concentration was anthropology, under the direction of Linda Grimm (before she was "Grimm"). I went to the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) for the Master's program, and my emphasis was Physical anthropology (choices were archaeology, physical or cultural anthropology). I studied with Bill (William) Bass, one of this country's foremost authorities on the then-little-known field of forensic anthropology. Now, it is the subject of a popular TV series ("Bones," based on the life of a woman who authors books on the subject: fictionalized cases, I guess - haven't actually read any of her stuff). After I left Tennessee in 1981, I married John Guest (class of 79 in the College and also class of 79 in the Conservatory). We moved to the New York area where he began practicing law. I wasted a little time as a secretary to a group of architects. We had our first of two daughters before moving to southern California. I didn't return to work until the youngest girl was in school. As I had mentioned earlier, the field of forensic anthropology was practically unrecognized, and the job prospects weren't very favorable. However, having a social sciences background and an understanding of how important creating and maintaining a reliable database can be, I found myself working for a nonprofit horticultural garden, (Descanso Gardens - just outside of Los Angeles) managing the donor database. I've been working for the same director since 1984. In the picture, John on the left, then Rachel (who is now a freshman at Colby) and Sarah (who is a junior at Vanderbilt University). That's me on the right. By the way, John and I went to our 25th reunion last May and had a GREAT time!

Heather Haddon (OC '99) was awarded three first-place prizes in the 2003 Independent Press Association's New York Ethnic and Community Press Awards, including Best News Story, Best Feature, and Best Public Affairs Story. Heather is a reporter for the Norwood News in the Bronx and lives in Brooklyn. (5/04)

Elizabeth Hardy (OC '03) has been working in Chicago this year and, recently, began performing with an Early Music ensemble from Northwestern University. In the fall, she will begin the MA program in Early Music at Indiana University, where she has received a Dean's Scholarship. (6/04)

Rebekah Heinzen (OC '01) received her Masters from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2003 in International Health, Health Systems Management and Administration. Her Master's thesis was based in Tanzania focusing on disaster management. She began her PhD in January of 2005, continuing in the same program. (2/05)

Emily Helton (ACHS OC '06) has been spending the year doing CRM archeology in California and Illinois. She gave a paper in January at the Society for Historical Archaeology meetings based on her senior Honors project. She presented a paper titled, "Education and Gender in 19th Century New Philadelphia (IL)". Funding from the Jerome Davis Committee and the Office of the Dean enabled her to participate in these meetings in Williamsburg, VA .

Timothy J. Henrich (OC '95) attended the cluster reunion for his class at this year's commencement. He has just completed his second year of medical school at Yale. (5/02)

William Jungers (OC '70) is a Professor of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University, New York. He has been working on evolution and Primatology, with focus on Madagascar. (1/04)

Gwen Kelly (OC '02) is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at University of Wisconsin. The title of her project is: Craft Production and Social Difference in Iron Age Tamil Nadu. The Government of India has granted her permission to start her dissertation research. She is finishing up with the Tamil program in the next 2 weeks and will be coming back in the US between around December 30th and Jan. 18th.

Katheryne McFarland Igo (OC '90) earned an M.A. in Anthropology at Arizona State University before deciding on a career as a medical technologist. After earning a B.S. at the University of Utah, Kathy moved to Seattle with her husband, Rob Igo (OC '88). She works for the Puget Sound Blood Center. (6/02)

Brian Jones (OC '86) received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut in 1998. He is the Supervisor of Field Archaeology for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, CT, which means that he is responsible for planning, implementing, and overseeing all excavation on the Reservation and adjacent tribally-owned lands. His current research focuses on the Paleoindian settlement of New England. Brian lives in Colchester, CT with his wife, Margaret O'Keefe, and their two children, Tristan (age 5), and Fiona (19 months). (6/02)

Lisa M. Lauria (OC '95) is continuing her graduate work in anthropology at the University of Virginia. Her dissertation is titled, "Defining Susquehannock: Peoples of the Lower Susquehanna and Upper Potomac River Valleys, AD 1500- to 1763." She spent the last two and half years working at a multi-component Monacan Indian village site just north of Charlottesville and led a field school there last summer with another grad student. They have established a strong working relationship with members of the Monacan Indian Nation living in Amherst, VA. Lisa gave a paper at the SAA Conference in Denver talking about one aspect of that relationship--the process of transferring ownership of a private collection that was purchased by the NPS back to the Monacan Ancestral Museum. (5/02)

Nedra Lee (OC '02) is currently working in the development office of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. She came to the Libraries after working for the Historical Society and City Museum of Washington, DC for nearly 3 years. She is presently in the process of applying to graduate school, and hopes to be admitted into an Anthropology program as a doctoral candidate for the fall of 2006. (11/05)

Katherine Lorimer (OC '94) will complete a Masters in Library Science this summer at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She previously earned an MA in German at the University of Pennsylvania. (6/02)

Katherine McCardwell (OC '06) Since graduating I spent about a year working in the public school system and a public library. Then I spent the summer working at the Hammer Museum in Haines, AK. I am now in graduate school at the University of Kentucky, working on my Master's in Library Science. I hope to finish that in summer of '08. After that I may enter the PhD program in anthropology at University of Michigan, or I'll go back to the job market, hopefully returning to Alaska.

Kate McClellan (OC '01) has been awarded a Regent's Fellowship at the University of Michigan where she will begin graduate work toward the Ph.D. in Anthropology in the fall. She is interested in Islamic studies and has received a grant to study Arabic in Chicago this summer. (5/02)

Amy Margaris (OC '97) received her MA in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, Tuscon, in 2000. Her masters' thesis was a study of sediments from Tabun Cave in Israel using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIS). She also did fieldwork at Ucagizli Cave in Turkey. Recently, she spent several months in Kodiak, Alaska analyzing bone tools and working refuse from three museum collections. These data will form part of her dissertation at the University of Arizona which is titled: Technology Transfers and Changing Osseous Raw Materials Use in the Kodiak Archipelago Contact Period. Also, Amy is co-organizing a forum at the upcoming SAA’s in Salt Lake City on archaeological sciences and archaeology and invites Obies to attend. She is pictured here during a recent lunch with Jack Glazier in Tucson, AZ. (2/05)

Jennifer (Chude) Mondlane (OC '01) has been accepted to the Graduate Faculty Program at the New School University in NY City, to complete a degree in Anthropology with a concentration in Sub-Saharan Africa. She received a Graduate Faculty Scholarship Award and a University Scholarship Award from the New School University. At Oberlin College she was a Mellon Fellow and will be applying for grants through the Mellon Fellowship Program to continue her research during her graduate studies. (5/02)

Heather Moore (OC '92) earned dual master's degrees in the HLS program at the University of Maryland, College Park, in Library Science (archives concentration) and history (Native American History concentration). For the past seven years she has served in the position of Photo Historian for the U.S. Senate Historical Office in Washington, D.C. In the capacity of archivist, photographer, and historian, she participates in the documentation and preservation of the history of the United States Senate. She was married in April 2004 to Charles Piety, who is an atmospheric chemist at the University of Maryland. Heather visited the campus on March 3, 2006, under the auspices of the department and the Alumni Association. Heather had lunch with majors to discuss careers in Archives and related fields and gave a presentation in the museum anthropology class (ANTH 292) on Archival Research.

Selina Morales (OC 2004) will soon start her PhD in Folklore at Indiana University. (8/05)

Rebecca Morrow (OC 1994) earned her M.A. in Anthropology from SUNY-Buffalo. During graduate school, she spent 18 months in Dublin, Ireland, learning about the experience of marital breakdown among working-class women. Since September 2002 she has been the Director of the Anderson Gender Resource Center at Idaho State University. Prior to moving to Idaho, she spent the 2001-02 academic year on a Fulbright at the Gender Studies Centre at Vilnius University in Lithuania.

Charles Naftalin (OC 1979) is a partner of Holland & Knight, practices in the area of telecommunications law. He is experienced in interexchange, local exchange and international telecommunications services providers via fiber optic cable, microwave and satellite radio, commercial television and radio broadcasters, non-profit public interest groups, mobile marine radio common carriers and state and municipal governments.

Joshua Piker (OC '89) (Anthropology and History) is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma with a specialty in Native American and Colonial History. In Spring 2002 returned to Oberlin to participate in the department symposium, Closing the Circle, as an outside reviewer. Currently, he just published a book on the eighteenth century Creek Indian community of Oakfuskee, titled "Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America," Harvard University Press, 2004. Prof. Piker is the recipient of the 2005 Malcolm Bell Jr. and Murel Barrow Bell Award sponsored by the Georgia Historical Society. (11/05)

Gil Saenz (OC '99) graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in May, 2002, and will be a commissioned Lieutenant in the US Navy JAG Corps by next November. His long-term goal is to practice civil rights and employment law in South Texas. (6/02)

Lawrence M. Schell (OC '70) After graduating, he taught high school for two years. Received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. Currently he is a professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and in the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health. His research concerns human adaptation and responses to urban environments, particularly the effects of industrial pollutants on human prenatal and postnatal development. He likes working collaboratively and have worked closely with colleagues in the departments of Psychology, Educational Counseling and Psychology, Environmental Health and Toxicology, and Epidemiology as well as with the NYS Department of Health. In the early 1990's, he conducted a study in Albany, NY of interactions of nutrition and environmental lead, and the effects of lead on the fetus and infant. Since 1995, he has been involved in a partnership research project with the Mohawk National of Akwesasne, who live adjacent to a polluted section of the St. Lawrence River. His more recent journal publications are in anthropology and public health journals and concern endocrine effects of persistent organic pollutants, and the role of nutrition as a mediator of lead uptake in the fetus and infant. He has co-edited three volumes: Human Growth from Birth to Maturity (2002), Urbanism Health and Human Biology in Industrialised Nations (1999), and Urban Ecology and Health in the Third World (1993). Since 2003, he also has been working as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 he obtained a grant from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities to establish a research and training center at the University, and have directed the center since.

Alison Schwartzwalder (OC '02) will be begin graduate study in Fall, 06 in Public Health at Columbia.

Leslie Schwartz-Leff (OC '79) Since graduating from Oberlin in '79, I've had a lot of different jobs, some actually related to my cultural anthropology major - all enriched by it! In 1980, I worked as an intern with the Ohio Legislative Research Commission on the staff of then Ohio senate president Oliver Ocasek. The following year, I was an assistant director of the Great Lakes College Association' Comparative Urban Studies Program in London, and several cities in the Netherlands and Yugoslavia. In the 80's, in Philadelphia, I worked as a phone counselor at an abortion clinic, as a job developer for refugees from Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East through Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, I was an legal assistant for an immigration law firm in 1985 when I decided to follow my heart and my childhood ambition of becoming an elementary school teacher. I went to Arcadia University (then known as Beaver College) and got an M.Ed. My first teaching job was in inner city Philadelphia during the 1987-88 school year. I then moved to Vermont, where I taught 4th and 5th grade in a picturesque rural town called Bristol for 5 years. During this time I got married and pregnant and proceeded to stay home with my 2 sons for the next 8 years. In 1999, my family moved to Philadelphia. In 2001, I went back to work teaching at Abington Friends School, then another school in inner-city Philadelphia. I have been teaching at Souderton Charter School Collaborative for the past three years. It is a progressive charter school in a lily-white conservative Christian community 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I feel that my study of cultural anthropology informs everything I do both professionally and personally. My family lives in Cheltenham, PA, just outside of Philadelphia. Our town and especially our neighborhood is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious. It is a wonderful place to live and for our kids to grow up.

Michael Severino (OC '03) I graduated Oberlin College in 2003 with majors in Biology and Anthropology. Since that time I started a small vegetable farm at my home in rural Iowa and taught environmental education for a couple of years before entering the Peace Corps. I have recently returned from 2 1/2 years spent with the Peace Corps in the ecuadorian Amazon. I am soon to marry an Ecuadorian that I brought back to Iowa with me, Jackeline Shiguango, a kichwan speaking indigenous woman of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Lindsay Stark (OC '99) is currently pursuing her doctorate at Columbia University's School of Public Health. Previously, she worked for the Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia as a researcher and project manager for a USAID-funded initiative on the care and protection of children in crisis-affected countries. Lindsay has consulted with UNFPA in Sudan and Haiti, served as a Shansi fellow in Indonesia, and conceived of and managed psychosocial.org, a program devoted to aid worker well-being during her three years with Action Without Borders. Her research has primarily focused on female former child soldiers and she recently published an article in Intervention on the impact of traditional cleansing ceremonies on psychosocial healing and reintegration for girls in Sierra Leone. She received her MPH from Columbia University in 2006. (10/07)

Elio Trabal (OC '04) will be working for Oberlin College, as a Education Technology Specialist at the Language Lab. (8/05)

Sue Wasserkrug (OC '81) is a staff attorney at the Homeless Advocacy Project in Philadelphia where she coordinates the Children and Families Project. She earned her law degree at the University of Iowa. She and her husband, David Casarett, M.D., live in Philadelphia. (6/02)

Kenneth M. Weiss, Evan Pugh Professor of Biological Anthropology and Genetics at Penn State University and Oberlin College alumn (Math major, class of '63), writes a regular column called Crotchets and Quiddities in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, which is available online via OBIS. His most recent column concerned atavisms in evolution and its titled: "Dinner at Baby's: Werewolves, Dinosaur Jaws, Hen's Teeth, and Horse Toes." (04)

Paul D. Welch (OC '77) Paul is an Associate Prof. of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University. Author of "Archaeology at Shiloh Indian Mounds 1899-1999", The University of Alabama Press, 2005. Check out his website: http://www.siu.edu/~anthro/welch/ (11/05)

E. Christian Wells (OC '96) received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Arizona State University in 2003. He is currently AssistantProfessor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida.

Dr. Carolyn White (OC '91) (ARCH) completed her dissertation in January in Archaeological Studies at Boston University. Titled, "Constructing Identities: Personal Adornment from Portsmouth,New Hampshire, 1680-1820", it is a study of the artifacts of personal adornment recovered from ten archaeological sites in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She recently contributed articles on buttons and dress to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology (Charles Orser, ed.) and is preparing a book manuscript based on part of her dissertation research. Carolyn has worked with the Archaeology Division at Strawbery Banke, Inc., excavating and interpreting domestic sites of the historical period at this living history museum (http://www.strawberybanke.org). She also does fieldwork throughout New England with The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (http://www.spnea.org/). Author of a new book "American Artifacts of Personal Adornment, 1680-1820: A Guide to Identification and Interpretation", Altamira Press, 2005. (11/05)

Katherine E. Wickliffe (OC '04) I also majored in biology and have pursued that path since graduating. After graduation, I worked for three years at the NIH as a postbaccalaureate research fellow. This fall I started graduate school at UC Berkeley in the Molecular and Cellular Biology where, assuming everything goes according to plan, I'll get my PhD in 2012. (10/07)