Last week I started my fellowship at the Hamden Public Library. The first two days of the fellowship my fellows and I took a tour of Hamden and North Haven. We visited government offices, facilities, parks, etc. Now I have started my work at Hamden Library. The library has a great summer reading program for kids, but I noticed that there was not much to attract teens and young adults. I decided to create a few YA programs. The summer reading theme is "Dig Into Reading," so the librarians were very excited about my anthropology background! I designed two programs, one about archaeology and one about forensic anthropology (thanks Prof. Ullinger for lending me some bones!). I am running each of these two programs three times (once at the main branch and once at each of the two other branches). I'm excited, but also nervous that no teens will show up - if you know any teens in the Hamden area, let them know about this!

Here's the flyer for my YA programs

I'm set up at the Reference desk here, so in between working on my projects, I answer patrons' questions. We get some pretty strange questions, so the day is always interesting.

Festival Weekend

So far the Archives have been great, I have been learning something new each day and have been staying busy. They have put a lot of work into the intern program and I already know that this is going to be a great experience.

There is a great market on the north end of town that sells fresh produce from local farmers. I am trying to make it a habit to buy more fresh food, especially when I can get such great deals on it! There are people from all over the area that come to sell their products, whether it be fruit, cheese, or handcrafted furniture. It is a great place to go on the weekends and is surrounded with small bookstores and coffeeshops that have some great food. 

I also went to the Smithsonian National Zoo with some of the other interns I have met in the city. The zoo is huge, and we saw so many animals! I was very excited to see the gorillas as I have never seen one before! 

This guy sat right in front of me but wouldn't turn around!

In addition to the zoo, I also went to an Israeli culture festival in northern Washington. One of the girls who lives in my house (is from Yale actually) brought us and we ate some really delicious food and listened to a ton of great music. 

There was a map where people would post where they were from or where they had grown up in Israel

After the Israeli culture festival, we went to DC Capitol Pride which stretched four blocks down
Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a huge, very lively event with lots of music and food. We even witnessed a marriage proposal- a man proposed to his boyfriend on stage in front of everyone, it was very cute.

A few of my housemates and I after the festivals
:] Emily 

Whanau

I'm home from my own overseas adventures, just as Dr. Ullinger begins one, and Dr. Giblin is still in the middle of her own. This doesn't mean the anthropological adventure itself is over. It is great to be back with my family, as one of the things that makes anthropological research difficult is being apart from our kin for extended periods of time. This has led me to think of how important kin, fictive or otherwise, are to our success as a program and a discipline.
What I'm working on now is a proposal for a major in anthropology at Quinnipiac, and I use the concept of kin quite seriously with this endeavor. While students are ultimately responsible for their GPA, and to demonstrate their independent work, anthropology cannot be done, or done well, if we don't rely on one another. We must learn from others in order to make sense of the human lives that came before us, or to understanding the joy and suffering of our contemporary peers. My adventure now is to write a proposal that captures the best of what anthropology has to offer-a major where students work together, and with their professors, to get the most out of their education and to contribute to what is known about the human condition.
I'd love to hear from any students if they have thoughts, ideas about what would be interesting to them if they were to become a part of our AN family.

Prof. Haldane

Anthropology = Friends Everywhere

There are many reasons to love anthropology.  But, one of the most amazing things about studying anthropology is that you end up having friends that travel, live and work EVERYWHERE.  I have only been in London for 3 days, and I have already seen two old friends!

A.A. was a fellow graduate student at Arizona State University.  She completed her dissertation on teeth, but now works for the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine.  I saw her on the first day that I arrived.  Today, I was surprised in the Duckworth by M.G., a former student in the NSF-REU that I co-directed at Notre Dame. He is now finishing his dissertation at Cambridge.

On Sunday, I will be joined here by S.S., a colleague that I have worked with at Notre Dame since I was an undergraduate there.   Later this summer, I will meet up with R.F.  She and I started our PhDs at the same time at Ohio State, and she is now a lecturer at University College Dublin.  I will also meet up with T.M., another fellow grad student from Ohio State who now lives in Bristol.

You meet a lot of wonderful people in anthropology.  The amazing thing is that you can find them years later wherever you go in the world!

--Professor Ullinger

London & Cambridge

I arrived in London yesterday morning and have been quite busy since then.  I unpacked and explored the area around the flats where we are staying (Endsleigh Court) in the Bloomsbury area.  Today, I took the train up to Cambridge and began collecting some data on skeletons from Jericho, which are housed in the Duckworth Laboratory.

Collections in the laboratory:

I am looking at variants on the teeth and the crania to assess biodistance, or, relatively, how closely people from Jericho are related to people at other sites throughout the Bronze Age in the southern Levant.

I am using the yellow plaques on the lab bench (seen below) as a reference for scoring dental variants.  And, I am making molds of the teeth, which I will be able to bring back to the US to use for further research.

This will be my work space for the next week!

--Professor Ullinger

Bones Exhibit at the Smithsonian

Hello!
On Sunday I went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to check out the Jamestown exhibit I talked about earlier. While I was walking around I happened to notice this poor spider monkey in a display case who has by some miracle of nature become bipedal!

I won't lie, it is a little disheartening that the Smithsonian can't get this right!

-Emily

Mattatuck Museum

Hi all!  As Lucy blogged earlier, she and I have been working on a research project related to Mr. Fortune, the skeleton from the Mattatuck Museum.  Earlier this week, we went to the Mattatuck Museum (http://www.mattatuckmuseum.org/) to examine documents from the time when Fortune lived (late 18th century).  We dove into tax documents, land deeds, and medical notebooks.

We learned that Preserved Porter, the man who owned Mr. Fortune, claimed slaves on the US tax list of 1800.  However, earlier tax lists from Waterbury did not contain specific information regarding slaves, and so we did not learn when Mr. Fortune may have moved to the Porter household.

We also discovered that people enjoyed doodling in the 1700s just as much as they do today, and that notebooks are often used for multiple purposes -- Lucy has vowed to make a cake from a recipe written down in one of the medical notebooks!

Here, Lucy is reading Anderson's "History of Waterbury," which contains genealogies of numerous Waterbury families (including the Porters), and information about Mr. Fortune.  Sitting next to Lucy is Mr. Al Walton, a member of the African-American History Commission Project who is examining letters related to the project.  Also in the photo is Ms. Marie Galbraith, former director of the Mattatuck Museum.

-- Professor Ullinger