EVENTS & ACTIVITIES - College of Liberal Arts ...

May 2020
The spring semester has just ended and our graduates are out in the world, making great changes!
We hope everyone is staying healthy. We wanted to share updates of what we've been up to!

EVENTS & ACTIVITIES

Graduation Celebration
We held a distant graduation celebration event on Friday, May 15, 2020, for our graduating
seniors. The celebration included words of welcome from Melissa Remis, the Department
Head, Kory Cooper, the Undergraduate Director, followed by congratulatory remarks for each
graduate by faculty with whom they have worked and taken courses. Congratulations all
Anthropology graduates of 2020! May you shine on in all that you do!

On May 5, 2020, Madi Whitman successfully defended her dissertation, “Bodies of Data:
The Social Production of Predictive Analytics”

Call for photos!
If you could define the historical trajectory of the moment, what would it look like?
Anthropologies of Tomorrow Call for Photos
Sept 30 Submission Date
Inspired by the American Anthropological Association, the Department of Anthropology is
delighted to open a call for photo submissions. Anthropoogists work all around the world and
this work takes on many forms and mediums. We especially encourage photographs of life
during the time of the pandemic that engage critical, decolonial, and decarceral
perspectives. Submit your photo today!
Submissions: https://tinyurl.com/aotphoto
Questions? Contact Laura Zanotti lzanotti@purdue.edu

AWARDS

Diana Quintero and Kamryn Dehn earned 1st place prize for best poster presentation in the
College of Liberal Arts at the virtual Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference! Diana and

Kamryn presented on "Male vs. Female Representation in Chimpanzee Behavioral Studies"
as part of an ongoing study with Dr. Stacy Lindshield on feminist perspectives in
primatology. Diana served as a Wilke Intern with Dr. Lindshield in 2019-20 and Kam joined
Dr. Lindshield’s lab in January 2020.

Dr. Holly Okonkwo has been awarded a 2020 Summer Faculty Grant from the Purdue
Research Foundation for her research project titled, "Liberatory Code: Race, Gender and the
Politics of Computing"! Funding from this grant support Dr. Okonkwo in completing her
current book manuscript.

Graduate Student Giselle Narvaez Rivera received a Frederick N. Andrews Environmental
Travel Grant 2020 and an International Primatological Society Conservation Grant 2020.
The grants will support Giselle’s fieldwork research in Costa Rica, where she will be studying
the interactions between humans and the endangered black-handed spider monkeys.

Dr. Erik Otarola-Castillo and graduate student Melissa Torquato’s paper published in the
Annual Reviews of Anthropology, titled “Bayesian Statistics in Archaeology”
(https://bit.ly/2LPb9Sx), is featured as a Notable Writing in the latest volume of “The Best
Writing on Mathematics 2019”. This annual anthology, published by Princeton University
Press, brings together the year’s finest mathematics writing from around the world.
https://bit.ly/2za1nrL

Dr. Dada Docot was awarded a supplementary PRF Summer Faculty Grant (SFG) from the
Purdue Research Foundation that will provide salary support for her research project titled,
"Extraordinary Occupational Hazards: Filipino Migrants in Mainland China amid COVID-19"!
With this funding, Dr. Docot will conduct a qualitative survey that will assess the
repercussions of COVID-19 on the precaritization of migrant workers from the Global South,
such as Filipinos, amid discourses about viral containment and border securitization.

Dr. Risa Cromer was awarded a a 2020 Summer Faculty Grant from the Purdue Research
Foundation for her research project titled, "Ex Utero: Frozen Embryo Politics in the United
States"! This funding will support Dr. Cromer in completing her current book manuscript.

NEWS
Dr. Andrew Flachs has a new article out about COVID's disruptions in the food system, and
the ways that they follow the history of labor and land reform in Exertions, the blog of the
Society for the Anthropology of Work.

Check out the digital news story on Dr. Michele Buzon's research at Tombos, Northern
Sudan, in the Nile River Valley.

In a recent publication in Cultural Anthropology Dr. Kali Rubaii explores how people find
trust to overcome issues during situations of crisis even when they have no knowledge of
one another’s motives in "TRUST WITHOUT CONFIDENCE: Moving Medicine with Dirty
Hands." https://journal.culanth.org/index.p…/…/article/view/4711/530

Alumna Franco Lai's (PhD 2014) first book, based on her PhD dissertation, is coming out
from @hkupress in December 2020! Maid to Queer is the first book about Asian female
migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant
observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the
book explores the meanings of same-sex relationships to these migrant women. Congrats,
Franco! https://tinyurl.com/ycmwwbsn

Graduate student Gideon Singer is part of a team at Datastory that have created a GIS Map
Layer with their partners Spatial A.I. The map shows social sentiment regarding COVID-19 in
each county of the US. Gideon's experience researching social media during his PhD gave
him the idea to generate word clouds based on social media data. He was then able to use
the Python scripting language to automate a word-cloud that took the shape of each
respective county as long as there were 50 or more post in the last week.

Purdue Alumnus magazine has a feature article including Dr. Michele Buzon and Dr. Laura
Zanotti, who share what it takes to do their field research and why it matters!

Congratulations to Dr. Elizabeth Brite on being awarded the Exceptional Early Career
Teaching Award! Dr. Brite is a clinical assistant professor in the Honors College as well as a
Courtesy Faculty appointment in Anthropology.

As secretary-treasurer of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America-SALSA,
faculty member Dr. Laura Zanotti joins her colleagues on the COVID-19 working group,
chaired by Daniela Peluso. Check out their webpage, which highlights published positions by
indigenous leaders, communities and organizations: https://www.salsa-
tipiti.org/category/covid-19/indigenous-positions/

Got questions about how COVID-19 affects your housing, financial aid, remote learning or
anything else? The #Purdue COVID-19 Information Center, 765-496-INFO (4636), is staffed
8a to 8p, Mon-Fri.

RECIPE
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of the Anthropology monthly newsletter! As a
reward, you get a recipe for shakshuka. The origins of this dish are disputed – Morocco,
Turkey, Yemen – but it is enjoyed throughout North Africa and the Middle East. B’sehaa!
Afiyet olsun! Bialeafia!

 Ingredients:                    Directions:
 3 tbsp olive oil
 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
 2 spring onions, finely         Place a large non-stick frying pan (preferably one with a lid)
 chopped                         on a high heat. Add the oil, and as soon as it is warm, add
 ½ tsp salt                      the garlic. Turn the heat down and add the spring onions.
 1 tbsp tomato purée
 4 tomatoes, chopped             Add the salt, tomato purée and chopped tomatoes and cook
 2 tsp cumin seeds               for about 5 minutes, until the tomatoes have softened,
 1 tsp smoked paprika            adding 2 tablespoons of water if they start catching on the
 200g baby spinach leaves        bottom of the pan.
 4 medium eggs
 1 tsp chilli flakes             Add the cumin seeds and smoked paprika and cook the
                                 spices through for a few minutes.
 To serve
                                 Add the spinach, a handful at a time, and mix as best as
 Greek yoghurt                   you can – I know spinach can go rogue! Put the lid on the
 Toasted sourdough               pan and allow the spinach to wilt. This will only take a few
                                 minutes.

Take off the lid and cook for another few minutes on a
medium heat until all the moisture has dried up.

Make 4 cavities in which to place the eggs. Crack an egg
into each cavity, then put the lid on top and leave on the
heat until the whites are cooked and the yolks are still
runny. This will take roughly 4 minutes. Take off the lid and
sprinkle over the chilli flakes.

Spoon an egg and some of that smoky spinach on to each
plate, and serve with yoghurt and crisp toasted sourdough.

Recipe from
https://www.nadiyahussain.com/recipes/smoky-spinach-
shakshuka/