Yonatan Reches from the Kedusah Project will hold a hands-on demonstration of the tools and materials of Jewish Scribal Art.
anthropology
Emily Schumacher Dissertation Defense
Join the UTulsa Department of Anthropology and Sociology for the presentation and defense of Emily Schumacher’s doctoral thesis. The event will be held in the upstairs seminar room of Harwell Hall, with the option to view the defense virtually.
For access to the Teams link, please email ers847@utulsa.edu before July 15th.
John Shea Lecture
Please join the Department of Anthropology and Sociology as we welcome paleoanthropologist Dr. John J. Shea of Stony Brook University. Dr. Shea will give a lecture on his current research in the upstairs seminar room of Harwell Hall. We hope to see you there!
Department of Anthropology & Sociology End-Of-Year Awards Dinner
The Department of Anthropology and Sociology celebrates our students and a successful year with our annual end-of-year awards dinner. The dinner will feature the presentation of the Danowski Whalen Senior Prize in Anthropology and the Outstanding Academic Achievement in Sociology award and a keynote lecture by Dr. Patrick N. Pedersen, Fullbright Postdoc Visiting Scholar, “Of Muscle and Stone: Ground Stone Tools and Food Processing During the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic Transition Southwest Asia”.
By invitation only.
Les Eason “Patterns and Magnitude of variation in the Hominin Proximal Femur”
Want to learn more about the evolutionary flexibility of the human and non-human primate hip? Lambda Alpha presents a talk by Les Eason, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Tulsa.
A Relational Approach to Social Change
Are you interested in learning how to make social change that is meaningful, effective, and fosters solidarity rather than division?
The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) has an 80-year track record of creating political change for the common good through institutional organizing and civic leader development.
In this seminar hosted by TU’s Department of Anthropology, IAF-trained community organizers will demonstrate foundational principles and practices of their network’s model of grassroots social work through a local Tulsa lens.
Working For Black Ancestors
The Tulsa community and TU students are invited to join Lambda Alpha to hear from Dr. Aja Lans, a bioarchaeologist from Johns Hopkins University, who will be presenting a talk about the use of Black bodies in anthropological skeletal curations, as well as the impact of her identity as a Black Anthropologist on her work.
Hear from Dr. Aja Lans:
“My identity as a Black anthropologist both influences and strengthens my work as a bioarchaeologist, but I have faced many obstacles in developing my scholarship. My research focuses on the histories of African descended peoples whose bodies have been curated in anthropological skeletal collections. Such studies require understanding the ethical implications of working with human remains and descendant communities in ways that are rarely sufficiently addressed in anthropology. I argue that the skeletal remains of Black people should only be studied in limited circumstances, including efforts to repatriate or lay Ancestors to rest, when burial sites are at risk, and when relevant questions posed by a descendant community can only be answered by considering the skeletal body. Therefore, I propose a liberatory bioarchaeological practice informed by Black feminism and critical race theory.”
The George Odell Lambda Alpha Lecture Series: Prof. April Nowell
TU community join the Department of Anthropology for The George Odell Lambda Alpha Lecture Series with Prof. April Nowell from the University of Victoria, BC.
THE STORIES WE TELL: CHILDREN, ORAL STORYTELLING, AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION IN THE EUROPEAN UPPER PALEOLITHIC
Whether around a campfire, in a café, or in a sold-out theater, storytelling is ubiquitous in human culture. The universality of storytelling suggests that this behavior has deep roots. It also begs the question of why we as humans find stories so compelling and what the evolutionary context for this behavior might be. How children learn in foraging societies differs from the classroom-based learning and teaching style typical of industrialized societies in the West. This difference, however, has often been mischaracterized by anthropologists as an absence or rarity of direct teaching in foraging societies. In this talk, following the work of Scalise Sugiyama, I argue that oral storytelling is a form of pedagogy in foraging societies that share many of the features of direct teaching. Building on ethnographic data, I explore the evolutionary context, adaptive features, and cognitive underpinnings of storytelling. I then present archaeological evidence for storytelling and narrative in the Upper Paleolithic. Finally, arguing that storytelling is a vehicle for cumulative culture, I consider the implications of this form of teaching for skill acquisition and knowledge transmission among Upper Paleolithic children and adolescents and for their role as drivers of human cultural evolution.
Emily Schumacher Dissertation Defense
Join the UTulsa Department of Anthropology and Sociology for the presentation and defense of Emily Schumacher’s doctoral thesis. The event will be held in the upstairs seminar room of Harwell Hall, with the option to view the defense virtually.
For access to the Teams link, please email ers847@utulsa.edu before July 15th.
John Shea Lecture
Please join the Department of Anthropology and Sociology as we welcome paleoanthropologist Dr. John J. Shea of Stony Brook University. Dr. Shea will give a lecture on his current research in the upstairs seminar room of Harwell Hall. We hope to see you there!
Department of Anthropology & Sociology End-Of-Year Awards Dinner
The Department of Anthropology and Sociology celebrates our students and a successful year with our annual end-of-year awards dinner. The dinner will feature the presentation of the Danowski Whalen Senior Prize in Anthropology and the Outstanding Academic Achievement in Sociology award and a keynote lecture by Dr. Patrick N. Pedersen, Fullbright Postdoc Visiting Scholar, “Of Muscle and Stone: Ground Stone Tools and Food Processing During the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic Transition Southwest Asia”.
By invitation only.
Les Eason “Patterns and Magnitude of variation in the Hominin Proximal Femur”
Want to learn more about the evolutionary flexibility of the human and non-human primate hip? Lambda Alpha presents a talk by Les Eason, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Tulsa.
A Relational Approach to Social Change
Are you interested in learning how to make social change that is meaningful, effective, and fosters solidarity rather than division?
The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) has an 80-year track record of creating political change for the common good through institutional organizing and civic leader development.
In this seminar hosted by TU’s Department of Anthropology, IAF-trained community organizers will demonstrate foundational principles and practices of their network’s model of grassroots social work through a local Tulsa lens.
Working For Black Ancestors
The Tulsa community and TU students are invited to join Lambda Alpha to hear from Dr. Aja Lans, a bioarchaeologist from Johns Hopkins University, who will be presenting a talk about the use of Black bodies in anthropological skeletal curations, as well as the impact of her identity as a Black Anthropologist on her work.
Hear from Dr. Aja Lans:
“My identity as a Black anthropologist both influences and strengthens my work as a bioarchaeologist, but I have faced many obstacles in developing my scholarship. My research focuses on the histories of African descended peoples whose bodies have been curated in anthropological skeletal collections. Such studies require understanding the ethical implications of working with human remains and descendant communities in ways that are rarely sufficiently addressed in anthropology. I argue that the skeletal remains of Black people should only be studied in limited circumstances, including efforts to repatriate or lay Ancestors to rest, when burial sites are at risk, and when relevant questions posed by a descendant community can only be answered by considering the skeletal body. Therefore, I propose a liberatory bioarchaeological practice informed by Black feminism and critical race theory.”
The George Odell Lambda Alpha Lecture Series: Prof. April Nowell
TU community join the Department of Anthropology for The George Odell Lambda Alpha Lecture Series with Prof. April Nowell from the University of Victoria, BC.
THE STORIES WE TELL: CHILDREN, ORAL STORYTELLING, AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION IN THE EUROPEAN UPPER PALEOLITHIC
Whether around a campfire, in a café, or in a sold-out theater, storytelling is ubiquitous in human culture. The universality of storytelling suggests that this behavior has deep roots. It also begs the question of why we as humans find stories so compelling and what the evolutionary context for this behavior might be. How children learn in foraging societies differs from the classroom-based learning and teaching style typical of industrialized societies in the West. This difference, however, has often been mischaracterized by anthropologists as an absence or rarity of direct teaching in foraging societies. In this talk, following the work of Scalise Sugiyama, I argue that oral storytelling is a form of pedagogy in foraging societies that share many of the features of direct teaching. Building on ethnographic data, I explore the evolutionary context, adaptive features, and cognitive underpinnings of storytelling. I then present archaeological evidence for storytelling and narrative in the Upper Paleolithic. Finally, arguing that storytelling is a vehicle for cumulative culture, I consider the implications of this form of teaching for skill acquisition and knowledge transmission among Upper Paleolithic children and adolescents and for their role as drivers of human cultural evolution.