As we start another academic year, I am pleased to share a few updates about the department with you. As always, we enjoy hearing from you so please let us know what you are up to.
Our students continue to excel, and we are proud of all their accomplishments! Special congratulations to our graduating students.
In faculty news, as noted elsewhere in this newsletter, Cynthia Beall has retired as of July 1st. It is not possible to do justice to her many important contributions to the department, the university, and the discipline. Best wishes for a happy and healthy retirement!
Congratulations to Lihong Shi, who was awarded a Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship for Fall semester 2023. During her fellowship, Dr. Shi will work on her latest project, A Grief Endured: Surviving Child Loss in China, a project also supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
Congratulations also to Bridget Haas on the publication of her book, Suspended Lives Navigating Everyday Violence in the US Asylum System published by University of California Press.
Lee Hoffer continues his important work on syringe exchanges in the state of Ohio, funded by the Ohio Department of Health. He is also researching use of psilocybin (aka “magic mushrooms”), funded by the Expanding Horizons Initiative in the College of Arts and Sciences. He will be on sabbatical during Fall 2023 semester to continue and expand these projects.
This semester we are pleased to welcome Dr. Ishani Dasgupta, who is a Humanities in Leadership Learning Series (HILLS) Postdoctoral Fellow for 2023-2024. Dr. Dasgupta received her Ph.D. in Anthropology and South Asia Studies, with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania, in 2022 for her dissertation: “Emergence of a Deterritorialized Nation: How Tibetan Political Practices Confront the Precarity of Statelessness.” We look forward to learning more about her interesting work.
This past academic year we had an impressive slate of guest speakers come to campus to share their work with the campus community. In October, Prof. Alexandra Brewis (Arizona State University) gave the annual Kassen Lecture on her work on stigma and global health. In February, Dr. Nichole Carelock came to present her work in the tech industry as part of our “Applying Anthropology to the Real World” annual lecture series. Finally, In April, Carolyn Rouse, Ritter Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, presented her work exploring the experiences of one community in California at the heart of recent trends of declining US white life expectancies. The department is grateful to our donors and the College of Arts and Sciences for their support in bringing these speakers to campus.
As always, I enjoy hearing from you, so please let me know how you are doing. I can be reached by email at janet.mcgrath@case.edu or by phone at 216-368-2287.