“What are the Anthro faculty doing this summer?”
Hello SUNY-New Paltz Anthro Friends! Check out what our faculty are up to this summer. Hope you are all having a fun and restorative summer.
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Prof. Joe Diamond: “This summer, I am looking forward to writing, engaging in research, doing a little fishing, and knocking down a building on my property.” Prof.
Ben Junge: “I’m on sabbatical for the 2021-22 academic year and will miss students and colleagues at New Paltz. This summer, I’m finishing up a couple of articles and have a book coming out in July about political conservatism in Brazil (always very exciting when big projects come to fruition). From September to May, I’ll be doing a residential writing fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. Can’t wait to explore the majestic southwestern high desert! In the meantime, I’m enjoying a lot of gardening (potatoes! zukes! corn!) and walking the trails of the Hudson Highlands.”
Prof. Lauren Meeker: “This summer, as I get up my vaccinated nerve to go out in the world again, I plan to dig into the garden, catch up with my nieces and nephew, who we’ve been missing badly from afar, and work on putting together a family history film for my partner John’s family. I’ll also be doing a lot of writing for a book project on Vietnamese lineage ritual with my Vietnamese colleague Dr. Phan Phuong Anh.”
Prof. Nystrom: “I’ll be spending most of my summer puttering around the house doing some small renovation projects. The family will be making a couple trips to visit relatives we haven’t seen in over a year. From the academic side, I will also be finishing a couple writing projects and teaching an online class.”
Prof. Jessica Smeeks: “Unable to return to Peru this summer, I will be focusing on the data and materials from my previous season of fieldwork. In particular, I will be analyzing GPS points, representing architecture and artifact locations, from 14 sites in ArcGIS Pro for two articles that I am writing. The focuses of these analyses are site visibility and accessibility, as well as artifact distribution. My primary objective this summer, however, is dissertation writing. I intend to defend in the fall. I am also looking forward to a trip home to North Carolina in the middle of the summer. My nephew will be turning 1 on June 24, and my family is coming together to celebrate.”
Prof. Victor de Munck: “I have received a large grant from the Lithuanian Research Council to study new forms of intimate relations, marriage and decisions to have children. We have a fairly large team of undergraduates and graduate students. it should be fun. Also leading an effort to put together the first Euro-Asian anthropology conference for June 2022. Also working on a project with an anthropologist here and four Indian anthropologists to do research and write a special issue on development projects in tribal India. We’ve built an Anthro club of thirty students but no Anthropology department or institute. I’m involved in two cognitive workshops on cultural models. Beyond that, the summer is for swimming in lakes nearby and possibly traveling to Sicily, Tunisia or Turkey if it is safe and there is no quarantine. we’ve all had our shots!”
Prof. Dave Perry: “I hope to take a vacation, and will be working on expanding my archaeobotanical reference collection to include some more examples of agricultural weeds which may have been useful resources in the past (pretty much an excuse to take walks in the countryside). I’ll also be busy with my day job helping ATT deploy 5G and Firstnet (the First responder network) in New England.”