Speaker Series
Each year, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delaware hosts a number of external speakers both in person and by zoom. The colloquium events showcase cutting-edge research and community engagement while inviting conversations about major global issues. They accompany a yearlong series of programs, classes and activities that explore annual themes.
Previous Programs
2022–2023: Anthropology of Climate Change
Internationally acclaimed anthropologists explored the many ways that people respond to climate change and changing ecologies. The speakers helped us understand these problems from multiple perspectives, while underscoring the importance of anthropology's role in our climate future.
Climate Change, Human Health, and Resilience in the Holocene
On Feb. 21, 2023, Gwen Robbins-Schug, a professor of biology at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, spoke about health, environment, and climate change from the perspective of her research on the archaeological past.
Energy Expenditure in Human Health, Ecology and Evolution
On March 7, 2023, Herman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University, presented on health issues (especially metabolism) from an evolutionary perspective.
People Centered Sustainability Framework in the Himalayas
On May 2, 2023, Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, an assistant professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia, discussed climate change and Indigenous issues in the Himalayas.
UD anthropologists receive grants
At the same time as the speaker series brought diverse perspectives on climate change to our campus, three UD anthropology faculty members were awarded course development grants from the university's Climate Change Hub. Their courses — Georgina Ramsay's Refugees and Forced Migration, Vikram Thakur's Environmental Anthropology, and Jennifer Trivedi’s Culture, Health, and Environment — received awards to expand the options that exist for UD students to explore how climate change affects people around the world and how they understand and respond to it, as well as anthropology's study of climate change.
2021–2022: COVID-19: Biology, Culture, and History of Pandemic Life
Notable anthropologists explored how people have learned to live with pandemic disease. As a holistic endeavor that combines biological, cultural, and historical perspectives on the diversity of human experience, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to help us understand how communities are coming to terms with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to provide insights into the experiences of past generations who survived pandemics.
Facing the Mask: Some Anthropological Reflections
On April 8, 2021, Emma Tarlo, emeritus professor of anthropology with Goldsmiths, University of London, reflected on the effects on individuals and society of complying with COVID-19 health mandates such as wearing masks.
Diagram for a Pandemic: Anticipatory Knowledge and the Government of Emergency
On April 22, 2021, UD welcomed guest speaker Andrew Lakoff, professor of sociology and director of the Center on Science Technology, and Public Life, University of Southern California.
Weaving together a diversity of knowledges, experiences, and practices to address COVID-19
On Feb. 24, 2022, Julie Maldonado, associate director for the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN), discussed weaving together a diversity of knowledges, experiences, and practices to address COVID-19. Maldonado is also co-director of Rising Voices: Climate Resilience through Indigenous and Earth Sciences, and a lecturer in the environmental studies program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Becoming Animal with COVID-19
On March 17, 2022, UD welcomed Seven Mattes, assistant professor of integrative studies in social sciences at Michigan State University.
Medical Betrayal, Menstrual Experiences, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
On April 21, 2022, UD welcomed Kathryn Clancy, associate professor and director of graduate studies with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois.
Africa: Archaeologies of Relevance to Contemporary Pandemics
On April 26, 2022, UD welcomed Shadreck Chirikure, British Academy Global Professor with the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, presented "Africa: Archaeologies of Relevance to Contemporary Pandemics."
UD Anthropologists Research and Respond to COVID-19
Lu Ann De Cunzo, UD Professor of Anthropology, presented the following statement. It was informed by Jean Segata, social anthropologist, “COVID-19 Scales of Pandemics and Scales of Anthropology," Somatasphere.
Right now, anthropologists are researching the diverse social impacts and responses to the disease around the world, and exposing the ways that this public health crisis intersects with other forms of injustice. At UD, our anthropology faculty are looking at the pandemic in relation to cultural meanings of risk, the effects of the pandemic on hurricane recovery efforts, the reshaping of gender norms and domestic labor, and issues of race and immigration, poverty and inequality, and science and policy.
Our work exposes the bio-cultural dynamics that shape health and illness and the inequities that multiply COVID-19's impact on vulnerable populations. It reinforces our knowledge of how events like COVID-19 do not happen in isolation but build upon existing issues. Anthropological research is essential for designing and implementing disease prevention strategies, strengthening health care systems, and promoting well-being in diverse contexts. COVID-19 is a disease on a global scale, but it is not a universal phenomenon. Anthropological research is essential for placing it in context.
2020–2021: Bordering: Centering the Marginalized
The Bordering Project, hosted by the University of Delaware Department of Anthropology, explored and examined borders in all forms. Through programs, classes, and activities, the Department of Anthropology analyzed the ways that borders pose limits on human experience as well as represent transformational potential.
The Land of Open Graves: Making Undocumented Migration Visible
On November 10, 2020, the University of Delaware welcomed Jason De León, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA and executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project. He is the author of the 2015 book, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. During his virtual presentation, De León discussed migrant deaths along the U.S./Mexico border and his work on the Undocumented Migration Project.
The Bordering Project
Borders are paradoxical things. Since the inception of the discipline, anthropologists have been drawn to borders: those that humans construct to categorize behaviors in cultural anthropology; those that humans materialize through objects in archaeology; those that delineate biological limits in physical anthropology; and those that humans reproduce through language in linguistic anthropology. The borders we trace through human experience tell us about more than just boundaries, however. Through attention to borders we can better understand the relations of power and inequality that structure human experience. It is only through recognizing borders that we can hope to overcome them.
The Bordering project hosted by the University of Delaware Department of Anthropology seeks to explore and examine borders in all forms. Our project is inspired by insights into bordering and borderlands.
- Borders are "simultaneously structures and processes, things and relationships, histories and events." — Kent Lightfoot and Antoinette Martinez, 1995
- "It is the process of bordering, rather than the course of the line per se, which is important." —David Newman, 2006
- Borders "run across land but through people…. They divide and unite, bind the interior and link with the exterior." — Ira Zartman, 2010
- Borderlands are liminal, multivocal, multilocal, dynamic, contested places in which people deploy identity strategically and situationally. — Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson, 1999
We understand borderlands to be material and conceptual places of many realities - dynamic, fraught, fragmented, and fascinating.
We analyze the ways that borders pose limits on human experience as well as represent transformational potential. Our explorations of shared and distinctive experiences of danger, strangeness, innovation, negotiation, accommodation, reflection, and embodiment advances understandings of borderlands and the bordering processes that produce them.
The Department of Anthropology partnered with the Undocumented Migration Project to bring the Hostile Terrain 94 Project to the University of Delaware. The art installation, which visually represented the invisible violence and deaths that have occured at the U.S-Mexico border, was on display at Munroe Hall in fall 2023.
Several educational and research initiatives highlight how the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delaware has explored bordering. The Department of Anthropology at UD has offered classes on borders and bordering across three fields of anthropology. (Check the UD Undergraduate Catalog for current classes):
- ANTH352 (Fall 2020), Refugees and Forced Migration which explores the legal and political dimensions of forced migration.
- ANTH342 (Spring 2021), American Culture Archaeology Perspectives which examines how the material world constructs and can deconstruct borders and lives on the margins.
Department research includes Georgina Ramsay’s work on Bordering in Delaware; an interview project incorporating student research assistants; and Lu Ann De Cunzo’s archaeological work on the lower Delaware Valley as a colonial borderland and indigenous homeland.
