Introducing BAS Editor Julienne Rutherford

It is an honor to follow in Virginia Vitzthum’s footsteps as the new BAS contributing editor for Anthropology News. It is fitting that Virginia and I share this particular connection as she and I share an intellectual lineage. Virginia and my Indiana University graduate advisor Kevin Hunt were students together in the PhD program at Michigan. Kevin first connected me with Virginia, who from the first was supportive and enthusiastic about my research and of me as a young woman scholar building her career in biological anthropology. To be handed her long-burning AN torch is a continuation of that relationship and I am excited to carry it forward.

One of my passions—inspired in large part by the graciousness and commitment of established scholars like Virginia—is peer-mentoring among early stage career biological anthropologists. To that end, I founded the Biological Anthropology Developing Investigators Troop (BANDIT) in 2010 at the AAPA meeting in Albuquerque. The idea was to get grad students, postdocs, assistant/visiting/adjunct professors and other “un-tenureds” in a room to loosen up, stop trying to impress each other, and share their stories of struggle and triumph to build a network of emotional and intellectual support. Our first meeting was exhilarating, with about 30 attendees fueled by wine donated by James McKenna. That led to the formation of the BANDIT blog in which I post original content about grantwriting, manuscript writing, personal life issues (I avoid the word balance!), teaching, mentorship and other critical issues. In the following years, the BANDIT Happy Hour at AAPA has become a de rigueur event, with attendance climbing to 200 last year in Portland. Once I had my daughter and the pace of the tenure track picked up, I was unable to manage the blog alone. In January, several wonderful—and mostly untenured—colleagues joined me in introducing the BANDIT facebook page which at this writing has 600 members. Together with Kate Clancy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Robin Nelson of the University of California at Riverside, Elizabeth Quinn of Washington University, Katie Hinde of Harvard University, and our sole tenured moderator Katie MacKinnon of St Louis University, we are reaching thousands of Facebook users a week. The material we share should be of broad interest to anthropologists of all stripes, and particularly their students. Like BANDIT on Facebook!

Howells Award Fundraiser

The WW Howells Award is awarded by BAS to recognize outstanding books in biological anthropology. The Biological Anthropology Section of the AAA is undertaking a fundraising drive to increase the Howells Endowment Fund so that we can better honor both the memory of an eminent biological anthropologist and the outstanding work that biological anthropologists are doing today. Our goal in this drive is to raise $10,000, all of which will be added to the fund, to increase the income it generates. Checks for contributions should be made out to the American Anthropological Association with the notation Howells Fund in the memo line. Contributions should be sent to the Howells Award, American Anthropological Association, 2200 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600, Arlington, VA 22201.

2012 BAS Student Prize Winner: Michaela Howells

The 2012 BAS Student Prize goes to the paper entitled: “You Just Have to Wait: The Impact of Marital Status on the Pregnancy Outcomes of Samoan Women” by lead author (and presenter) Michaela Howells (U Colorado, Boulder) and co-authors Richard Bender (U Colorado, Boulder), Darna L Dufour (both from UCB), and John Ah Ching and Bethal Mua’sau (LBJ Tropical Medical Center). Howells et al investigated the relationship between social capital, marital status and pregnancy outcomes in American Samoa. They coupled a thorough statistical analysis of the relationship between marital status and pregnancy outcomes, with a detailed grasp of the cultural practices that encourage some and deny others the ability to have a formal state-sanctioned marriage.

Harappan Archives Available

The Archives at Cornell University now contain the full texts authored by Nancy C Lovell, Brian Hemphill, John R Lukacs and Kenneth AR Kennedy on the subject of the Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeletons from Cemetery R-37 at Harappa Village, Pakistan. These are from the mature phase of the Harappan (lndus) Civilization. They were described in the two field sessions at the site in 1987 and 1988. These records have not been published, but they are available to all scholars with research interests in the archaeology and biological anthropology of prehistoric South Asia. Those wishing to see this document should contact Elaine Engst, Archivist, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Level 23, Carl A Kroch Library, Cornell University, lthaca, NY14853-5302. Her telephone number is 1/607-255-0370.

Biological Anthropology Fieldwork Survey

In her wonderful work as a blogger of ladybusiness over at Scientific American, Kate Clancy has collected several disturbing stories of sexual harassment and assault in the field. She recognized an opportunity to learn more about the state of fieldwork in biological anthropology and the potential risks for our students in unfamiliar territory at the bottom of the hierarchy of academic power. To that end, she and several colleagues (including me, Robin Nelson and Katie Hinde) developed the Biological Anthropology Fieldwork Survey, which can be found via Clancy’s blog. By the time you read this column the survey may no longer be live, but I will be reporting updates and findings in my online AN column so please stay tuned there or over at Context and Variation.

This space is your space. Have an announcement to share? Email me at ruther4d@uic.edu.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/04/11/introducing-bas-editor-julienne-rutherford/