Anthropology Commons^™

Introduction. The Public South: Engaging History, Abolition, Pedagogy, And Practice, Helen A. Regis, C. Mathews Samson

Southern Anthropologist

With this issue of Southern Anthropologist, we introduce several new features, which we hope will enliven conversations and expand the readership of the journal.

Standing Together Against Silencing: Anthropology As Inclusive Public History In The Anti-Crt Legislative Era, Ann E. Kingsolver, Elena Sesma

Southern Anthropologist

The authors – a high school student, undergraduate and graduate students, and Anthropology Department faculty members at the University of Kentucky – discuss ways that existing ethnographic, archival, and archaeological data can be explored with new analytical lenses to contribute to public history centering voices and perspectives that have been silenced and marginalized in dominant historical narratives. This is argued to be a vital pedagogical project in secondary and postsecondary educational as well as inclusive community discussions, given the current legislative environment across a number of states in the southeastern US that discourages the teaching and even availability of texts …

Doing Oral History As Public Anthropology, Helen A. Regis

Southern Anthropologist

Doing Oral History engages students as co-researchers in a community-engaged oral history project begun in 2011. Supported by a research partnership between a faculty member, a university oral history center, and a non-profit archive, the course engages learners in the exploration of a festival and its communities. Through oral histories with long-time festival workers, artists, staff, volunteers, and neighbors, we contribute to expanding the history of a festival and the social movements that have shaped it. We also consider the ways in which diverse festival workers come to feel a part of a community centering African American working-class folk, cultures, …

Human Trafficking Research: Developing Collaborative Partnerships With Local Agencies, Jaymelee Kim

Southern Anthropologist

This article considers an effort to develop meaningful research collaborations with non-governmental organizations and local agencies working on human trafficking. Scholarship discussing challenges and insights for “finding the field” and developing partnerships in the rural US is sparse. This research report briefly discusses considerations that should be taken into account when developing applied research projects with non-academic collaborators. Using Ohio-based human trafficking research as a case study, this piece discusses how cultural factors, misconceptions, confidentiality, and goals can be navigated to ultimately benefit the partner agencies and the populations they serve.

Putting Anthropological Critiques Into Practice, Amanda J. Reinke

Southern Anthropologist

How do we use anthropological critiques of institutions, practices, and processes to improve practices that address the needs of the public?Drawing on applied anthropological literature and from the author’s experience as a conflict management practitioner and academic, this essay discusses the relationship between critiques of practice and practicing anthropology. Rather than a diametrically opposed relationship (academic vs. practitioner or Ivory Tower vs. applied), I use my positionality as a researcher, academic, entrepreneur, and practitioner in conflict management to argue that engaging with theoretically informed critiques is necessary for practice improvements, and that practitioners are central to improving theory.

Blood Will Tell: Eugenics Education At A Twentieth-Century Southern University, Meg Langhorne, Alison Bell

Southern Anthropologist

During the 1920s and ‘30s, Washington and Lee University (W&L) biology students visited local families suspected of “degeneracy.” At the direction of their professor and with the support of social workers, physicians, and other authorities, students recorded generational histories as well as such variables as age, material conditions, educational level, employment, illnesses, and supposed proclivities toward promiscuity, alcoholism, illegitimacy, “idiocy,” and “feeblemindedness.” W&L Special Collections and Archives contains 25 of these eugenics term papers. Together they document ways that young White men – many from well-to-do southern families – learned or affirmed that their social position was a function of …

Abolition 101: Anthropological Praxis And Education For Liberation, Daniel A. Pizarro

Southern Anthropologist

Anthropological praxis has the potential to help build and sustain social justice movements by speaking truth to power, exposing structural violence, and questioning communities’ safety and well-being. Anthropologists who engage in praxis interrogate the root causes of oppression by critiquing the discipline’s pedagogies. The current structure of academic institutions encourages scholars to overlook the popular and political education necessary to ameliorate social suffering and advance human rights. This paper explores prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition, a liberatory praxis framework that socio-cultural anthropologists may adopt as active participants in the abolitionist struggle. This case study draws on community-based participatory action research …

Complete Issue, Journal Editors

Southern Anthropologist

No abstract provided.

Pedagogy In Times Of Crisis, James Daria, Abigail Wightman, Shelly Yankovskyy, Amanda J. Reinke

Southern Anthropologist

Editors’ note: With this issue, we launch a new feature of the journal, drawing from a panel discussion or roundtable at SAS, which sparked important discussion for panelists and conference participants. This panel, which took place on April 9, 2022, in Raleigh, NC, was part of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society with the theme “Public Interest and Professional Anthropology in the South.” The roundtable was organized and moderated by Amanda J. Reinke. The transcript was created by Helen Regis and the conversation was lightly edited by the authors, who also had an opportunity to include references …

Historical Archaeology At The Chalmers Institute, Mississippi's First University, Antosia Briggs

Honors Theses

This study presents a basic description and analysis of the artifacts collected from the 2015 archaeological excavation conducted in Holly Springs, Mississippi at the Chalmers Institute site. The thesis includes history and background on Holly Springs as a city to orient the reader. This text also includes information regarding the program, Preserve Marshall County, as their work regarding the building and site ties directly into the ability of the student archaeologists being able to excavate in 2015 as well as the future of the building. This study analyzes the artifacts found based on the frameworks of the archaeology of institutional …

Our Mothers Are Dying: How Economics Affect Maternal Mortality, Kendall Wheelock

Honors Theses

One of the primary goals from the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce maternal mortality on a global scale. It is well documented that economic success has a strong correlation with maternal mortality (Kirigia et al 2014, 1-3). There is ample research on how one’s health affects their ability to participate in society, furthermore protecting women within the sphere of medicine is a key part of advancing society. This thesis aims to give qualitative and quantitive backing to a deeper investigation of the correlation between economic success and maternal health.

To focus this research, the thesis focuses on …

Reframing Culture: The Decolonization And Repatriation Process In The Italian Museum System, Leila De Gruy

Honors Theses

In 2022, the collections of the former Museo Coloniale, Colonial Museum, were reopened to the public as a part of the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome. This reopening, viewed by many as an exhumation of fascist dictator Mussolini’s former collection, in the neighborhood he built for the World Fair, reinvigorated the debate surrounding museum decolonization and brought Italy into the spotlight for this topic. This thesis seeks to explore the conversation surrounding the topic of Italian museum decolonization, using the Museo Coloniale’s collection as the primary example of a colonial museum in a post colonial world. Through this, it asks …

Los Pedrenses: Alternative Tourism, The Spectacle Of Youth, And Struggles For Local Authority In La Pedrera, Uruguay, Gwendelyn Gardner

Honors Theses

Tourism has been a longstanding industry in La Pedrera, a rural beach town along the Atlantic coast of Rocha, Uruguay. The effects of recent forms of tourism massification in the form of los boliches and Carnaval have prompted residents to develop a local discourse and sociopolitical front against youth and mass tourism. This discourse has roots in the strong connection between residents and the environment that has shaped the development of the community as caretakers of the region. Such reasoning is based on interviews with La Pedrera locals, social media analysis, and articles for local and national newspapers in conjunction …