April
5, 2002
Future
Margaret Meads to Gather at MHC for Five College Anthropology
Conference
More than twenty-five Five College students of anthropology will
gather at MHC April 13 for a day that will feature their formal
presentations about topics as diverse as the peoples and practices
of the world. The students, eleven of whom are MHC students, will
give talks based on their research and independent work on such
intriguing topics as the following: authenticity and the corporate
bottom line in Nashville's country music industry; maternity
benefits for self-employed women in Gujarat, India; how human
actions facilitate the transmission of cholera; the meaning of
music in the context of the kurova guva ceremony among the Shona
in Zimbabwe; Quechua-Lamista spirituality and biodiversity; the
health issue of childhood diarrhea in the Andes; irrigation systems
as vessels for power in Peru; prosthesis and transformation: the
conversion to Christianity among Nepali leprosy patients; and
romance in India and the United States: the social construction
of romance and its complicity in the construction of gender roles.
The talks are open to the public and will be held in the Willits-Hallowell
Center from 9 am to 3 pm.
Renée Rothman '91, the conference's keynote
speaker, will give a talk titled "Walking between Worlds:
The Strange and Wonderful Ways of the Anthropologist" at
9:15 am. After graduating from MHC, summa cum laude, with a bachelor's
degree in anthropology, Rothman went on to earn a doctorate in
cultural anthropology from the University of California at Santa
Cruz. While a student at MHC, she completed research on contemporary
ritual practices among local Episcopalians and Neopagans and on
ways that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered populations
challenge Americans' "strictly bipolar notions"
of gender, she said. As a graduate student, Rothman, who has studied
modern dance and the martial art aikido, focused her research
on the anthropology of dance. Her dissertation explored the ways
that the movements, physicality, and practices of aikido create
a sense of community and camaraderie among its practitioners.
She is currently a lecturer in cultural anthropology and world
cultures at San Jose State University, where she teaches a course
on the anthropology of dance, and at the University of Santa Cruz.
The Five College Anthropology Conference has been held annually
for the past seven years (following a hiatus of undetermined length).
The last time it was held at Mount Holyoke was in April 1996.
Says MHC Professor of Anthropology Lynn Morgan, "Abstracts
are continuing to come in, and students are very enthusiastic
about the conference. I'm very excited about how this event is
shaping up."
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