All members of the department are active scholars as well as experienced and enthusiastic teachers. Their research interests include the following: Paleoindian archaeology, paleoenvironments, evolutionary theory; cultural, political, economic, psychological and linguistic anthropology; nonverbal communication, language contact and variation; nationalism and state formation, race and class issues, gender issues and future studies.
Haeng-ja Chung, assistant professor of anthropology, joined the Hamilton faculty in 2006 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and Colorado College. She earned her Ph.D. from UCLA. Chung has published articles and book reviews in Gender and Labor in Korea and Japan, Journal of Asian Modern Women’s History, War and Peace, Journal of Asian Studies and American Anthropologist in English and Japanese. She was awarded a fellowship and research grants from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. While being affiliated at the department of cultural anthropology at the University of Tokyo for two years, she conducted research on performative, emotional and affective labor. Based on the research, she writes an ethnographic monograph on high-end Korean nightclub hostesses in Japan. Chung was also a recipient of Hamilton’s John R. Hatch Class of 1925 Excellence in Teaching Award.
Nathan Goodale, assistant professor of anthropology, earned his B.A. in geology and anthropology from Western State College, his M.A. in anthropology from the University of Montana, and his Ph.D. in anthropology from Washington State University. Goodale’s current research is focused on evolutionary approaches to understanding lithic technological organization, the transition to agriculture / resource intensification, and the Neolithic Demographic Transition. Goodale conducts research in the interior Northwest of North America, western coastal Ireland, and the Near East. Research emphases include modeling human behavior with quantitative methods, lithic technological organization, and evolutionary approaches to understanding variation in material culture as a byproduct of human behavior and knowledge transmission.
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George T. Jones, “Tom” to friends and colleagues, began teaching at Hamilton in 1985 after receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Washington. His research interests concern hunter-gatherer adaptation to desert environments and since 1978 he has conducted archaeological studies in the intermountain region of the western United States. Between 1986 and 2007, he co-directed the archaeological field school with his wife, Professor of Anthropology Charlotte Beck, focusing on the Paleo-Indian occupation of central and eastern Nevada. With Beck he published the monograph, The Archaeology of the Eastern Nevada Paleoarchaic, and has co-authored numerous book chapters, and articles in such journals as American Antiquity, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, which report the results of his research program. He was awarded the Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for excellence in teaching from the College.
Chaise LaDousa, associate professor of anthropology, attended the college of the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University. He has conducted field research in North India studying languages and the role they play in education and India’s rapidly changing political economy. Another project has focused on the importance of fun in expressive culture in institutions of higher education in the United States. He has published numerous professional articles, and has a book in press titled Signs of Play: Faith, Race, and Sex in a College Town.
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Urciuoli came to Hamilton in 1988. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her areas of interests are linguistic and cultural anthropology, specializing in public discourses of race, class, and language, and particularly the discursive construction of "diversity" in U.S. higher education. Urciuoli's book, Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class, was published in 1996; it was awarded the 1997 Gustavus Myers Center Award for the study of human rights in North America. She has published in American Ethnologist, Language and Communication, and the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. Urciuoli is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Cultural Anthropology, the American Ethnological Society, and the Society for Linguistic Anthropology.
Christopher Vasantkumar, assistant professor of anthropology, joined the Hamilton faculty in 2006. He holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a master's and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2002, he has conducted ethnographic field research in multiethnic communities in northwest China as well as amongst the Tibetan populations of Himachal Pradesh, India. His research interests center on the place of Tibetans and other ethnic minorities in national and trans-national envisionings of China and Chineseness as well as on the intersection between Chinese discourses of minzu (“ethnicity”) and global imaginings of race, nation and indigeneity. Vasantkumar teaches courses on the politics of difference, transnationalism and globalization and the anthropology of money.
Henry Rutz is an economic anthropologist with research interests in the cultural nationalism of Pacific Island States, with special reference to Fiji. He also has research interest in changing culture of the middle class in an era of globalization, with special reference to issues of class and education in Istanbul. He is co-author, with Erol Balkan, of Reproducing Class: Education, Neoliberalism and the Rise of the New Middle Class in Istanbul (2009). Rutz's other publications include Cultural Preservation, in World at Risk: A Global Issues Sourcebook (2002), The Rise and Demise of Islamic Religious Schools: Discourses of Belonging and Denial in the Construction of Turkish Civil Society and Culture, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (1999), and Evaluating the Discourse of Tradition, Pacific Studies (2000).
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Anthropology faculty members are deeply committed and accomplished teachers. Three have received Hamilton's Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching in recent years. Professors emphasize collaboration with students, publishing and presenting research papers co-authored with anthropology majors.
Students experience the fascination of collaborative field research and the thrill of archaeological discovery by participating in our summer field program, devoted to the study of the earliest cultures of western North America.
Centrally positioned in the liberal arts tradition, anthropology is a great choice for a minor or elective course. It has an interdisciplinary reach from the arts to the social sciences to the hard sciences. It involves both real field research and vibrant theoretical debate. And its central subject is the spectrum of human diversity itself.
Anthropology at Hamilton prepares graduates for an amazing array of careers, professions and pursuits. Recent majors have become writers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists. They have entered the fields of international business, epidemiology, social-impact studies, organizational analysis and market research, to mention a few.
In addition to postgraduate success in the professions, about four in five Hamilton alumni with degrees in anthropology go on to graduate study.
Anthropology faculty members are deeply committed and accomplished teachers. Three have received Hamilton's Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching in recent years. Professors emphasize collaboration with students, publishing and presenting research papers co-authored with anthropology majors.
Students experience the fascination of collaborative field research and the thrill of archaeological discovery by participating in our summer field program, devoted to the study of the earliest cultures of western North America.
Centrally positioned in the liberal arts tradition, anthropology is a great choice for a minor or elective course. It has an interdisciplinary reach from the arts to the social sciences to the hard sciences. It involves both real field research and vibrant theoretical debate. And its central subject is the spectrum of human diversity itself.
Anthropology at Hamilton prepares graduates for an amazing array of careers, professions and pursuits. Recent majors have become writers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists. They have entered the fields of international business, epidemiology, social-impact studies, organizational analysis and market research, to mention a few.
In addition to postgraduate success in the professions, about four in five Hamilton alumni with degrees in anthropology go on to graduate study.
Anthropology faculty members are deeply committed and accomplished teachers. Three have received Hamilton's Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching in recent years. Professors emphasize collaboration with students, publishing and presenting research papers co-authored with anthropology majors.
Students experience the fascination of collaborative field research and the thrill of archaeological discovery by participating in our summer field program, devoted to the study of the earliest cultures of western North America.
Centrally positioned in the liberal arts tradition, anthropology is a great choice for a minor or elective course. It has an interdisciplinary reach from the arts to the social sciences to the hard sciences. It involves both real field research and vibrant theoretical debate. And its central subject is the spectrum of human diversity itself.
Anthropology at Hamilton prepares graduates for an amazing array of careers, professions and pursuits. Recent majors have become writers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists. They have entered the fields of international business, epidemiology, social-impact studies, organizational analysis and market research, to mention a few.
In addition to postgraduate success in the professions, about four in five Hamilton alumni with degrees in anthropology go on to graduate study.
Anthropology faculty members are deeply committed and accomplished teachers. Three have received Hamilton's Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching in recent years. Professors emphasize collaboration with students, publishing and presenting research papers co-authored with anthropology majors.
Students experience the fascination of collaborative field research and the thrill of archaeological discovery by participating in our summer field program, devoted to the study of the earliest cultures of western North America.
Centrally positioned in the liberal arts tradition, anthropology is a great choice for a minor or elective course. It has an interdisciplinary reach from the arts to the social sciences to the hard sciences. It involves both real field research and vibrant theoretical debate. And its central subject is the spectrum of human diversity itself.
Anthropology at Hamilton prepares graduates for an amazing array of careers, professions and pursuits. Recent majors have become writers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists. They have entered the fields of international business, epidemiology, social-impact studies, organizational analysis and market research, to mention a few.
In addition to postgraduate success in the professions, about four in five Hamilton alumni with degrees in anthropology go on to graduate study.
Anthropology faculty members are deeply committed and accomplished teachers. Three have received Hamilton's Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching in recent years. Professors emphasize collaboration with students, publishing and presenting research papers co-authored with anthropology majors.
Students experience the fascination of collaborative field research and the thrill of archaeological discovery by participating in our summer field program, devoted to the study of the earliest cultures of western North America.
Centrally positioned in the liberal arts tradition, anthropology is a great choice for a minor or elective course. It has an interdisciplinary reach from the arts to the social sciences to the hard sciences. It involves both real field research and vibrant theoretical debate. And its central subject is the spectrum of human diversity itself.
Anthropology at Hamilton prepares graduates for an amazing array of careers, professions and pursuits. Recent majors have become writers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and scientists. They have entered the fields of international business, epidemiology, social-impact studies, organizational analysis and market research, to mention a few.
In addition to postgraduate success in the professions, about four in five Hamilton alumni with degrees in anthropology go on to graduate study.
