Faculty

Kathleen A. Galvin - CHAIR

BA, MA - Colorado State University
Ph D  - SUNY - Binghamton
Kathleen.Galvin@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Cultural and Biological Anthropology

RESEARCH: Africa, U.S. Great Plains; human ecology, human dimensions of global change, conservation and development, pastoralism, diet and nutrition

CLASSES: Human Ecology, Cultural Change, Humans in Ecosystems, Anthropology and Development

Dr. Galvin is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. She is also an Advising Faculty member for the Department of Sociology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at CSU. Trained as a biological anthropologist she has conducted interdisciplinary human ecological research in Africa for the past 20 years. She is interested in issues of African pastoral land use, conservation, climate variability and resilience and adaptation strategies of these populations. Her current research explores looking at the dynamics of the coupled natural and human system of the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem. She is also looking at the importance of spatial complexity and the costs of fragmentation of pastoral ecosystems around the world. Finally, she is currently leading a group to investigate household decision-making under uncertainty across sites around the world with NSF funding. Dr. Galvin has been a member of a National Academy of Science/National Research Council (NAS/NRC) group to assess Research Needs and Modes of Support for the Human Dimensions of Global Change. She was also a panel member of the NAS NRC Human Dimensions of Seasonal-to-Interannual Climate Variability group. She served on the National Science Foundation, Cultural Anthropology Program Panel. She was an Aldo Leopold Fellow in 2001. More information about her research can be found at http://www.nrel.ColoState.Edu/people/kathy.html

Katherine E. Browne - WEB SITE

BA, MA, Ph D - Southern Methodist University
Kate.Browne@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Cultural Anthropology

RESEARCH: French Caribbean; gender, economic mobility, modernity

CLASSES: Theory and Research Methods, Culture Change and Modernity, Caribbean and Latin America, Language and Culture

Dr. Browne is professor of anthropology. Her longstanding work in the French Caribbean inspired her to undertake a major research project and film documentary about the impact of Katrina on Afro-Creole residents of the New Orleans area. Her two-year collaboration with Emmy-winning filmmaker Ginny Martin resulted in Still Waiting: Life After Katrina, a one-hour documentary that aired on PBS in August and September 2007 in more than 200 US cities. She is also completing a collaborative book project with Lynne Milgram to showcase anthropological insights about the changing understandings of morality in societies that are experiencing global change. That book, Economics and Morality: An Anthropological Approach, will be published in 2008. Browne’s first book, Creole Economics: Caribbean Cunning Under the French Flag, was published in 2004 by University of Texas Press and is now in its second printing. Browne’s research addresses issues of cultural identity, attachment to place, and gender relations as these sources of collective awareness become threatened by environmental and social change.

Chris Fisher - WEB SITE

BA - Michigan State
Ph D - Wisconson - Madison
ChrisFisher@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD:  Archaeology

CLASSES:  Introduction to Prehistory; Archaeology of Mesoamerica; Demography and Settlement

Dr. Fisher’s research is focused on unraveling the complex relationship that links humans to their past and present environments. This focus of anthropological archaeology is often called landscape archaeology or human ecodynamics.  In the past decade attention drawn to global warming has created an immediacy to modern environmental problems, many of which have antecedents and parallels in the deep past. Ancient societies faced many of the same environmental problems we are confronting today and constructed both successful and disastrous responses. By studying this record of landscape change, which can be reconstructed through both earth-science and archaeological techniques, Prehistory can inform modern-based conceptions of land degradation, sustainability, development, and human and natural ecological change.  Dr. Fisher has active research projects in two areas of Mesoamerica including the Malpaso Valley, Zacatecas, and the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán.  He has published articles in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Antiquity, and the American Anthropologist, chapters in several books, and is the co-editor of a recent volume on archaeological approaches to intensification.

Michelle M. Glantz

B.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Mica.Glantz@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Biological Anthropology

RESEARCH: Human evolution, the prehistory of Israel and Central Asia, Neandertal morphology and evolutionary history, dental anthropology, evolutionary theory

CLASSES: Human Origins and Variation; Human Evolution; Advanced Human Evolution; Evolution of the Human Adaptation; the Evolution of Primate Behavior; Methods of Analysis in Paleoanthropology.

Dr. Glantz’s research and teaching focus on the origins of modern humans with an emphasis on deciphering the relationship of the Neandertals to modern human evolutionary history.  Broadly, her research is interested in the dialectic between culture and biology and its impact on hominan morphology.  In this regard, she has examined aspects of the craniofacial skeleton and dentition in order to determine the degree to which they reflect the evolution of subsistence strategies.  She has been a member of Paleolithic excavations in France and Israel and is presently conducting  fieldwork in Uzbekistan, and other neighboring Central Asian republics, with the goal of further documenting hominan colonization of these areas.  She has authored articles in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Antiquity, and the Geographical Review.

Lynn Kwiatkowski

BA - Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
MA, PhD - Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
Lynn.Kwiatkowski@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Cultural Anthropology

RESEARCH: Southeast Asia, medical, international health and development, hunger, gender, political and interpersonal violence

CLASSES: Medical Anthropology, Southeast Asian Cultures and Societies, Gender and Anthropology, Women and Health

Dr. Kwiatkowski’s research and teaching interests include medical anthropology, international health and development, gender, hunger, political and interpersonal violence and Southeast Asia. Her current research in Vietnam and in Vietnamese communities in the U.S. focuses on understanding historical and contemporary cultural interpretations of wife battering, its emotional and physical health consequences, and the cultural and social forces that influence this form of violence in local communities. Her research also involves analyzing responses to the violence at a number of different levels, including individual, familial, state, and international. Kwiatkowski has also conducted research in the Philippines, which examined ways that hunger is influenced by gender inequality, international women in development programs, international and local health programs, religious proselytization, political violence, and the state. She is the author of Struggling with Development: The Politics of Hunger and Gender in the Philippines. She has also published journal articles in Urban Anthropology and Cultural Survival Quarterly, and contributed chapters in Feminist Nationalism, the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, andthe forthcoming Brokering a Revolution: Relational Dynamics of a Philippine Insurgency.

Jason M. LaBelle

B.A.:  Colorado State University
M.A., Ph.D.:  Southern Methodist University
Jason.LaBelle@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Archaeology

RESEARCH: Environmental and Landscape Archaeology, Peopling of the Americas, Foragers, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, Lithic technology, Public Archaeology

CLASSES: Introduction to Prehistory, North American Archaeology, Great Plains Archaeology, Lithic Technology, Peopling of North America, Anthropology Research Methods

Dr. LaBelle is an archaeologist interested in prehistoric foragers inhabiting the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of North America during the Paleoindian period of the late Pleistocene/early Holocene.  Related research interests include ecological studies of playa lakes, hunter-gatherer site structure, lithic technology, and the history of archaeology.  His current research is focused on survey for Paleoindian locales in northern Colorado, but past fieldwork has taken him across Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Montana, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming.  In addition to teaching and research, he is also the Director of the Laboratory of Public Archaeology (LOPA), which houses archaeological collections from academic and contract projects.  Dr. LaBelle is currently Vice President of the Colorado Archaeological Society and has actively worked with avocational archaeologists throughout the Plains in documenting their collections.  He has published articles in American Antiquity, Archaeometry, Current Research in the Pleistocene, Geoarchaeology, Plains Anthropologist, and a chapter in Ethical Issues in Archaeology, in addition to technical reports in the contract and academic realms.

Ann L. Magennis

BA - Michigan State University
MA - University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Ph D - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Ann.Magennis@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Biological Anthropology

RESEARCH: Human adaptability; skeletal biology; bioarchaeology; Africa Mesoamerica

CLASSES: Human Origins and Variation; Human Osteology; Human Biological Variation; Bioanthropology of Human Populations; Contemporary Issues in Biological Anthropology; Anthropology and International Health

Dr. Magennis’ teaching and research interests include human adaptation to disease and nutrition, human skeletal biology, bioarchaeology, and global health.  Her current research involves the late 19th Century Colorado Insane Asylum, focusing on the skeletal remains as well as relevant historical documents.  She has also carried out fieldwork in North America, Morocco, Belize, and Tanzania.  She has published a monograph, The Indian Neck Ossuary, is co-author of a book, Black Mesa Anasazi Health:  Reconstructing Life from Patterns of Death and Disease, has published articles in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Northeast Anthropology, and Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Growth and Development, and chapters in books.

Kathleen A. Pickering

BA - College of William and Mary
JD - New York University School of Law
MA, Ph D - University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kathleen.Pickering@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Cultural Anthropology

RESEARCH: North American Indians; political economy; economic development; economic anthropology; globalization; indigenous knowledge; legal anthropology; Lakota culture and history

CLASSES: Cultures and the Global System; Indians of North America; Indians Today; Development in Indian Country; Comparative Legal Systems; Economic Anthropology

Kathleen Pickering is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Colorado State University, where she has been on the faculty since 1997.  Her research focuses on how Native Americans and indigenous cultures elsewhere in the world view the relationship between humans and the environment and how those views affect community-based economic development processes, attitudes toward conservation of natural resources, and agricultural practices. An anthropologist and lawyer, she collaborates with Native American non-profit organizations, ecologists, rural sociologists, and other anthropologists on studies involving individual households on the Lakota reservations of Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Cheyenne River in South Dakota.  She also is interested in the impacts of globalization on indigenous communities internationally, and indigenous efforts to become active and co-equal players in natural resource management.  Her scholarly areas include economic anthropology, traditional ecological knowledge, tribal economic development, and collaborative ecosystem conservation.  She has authored a book titled Lakota Culture, World Economy, co-authored a book titled Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty: Dreams, Disenchantments and Diversity, and is currently working on a co-authored book entitled Knowledge Binds: Indigenous Peoples and the Tangle of Natural Resource Management.  She also has published papers on decolonization and time, social capital, reservation economic development, micro-enterprise and credit constraints, and the role of culture in income distribution across reservations.  She was selected as an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2006.  She teaches courses on Indians of North America, Indigenous Peoples Today, Indigenous Ecologies and the Modern World, Culture and Environment, Development in Indian Country, Economic Anthropology, Comparative Legal Systems, and a survey course entitled Cultures and the Global System.  Before coming to CSU, she was the Director of Conservation Education for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Washington, D.C.  She has a Ph.D in Anthropology from University of Wisconsin-Madison, a J.D. from New York University School of Law, and a B.A. in History from the College of William and Mary.  Before starting graduate school, she worked as a legal services attorney on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass

BS - Vanderbilt University
MA, Ph D - University of California-San Diego
Jeffrey.Snodgrass@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Cultural Anthropology

RESEARCH:  Psychological, medical, and environmental anthropology; Culture, environment, and mental health; Theory and method in anthropology; Subaltern identity in India and South Asia; Religion and morality; Narrative, performance, and expressive culture; Indigenous Peoples and the environment; Cybercultures; Modernity

CLASSES: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology; Modern Indian Culture and Society; Religion and Society; Narrative Traditions and Social Experience; Indigenous Ecologies and the Modern World; Psychological Anthropology; Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology; Culture and Mental Health: Method and Theory

Dr. Snodgrass recently has been examining the relationship between religion and the environment among Indigenous Peoples inhabiting reserved and protected forests in India (primarily wildlife sanctuaries); he has been particularly interested to understand state attempts to promote forest and wildlife conservation among local Tribal communities by, among other things, mobilizing their religious and ethical commitments. He is extending this research to include consideration of how the mental health and healing practices of these same Indigenous communities can be negatively impacted by environmental change; in addition to tracing the relationship between deforestation and rising rates of psychosocial stress, depression, and suicide rates among members of these communities, he is interested in grasping the manner in which shamanistic traditions of healing involving spiritual possession, altered states of perception and consciousness, and psychological dissociation are affected by changes in the environment. In the long term, Dr. Snodgrass hopes to formulate a number of projects, many involving graduate students, investigating the interaction of cultures and minds in both natural areas and also computer-generated cyber- or virtual spaces (such as MMORPGS, or massively multi-user online role-playing games). Melding theories and methods from anthropology with those from the cognitive and environmental sciences, these projects will investigate the impact of spatial, sociocultural, psychological, and eventually neurobiological variables, structures, and processes on mental health and spiritual well-being. Dr. Snodgrass has worked extensively in the past with oral performers in India, the subject of his recently-published book by Oxford University Press, Casting Kings: Bards and Indian Modernity (July 2006). In addition, he has published widely on caste, ritual performance, spirit possession, and religious healing in edited volumes as well as such journals as American Ethnologist, Cultural Analysis, Cultural Anthropology, Culture and Religion, Ethnos, andthe Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society (JRAI, erstwhile Man). He is the recipient of grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Killam Foundation, and most recently the National Geographic Society.

Lawrence C. Todd

BA - University of Wyoming
MA, Ph D - University of New Mexico
Lawrence.Todd@ColoState.Edu

Dr. Todd’s area of research and teaching is hunter-gatherer archaeology with emphases on Paleoindian/Paleolithic studies, archaeological faunal analysis, and ecological archaeology.  He has conducted fieldwork in Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona, as well as in France, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and South Africa.  He has published journal articles in American Antiquity, Plains Anthropologist, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Current Research in the Pleistocene.  Dr. Todd is co-author of the book The Colby Mammoth Site: A Clovis Kill in Northern Wyoming and co-editor of The Horner Site: The Type Site of the Cody Cultural Complex.

Norberto Valdez

BA - University of Colorado
MA - University of Idaho
Ph D - University of Wisconsin
Norberto.Valdez@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Social anthropology

RESEARCH: Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and U.S. Southwest; peasant populations and land tenure; indigenous rights; Latino/Chicano populations of U.S.; human rights; race and ethnicity

CLASSES:  Latin American Peasantries, Peoples and Cultures ofSouthwest, Cultures and World System, Ethnicity in Colorado, various Chicano/Latino courses on ethnicity/race, history, culture and contemporary issues

Dr. Valdez's interests include theories of development and underdevelopment, rural and indigenous populations of Latin America and the U.S., and intersections of race, class, and gender.  Dr. Valdez has conducted field research in indigenous communities of Guerrero, Mexico, among refugee and repopulated villages in El Salvador, and Cuban adaptations in the post-USSR period.  He authored a book Ethnicity, Class, and the Indigenous Struggle for Land in Guerrero, Mexico,  (Garland) and contributed to another entitled Going Home: The Story of Repatriation in El Salvador (Apex).  He has published articles in Black Scholar, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Radical Philosophy Review, and in the University of Denver Law Review.  He has initiated an interdisciplinary study of rural transformation and Hispano lifeways in southern Colorado and New Mexico.  He and Dr. Jan Valdez (Geography) are collaborating on a book on social constructions of race in the antebellum South.

Mary Van Buren

BA - University of Oregon
MA, Ph D -  University of Arizona
Mary.VanBuren@ColoState.Edu

SUBFIELD: Archaeology

RESEARCH: Andean South America; prehistoric and historic archaeology, complex societies, Spanish colonialism

CLASSES: Introduction to Prehistory, Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Historical Archaeology, History of Anthropological Theory

Dr. Van Buren’s research focuses on the development of empires and the relationship between expansive states and the societies conquered by them, with a particular focus on Inka and Spanish imperialism in the Andes.  She has conducted fieldwork in Peru and Bolivia, and currently is investigating the social and technological organization of Inka and Spanish colonial silver mining at a complex of sites in southern Bolivia with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.  Dr. Van Buren has published work in American Anthropologist, Historical Archaeology, Latin American Antiquity, and the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, as well as contributed chapters in edited volumes, Domestic Architecture, Ethnicity, and Complementarity in the South-Central Andes and Approaches to the Historical Archaeology of Mexico, Central and South America.  She is also co-editor of the book Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient States.