March 2–6, 2014
Obesity, Upward Mobility, and Symbolic Body Capital in a Rapidly Changing World
Eileen Anderson-Fye, Co-Chair
Robson Junior Professor
Department of Anthropology
Case Western University
Alexandra Brewis Slade, Co-Chair
Director and President’s Professor
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
This advanced seminar explored the work of diverse scholars within and beyond anthropology that addresses the iterative relationships between changing physical bodies, shifting body norms, and local economic, ecological, and developmental transitions cross-culturally.
May 11–15, 2014
Costly and Cute: How Helpless Newborns Made Us Human
Karen R. Rosenberg, Co-Chair
Professor and Chair
Department of Anthropology
University of Delaware
Wenda R. Trevathan, Co-Chair
Regents Professor Emerita
Department of Anthropology
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
Participants in this seminar examined infant helplessness from biological, cultural, cognitive, behavioral, obstetrical, and pediatric points of view to understand how such a costly pattern of development evolved and what benefits it conferred on humans.
November 2–6, 2014
The Promise of Infrastructure
Nikhil S. Anand, Co-Chair
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography, Environment and Society
University of Minnesota
Hannah C. Appel, Co-Chair
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles
Akhil Gupta, Co-Chair
Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles
This seminar used ethnographic research to theorize infrastructure as cultural forms and materializations of certain ideas of order and social inequality in cross cultural contexts.