News, Events and Photos
2008 Press Releases from the Office of News and Information
Archaeology lessons for elementary school teachers 
By: Carol C. Bradley
Date: August 14, 2008
“What would your garbage tell us about you?” asks Indiana State Museum education program coordinator Gail Brown.
Five elementary schoolteachers from around the region sort through accumulations of trash—fast food wrappers, empty yogurt cartons, dog food cans—in a classroom in the University of Notre Dame Department of Anthropology’s Reyniers Laboratory on the north end of campus.
Dog food can—can we infer a pet owner?
It’s all part of Project Archaeology, a workshop cosponsored by the anthropology department and the museum.
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A good companion in the Holy Land 
By: Michael O. Garvey
Date: July 28, 2008
On Sept. 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon, then leader of Israel’s Likud Party, took an escort of Israeli police officers and went for a very conspicuous stroll on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and around al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. He later insisted that his visit was innocent tourism, but it was read by thousands of Palestinians as deliberate provocation, and within hours what has since become known as the Second Intifada was boiling away.
Anthropologist recognized by national association 
By Susan Guibert
Date: June 12, 2008
James J. McKenna, Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, was named the 2008 recipient of the Anthropology in Media Award (AIME) by the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
McKenna will be formally honored in November at the annual meeting of the AAA in San Francisco.
Teaching beyond the term paper
By Gail Hinchion Mancini
May 28, 2008
How many people read a student research paper? There’s the student writer. Maybe a friend offers to proofread it. Finally, there’s the professor who assigned the project. Not a very large audience.
The exception is research done by students in anthropologist Daniel Lende’s class, “Alcohol and Drugs: The Anthropology of Substance Use and Abuse.” By now, their research has been viewed some 2,600 times over the Internet.
Anthropologist Mark Schurr receives Ganey Award
By Paul Horn
April
3, 2008
Mark Schurr, associate professor and chair of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame has received the 2008 Rodney F. Ganey, Ph.D. Faculty Community-Based Research Award from the Center for Social Concerns.
The $5,000 award annually honors a Notre Dame faculty member whose research has made a contribution to a local community organization.
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Fighting Irish research heritage of real Irish
By Shannon Chapla
February 20, 2008
A ghost town of stone houses frozen in time for decades, the island Inis Airc, located just off the western coast of Ireland, is an uninhabited graveyard where roofless buildings remain untouched after the islanders were forcibly relocated to the mainland by the government in 1960.
“It’s eerie,” said Ian Kuijt, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.
Kuijt, who in 2005 wrapped up a 5-year excavation studying the origins of agriculture at a Neolithic site next to the Dead Sea in Jordan, decided his next project would take place in a more hospitable climate and now, along with some of his students, is exploring the history of Inis Airc, and other eroded, abandoned villages along Ireland’s west coast.
2007 Press Releases from the Office of News and Information
Infant co-sleeping expert James McKenna authors new book
Anthropologist James J. McKenna, director of the University of Notre Dame's Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory and a world-renowned expert on infant co-sleeping, breast-feeding, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), is the author of a new book titled "Sleeping With Your Baby: A Parent's Guide to Co-sleeping."
Newly released by Platypus Media, the book states that simplistic recommendations against any and all forms of co-sleeping are not only scientifically inappropriate, but dangerous and morally wrong. In taking readers through various ways to safely co-sleep, McKenna provides the latest information on the potential scientific benefits, and minimizes hazards and risks of co-sleeping.
Blum's new book examines honesty and lies in China
Susan D. Blum, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of a new book titled "Lies that Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths," which explores the ideology of truth and deception in China and elsewhere.
Offering a nuanced perspective on social interaction in different cultural settings, Blum draws on decades of fieldwork in China, providing an authoritative examination of society's rules, expectations and beliefs regarding lying and honesty.
Published by Rowman & Littlefield, "Lies that Bind" points to a propensity for deception in Chinese public interactions in situations where people in the United States would expect truthfulness, yet Blum argues that lying is evaluated within Chinese society by moral standards different from those of Americans. Chinese, for example, might emphasize the consequences of speech, Americans the absolute truthfulness, according to the book.
Anthropologist writes new book on illegal international trade
"Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World," by University of Notre Dame anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, has been published by the University of California Press.
A product of three years of intensive research in the field, Nordstrom's book examines the illegal means by which weaponry, drugs, diamonds, oil, food and more exotic merchandise are internationally traded. Her research included travel to dangerous and often violent areas of the United States, Africa, Europe and Asia, as well as numerous interviews with a wide variety of authorities ranging from war orphans to war profiteering capitalists.
Anthropologist receives American Film Institute fellowship
University of Notre Dame anthropologist Devi Snively has received an American Film Institute (AFI) fellowship to take part in the group's Directing Workshop for Women.
Snively is one of just eight women to receive the award from a pool of several hundred candidates. She is the only college or university faculty member and the only recipient from outside the film industry to be selected this year.
Fellowship recipients will participate in a three-week training workshop at the AFI conservatory, followed by several months of pre-production work, shooting, editing, post-production work and marketing. Films produced by the workshop participants will be screened at the AFI Theatre in Los Angeles.
Past recipients of the Directing Workshop for Women fellowship include Maya Angelou, Joanne Woodward, Anne Bancroft and Cicely Tyson.