tag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:/news-events/newsDepartment of Anthropology | News2024-03-27T15:25:00-04:00tag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1608252024-03-27T15:25:00-04:002024-03-27T15:25:13-04:00‘The border between the secular and sacred:’ Anthropologist receives Templeton grant for research on psychedelics, mental health, and spiritual yearning<figure class="image image-right"><img src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/563313/asf_photo600x.jpg" alt="Aidan Seale-Feldman" width="600" height="450"> <figcaption>Aidan Seale-Feldman, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, will lead a group of interdisciplinary researchers to work on the</figcaption>…</figure><figure class="image image-right"><img src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/563313/asf_photo600x.jpg" alt="Aidan Seale-Feldman" width="600" height="450">
<figcaption>Aidan Seale-Feldman, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, will lead a group of interdisciplinary researchers to work on the project “Ethical Substance: Psychedelic Medicine in Times of Social and Spiritual Yearning.”</figcaption>
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<p>Thanks to a major research grant, University of Notre Dame anthropologist <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/aidan-seale-feldman/">Aidan Seale-Feldman</a> will spend the next three years exploring how exposure to experimental mental health treatments impacts spirituality among secular Americans.</p>
<p>The assistant professor in the <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">Department of Anthropology</a> has been awarded a $370,000 grant from the <a href="https://www.templeton.org/">John Templeton Foundation</a> in which she will lead 10 other interdisciplinary researchers to work on the project “Ethical Substance: Psychedelic Medicine in Times of Social and Spiritual Yearning.”</p>
<p>The purpose of the grant is to explore the dynamic of psychedelic-assisted treatment for mental health and how it impacts spirituality in the secular world.</p>
<p>“In the midst of the reports on America’s growing mental health crisis, I was really drawn to the excitement around psychedelics as highly-effective treatments for things like <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27909165/">anxiety</a>, PTSD, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/00952990.2016.1170135">addiction</a>, and treatment-resistant depression,” Seale-Feldman said. “Maybe you could call it hype, but there's a lot of hope. It feels very hopeful, and that, to me, is exciting — that there is an emergent field of mental health care that might be revolutionary.”</p>
<h3><strong>Examining the impact of mystical experiences </strong></h3>
<p>Seale-Feldman, a medical anthropologist whose <a href="https://news.nd.edu/news/anthropologist-offers-blueprint-for-new-ways-of-being-and-relating-to-others-in-wake-of-disaster/">research specializes in </a>crisis, care, and psychic life, will examine how the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted treatment of mental health issues — specifically through the use of hallucinogens such as psilocybin and ayahuasca — correlates with the presence of mystical experience and how these powerful experiences could transform relationships to spirituality among the non-religious.</p>
<p>“Psychedelics, in general, have always been on the border between the secular and the sacred,” she said. “In non-clinical settings, these substances are also referred to as ‘entheogens,’ and ‘sacred medicines,’ and there is a long history of Indigenous use in both religious and healing practices throughout the Americas. So there's this sense of tension (between the differing interpretations), and I'm really interested in the fact that these substances live on that border.”</p>
<p>Mystical experiences have been written about for hundreds of years by both religious and secularist groups and have been described as a life-changing moment that unifies the divine and dissolves the boundaries of ego. Seale-Feldman said researchers have found this experience to be key in psychedelic treatment efficacy, and she is curious about the after-effects.</p>
<p>“The focus of the project is really on this question of the incorporation of mystical experiences into the lives of secular Americans and their therapeutic practices,’” Seale-Feldman said. “And we’re exploring what the impact of this might be in times of social and spiritual crisis.”</p>
<h3><strong>Advancing research with interdisciplinary work</strong></h3>
<p>Seale-Feldman is now leading a team of scholars — who specialize in anthropology, psychiatry, clinical psychology, philosophy, theology, and religious studies — to conduct and analyze research at four field sites over three years. The sites include a clinical trial for psilocybin-assisted palliative care, psychedelic churches, a psychedelic-therapy training program, and psychedelic science conferences.</p>
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<p>“The focus of the project is really on this question of the incorporation of mystical experiences into the lives of secular Americans and their therapeutic practices. And we’re exploring what the impact of this might be in times of social and spiritual crisis.”</p>
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<p>By the end, she said, their work will result in a number of published articles, an ethnographic book manuscript, podcast episodes, and a public workshop at the renowned retreat center Esalen Institute in California.</p>
<p>Both mental health and psychedelics have been marred by cultural taboos and stigma, but Seale-Feldman said this grant signals a shift in public perception of the topics.</p>
<p>“Given the state of mental health in the U.S. right now, I think we need to be as open-minded as possible in exploring a wide range of pathways towards healing,” she said. “And to also ask how the resurgence of interest in psychedelic medicine might impact people's lives beyond the area of mental health and into domains related to spirituality and meaning.”</p>
<p>Seale-Feldman is excited to approach this research through an anthropological lens and work with experts across interdisciplinary disciplines. The hope, she said, is that their findings will contribute to the current research dialogue, which has been primarily dictated by a psychiatric approach.</p>
<p>“I think it’s a really exciting new direction,” Seale-Feldman said. “There’s a lot of hype and narrative surrounding the so-called ‘psychedelic renaissance,’ so I’m hoping this research can be a kind of empirical study of that — to explore the impacts these experiences have on people and how psychedelic medicine could reconfigure our whole way of thinking about mental health care.”</p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Mary Kinney</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/the-border-between-the-secular-and-sacred-anthropologist-receives-templeton-grant-for-research-on-psychedelics-mental-health-and-spiritual-yearning/">al.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">March 27, 2024</span>.</p>Mary Kinneytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1591852024-01-16T09:10:44-05:002024-01-16T09:10:44-05:00Prof. Susan Blum Interviews regarding Plagiarism<p><strong>The Guardian:</strong> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism#top">Harvard's Claudine Gay was ousted for 'plagiarism'. How serious was it really?</a></p> <p><strong>Vox: </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/24036154/plagiarism-claudine-gay-neri-oxman-bill-ackman">The</a>…</p><p><strong>The Guardian:</strong> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism#top">Harvard's Claudine Gay was ousted for 'plagiarism'. How serious was it really?</a></p>
<p><strong>Vox: </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/24036154/plagiarism-claudine-gay-neri-oxman-bill-ackman">The fight over plagiarism is the harbinger of a messy new era</a></p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1591842024-01-16T08:49:00-05:002024-01-16T08:49:47-05:00Anthropologist offers blueprint for new ways of helping others in wake of disaster<p>For Aidan Seale-Feldman, an assistant professor and a medical and psychological anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, providing the right kind of care for victims of disaster is crucial. She finds insight by studying the diverse ways humans respond to catastrophe and loss, and how those responses are shaped by cultural, social and political factors.</p><figure class="image image-right"><a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/aidan-seale-feldman/"><img src="https://news.nd.edu/assets/551794/aidan_seale_feldman_350x300.jpg" alt="Aidan Seale Feldman 350x300" width="350" height="300"></a>
<figcaption>Aidan Seale-Feldman</figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/aidan-seale-feldman/">Aidan Seale-Feldman</a> knows a thing or two about what it’s like to witness a disaster. She was working in Nepal in 2015 when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the central region of the country, followed by a 7.3-magnitude aftershock, both of which claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people in total once the ground had ceased heaving and the dust had finally settled. The event changed her life — and her work — forever.</p>
<p>Disasters, both natural and humanitarian, are all around us. How we as humans process tragedy and survive all that suffering — and find ways to continue moving forward — is worth studying.</p>
<p>For Seale-Feldman, an assistant professor and a medical and psychological anthropologist in the <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">Department of Anthropology</a> at the University of Notre Dame, providing the right kind of care for victims of disaster is crucial. <a href="https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/4167">She finds insight by studying</a> the diverse ways humans respond to catastrophe and loss, and how those responses are shaped by cultural, social and political factors. Understanding those differences reveals not only why we react the way we do when something awful happens, but also informs how to genuinely and compassionately help those in the middle of a crisis, whatever it may be and wherever they may be.</p>
<h2>Our ability to cope with disaster depends on our well-being, resources</h2>
<p>When a disaster strikes, Seale-Feldman says, an immediate disorientation can develop in multiple directions — the severity and manifestation of which depends on a person’s well-being and level of social support prior to the disaster, as well as one’s personal and cultural resources in the management of that loss.</p>
<p>“It is certain that those who are in precarious situations, or who were already struggling with feelings of hopelessness, sadness, excessive worry or substance use prior to a disaster, will be more vulnerable to increased distress,” Seale-Feldman explained.</p>
<p>Knowing someone’s history and ability to cope with tragedy sets the stage for what mental health resources they may need.</p>
<h2>‘The world is like this’: How different cultures, belief systems deal with disaster</h2>
<p>It is important to remember that people from different cultures and belief backgrounds respond to loss differently after a disaster, Seale-Feldman said. She offered the example of the earthquake in Nepal, where she had been working on research on the translation of affliction between Indigenous and psychiatric worlds when the quake hit. The 2015 event helped her to discover that not all cultures see disaster in the same way. In Nepal, a place shaped by Hindu and Buddhist values, many people spoke of suffering as simply the reality of the world we live in.</p>
<p>“They would tell me, ‘The world is like this,’” Seale-Feldman said. “Basically, that life is a constant oscillation between suffering and contentment, misery and joy — everything is impermanent.”</p>
<p>These different human responses to moments of tragedy may also require different approaches to healing. “Not all psychosocial counseling or humanitarian efforts fit every culture or person in the wake of a disaster,” Seale-Feldman said.</p>
<p>For example, there is an idea in Western medicine that talking about loss and expressing negative emotions is necessary for healing. In Nepal, however, “there is a sense that to talk about those who died a bad death (in an accident or before one’s time) can strengthen the attachments between the living and the dead, making it harder for the dead to achieve either rebirth into the next life or liberation from the world,” Seale-Feldman said.</p>
<p>Something she learned from her experience in Nepal was that trained counselors have to find new ways to help those working with loss — in particular, learning healing techniques that may be different from what they have been taught as common practice in their field.</p>
<h2>Two ways to offer care emerge</h2>
<p>Seale-Feldman refers to the words of Dean Spade, a professor at the Seattle University School of Law, in his book “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),” where he argues that there are two main forms of care that emerge in the wake of a disaster: charity and mutual aid.</p>
<p>“Humanitarianism, a form of charity, relies on a hierarchical model in which those with resources decide who is deserving of aid and in what form, while mutual aid involves a nonhierarchical effort of collective coordination to meet each other’s needs,” Seale-Feldman explained.</p>
<p>One of the major issues in humanitarianism is that care is allocated based on “victim status,” Seale-Feldman said, “such that anyone who is not eligible as a victim based on predetermined criteria will be excluded from receiving aid, even if they may be suffering due to other issues.”</p>
<p>Mutual aid, however, offers a different form of care that sees all those involved as eligible sufferers in need of equal and adequate attention.</p>
<p>According to Seale-Feldman, beyond these two models, there are also smaller forms of care that emerge in the aftermath that are important to acknowledge and focus on, such as “the risks undertaken by some to help others, acts of kindness and generosity, and interactions marked by gentleness between people.”</p>
<p>These modes of assistance are what Seale-Feldman strives to illuminate in her own work.</p>
<h2>How can we help better, for longer?</h2>
<p>Seale-Feldman said that sustainability is one of the biggest problems with humanitarian efforts in terms of bringing access to mental health and psychosocial counseling to countries where mental health had not been incorporated into the public health care system.</p>
<p>“One thing I think humanitarians must ask is, ‘What are the ethics of giving care post-disaster, only to take it away once the disaster has been deemed over and all immediate effects have subsided?’ These finite programs make us think to ourselves, ‘What happens after that?’”</p>
<p>One response to this issue of sustainability has been an increasing effort to actually construct more permanent and inclusive mental health systems in times of emergency.</p>
<h2>Is it possible to mentally and socially prepare for a disaster?</h2>
<p>Regardless of where a disaster takes place in the world, there are some questions to be asked and lessons to be learned. “Disasters call on us to question the current state of affairs, to ask how it is that such a thing has happened and to critically rethink how we should be living — both in relation to each other and on a rapidly changing planet,” Seale-Feldman pointed out. “Disasters often provide a momentary opening for certain things to change.</p>
<p>“At a very immediate level, social support always plays a crucial role in the aftermath of a disaster. If we have strong social support networks in place, this will be very beneficial and protective — and not only in times of crisis.”</p>
<p>In part, this may mean building up mental health support services into current public health care systems — and being mindful of what those will look like, culturally and socially, depending on the community they are serving.</p>
<p>“The question is, how can we sustain this concern for others and these forms of community in life beyond the disaster?” Seale-Feldman asked.</p>
<p>“I think one thing we can do is to actively remember the relationships that are made possible because of the disaster — as well as the acts of care, kindness and solidarity that arise in its wake — with the hope that they might become blueprints for new ways of being and relating to others in the future.”</p>
<p><em><strong>Contact:</strong> Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or <a href="mailto:tdestazi@nd.edu">tdestazi@nd.edu</a></em></p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Tracy DeStazio</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://news.nd.edu/news/anthropologist-offers-blueprint-for-new-ways-of-being-and-relating-to-others-in-wake-of-disaster/">news.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">December 19, 2023</span>.</p>Tracy DeStaziotag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1587302023-12-13T08:11:00-05:002023-12-13T08:11:05-05:00To Canada and beyond: Anthropology internship with the Smithsonian reveals the human side of history for junior Alyssa Miulli<p>"A small project for the Whiteley Museum turned into a passion project that acted as a catalyst for what I hope to do in the future with anthropology and film,” Miulli said. “Interviews and ethnographic films are the most valuable resources to produce in order to represent subcultures that may be overlooked in our rapidly changing world.”</p><figure class="image image-default"><img src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/550984/1200x/miullishovel.jpeg" alt="Miullishovel" width="1200" height="772">
<figcaption>Alyssa Miulli with her trenching shovel, which she calls her summer best friend.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s learning from books and learning from immersive experiences. And last summer, Alyssa Miulli did the latter.</p>
<p>During an internship in Canada with the Smithsonian Institute, the University of Notre Dame <a href="https://history.nd.edu/">history </a>and <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a> major excavated 500-year-old artifacts of Basque mariners from France and Spain who built camps on an island while they hunted whales.</p>
<p>“Carbon dating of wood planks can give insight into a specific time range for whale hunting, the structure of the site may show what components of life were on land versus on the whaling vessels, and artifacts — such as leather shoes, a stone wall, and painted ceramics — can give a glimpse into domestic life,” Miulli said.</p>
<p>In addition to unearthing and inventorying roof tiles, flint, and cooking pots in Bonne-Espérance, Quebec, the junior immersed herself in the culture by eating seal meat, befriending locals, and making a short film about the region.</p>
<p>“For me, anthropology brings a distinctly human side to history,” said the <a href="https://glynnhonors.nd.edu/">Glynn Family Honors Program</a> scholar.</p>
<h3><strong>Exhausting, precise, and rewarding</strong></h3>
<p>Miulli fell in love with anthropology during her <a href="https://corecurriculum.nd.edu/university-seminar/">University Seminar</a> — Human Impact and the Environment: Past, Present & Future, taught by associate professor <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/donna-glowacki/">Donna Glowacki</a>.</p>
<p>In the first-year class, she was encouraged to think deeply about anthropology in relation to the environment. She also appreciated Glowacki’s support during the Snite Museum of Art’s annual <a href="https://writing.nd.edu/writing-rhetoric/essay-competitions/snite-museum-of-art-essay-competition/">essay competition</a> — which she won with “<a href="https://freshwriting.nd.edu/essays/a-boy-with-burdens-analyzing-themes-of-colonialism-and-environmentalism-in-the-art-of-yinka-shonibare/">A Boy with Burdens: Analyzing Themes of Colonialism and Environmentalism in the Art of Yinka Shonibare</a>.”</p>
<figure class="image image-right"><img src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/550985/miulliexhausting.jpeg" alt="Alyssa Miulli" width="500" height="667">
<figcaption>Alyssa Miulli digs for artifacts on the Canadian island of Bonne-Espérance.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/eric-haanstad/">Eric Haanstad</a>, associate professor of the practice and director of undergraduate studies in anthropology, pointed the president of the student-run Anthropology Club toward the summer internship led by Smithsonian senior scientist <a href="https://profiles.si.edu/display/nFitzhugh752005">Bill Fitzhugh</a>.</p>
<p>For more than 40 years, Fitzhugh has studied Arctic peoples and cultures. He previously excavated sites of Indigenous Innu and Inuit peoples on Quebec’s Lower North Shore, and Miulli was fascinated with his application of cross-cultural lenses to archaeology.</p>
<p>“I applied to this internship to see how the Innu, Inuit, and Basque cultures may have collided and influenced each other's way of life,” Miulli said.</p>
<p>Coming to appreciate the value of archaeological work was her favorite part of the experience. The team sometimes needed as many as three days to dig a 2-meter-by-1-meter unit, after which they inventoried artifacts and did a scale drawing for documentation.</p>
<p>“To put it plainly, archaeology is not easy. It is physically exhausting, tedious, and precise,” she said. </p>
<p>“However, it is rewarding to know that attention to detail and care for your work are essential. Every small action matters to formulate a better understanding of the culture and time period that the artifacts represent.”</p>
<h3><strong>Crowberry bushes and sandy beaches</strong></h3>
<p>The West Chicago native described the fog-shrouded Canadian island landscape as almost otherworldly.</p>
<p>“While St. Paul River [on the mainland] had rolling rock formations and sandy beaches, Bonne-Espérance was covered in a thick layer of moss with crowberry bushes and bakeapple plants ripening up for harvest season,” she said.</p>
<p>Each morning, a resident family of minks greeted the researchers when they arrived by boat; the team stayed nights in St. Paul River, about 4 miles away on the mainland.</p>
<p>People in St. Paul River also warmly welcomed the researchers. Locals invited them to engage with the culture, including eating at a restaurant where mummers — actors wearing disguises — performed.</p>
<p>Miulli enjoyed regional delicacies such as bakeapple cheesecake, seal meat, and fisherman’s brewis, which is made with salted cod fish, hard bread, onions, and scrunchions.</p>
<figure class="image image-left"><img src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/550988/miulliiceberg.jpeg" alt="Newfoundland iceberg" width="600" height="362">
<figcaption>Miulli spotted this iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland.</figcaption>
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<p>Late into the internship, officials with the Whiteley Museum of St. Paul River — which hosted the team — requested that it make a film about the dig and the region.</p>
<p>So Miulli — an actor, assistant director, and social media coordinator with Notre Dame’s <a href="http://nsrsco.weebly.com/">Not-So-Royal-Shakespeare Co.</a> — took action.</p>
<p>With creative freedom, an iPhone, and three weeks’ time, she interviewed Fitzhugh and locals and shot b-roll for the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGJri2XsPs">film</a>.</p>
<p>“A small project for the Whiteley Museum turned into a passion project that acted as a catalyst for what I hope to do in the future with anthropology and film,” Miulli said. “Interviews and ethnographic films are the most valuable resources to produce in order to represent subcultures that may be overlooked in our rapidly changing world.”</p>
<h3><strong>How it started, how it’s going</strong></h3>
<p>Miulli has also studied other cultures and areas of the world during her undergraduate career.</p>
<figure class="image image-right"><img src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/550995/alyssamiulli.png" alt="Alyssa Miulli" width="400" height="339">
<figcaption>The internship provided Miulli with multiple ways to engage with anthropology: an archeological dig, immersion in another culture, and making a film.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She has assisted Glowacki with <a href="https://crowcanyon.org/resources/updates-from-the-mesa-the-far-view-archaeological-project/">The Far View Archeological Project</a> — a collaboration between Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and Notre Dame that examines ancestral Puebloan villages.</p>
<p>And, she’s helped anthropology professor <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/susan-d-blum/">Susan Blum</a> with the <a href="https://schoolstorieslab.com/?page_id=706">School Stories Lab</a>, which gathers accounts from people worldwide about their “joys and fears, triumphs and shame, friendships and loneliness, curiosity and boredom, and everything else that accompanies the experience of school.”</p>
<p>During the fall semester, Miulli studied abroad at St. Andrews University in Scotland.</p>
<p>The first-generation college student chose St. Andrews for its exceptional academic culture that prioritizes individual humanities research, as well as its extensive musical theater community.</p>
<p>Miulli said she didn’t choose Notre Dame, though. It was more like the University chose her.</p>
<p>“Notre Dame provided everything that I wanted in my future: faith, community, academic rigor, and endless opportunity,” said Miulli, who plans to pursue a Ph.D.</p>
<p>“I am grateful every day to call the Golden Dome my home.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Beth Staples</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/to-canada-and-beyond-anthropology-internship-with-the-smithsonian-reveals-the-human-side-of-history-for-junior-alyssa-miulli/">al.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">December 13, 2023</span>.</p>Beth Staplestag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1579432023-11-13T13:19:00-05:002023-11-13T13:22:52-05:00New Podcast: Origin Stories: Fatherhood by Prof. Lee Gettler<h2><strong><a href="https://originstories.libsyn.com/fatherhood?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Origin%20Stories%3A%20Fatherhood&utm_campaign=nov%2023%20dean%27s%20newsletter">Origin Stories: Fatherhood</a></strong></h2> <p>Humans invest enormous amounts of time and energy…</p><h2><strong><a href="https://originstories.libsyn.com/fatherhood?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Origin%20Stories%3A%20Fatherhood&utm_campaign=nov%2023%20dean%27s%20newsletter">Origin Stories: Fatherhood</a></strong></h2>
<p>Humans invest enormous amounts of time and energy in bringing up babies. This unique investment is a</p>
<figure class="image image-right"><img src="https://anthropology.nd.edu/assets/547774/assets.libsyn.jpg" alt="Assets" width="90" height="90"></figure>
<p> fundamental part of what it means to be human. In this episode, the second in a three-part series on family relationships, researchers <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/lee-gettler/"><strong>Lee Gettler</strong></a>, Stacy Rosenbaum, and Sonny Bechayda explore how our species' approach to fatherhood may have shaped some of the most important traits that set us apart from other mammals.</p>
<p> </p>Department of Anthropologytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1574472023-10-24T14:23:00-04:002023-10-24T14:25:01-04:00The theory that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather is wrong.<p><strong>Cara Ocobock</strong>, assistant professor of anthropology and director of the Human Energetics Laboratory, and Sarah Lacy wrote an article in Scientific American suggesting that what we thought we knew about hunters/gatherers may be all wrong. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/">Read</a>…</p><p><strong>Cara Ocobock</strong>, assistant professor of anthropology and director of the Human Energetics Laboratory, and Sarah Lacy wrote an article in Scientific American suggesting that what we thought we knew about hunters/gatherers may be all wrong. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/">Read the story here.</a> </p>Department of Anthropologytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1554422023-08-30T15:08:31-04:002023-08-30T15:08:31-04:00Anthropology Major Alyssa Miulli's Summer Internship with the Smithsonian Institute<p>During the summer of 2023, I had the incredible opportunity to work under Dr. William Fitzhugh from the Smithsonian Institute to excavate a 16-17th century Basque whaling site on the island of Bonne Esperance. I experienced this journey along with students from the University of Colorado Boulder and…</p><p>During the summer of 2023, I had the incredible opportunity to work under Dr. William Fitzhugh from the Smithsonian Institute to excavate a 16-17th century Basque whaling site on the island of Bonne Esperance. I experienced this journey along with students from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Montreal. The "American Quarter" of the team journeyed through New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Labrador, and Quebec to fully understand the history of the Lower North Shore. During this journey, we saw icebergs, whales, moose, and beautiful glacial fields. We spent a majority of the summer at St. Paul River, where the Whiteley Museum hosted our team. I learned so much about excavation techniques, Basque and Inuit cultures, as well as artifact cataloging and preservation. Along with conducting archaeology, Dr. Fitzhugh took our team to other heritage sites such as Red Bay, Port au Choix, and L'Anse aux Meadows so that we could understand the holistic history of the region. This internship not only taught me about the practices of archaeology, but also provided an opportunity to connect with the present culture of the Lower North Shore. The Whiteley Museum gave me the resources to create a film about this culture, which can be viewed here <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WfGJri2XsPs?si=l2f8XRnc18LmSNdy" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p> I am incredibly grateful to the University of Notre Dame and Ms. Virginia Coss for providing this opportunity to me. It was truly an unforgettable experience, thank you!</p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1550782023-08-15T10:09:54-04:002023-08-15T10:09:54-04:00Prof. Vania Smith-Oka Leads New Interdisciplinary Project in South Bend<p>GRC Funding Supports <a href="https://www.humanitieswithoutwalls.illinois.edu/news/cafecitos">"The Latinx Obstetric Violence Project"</a></p><p>GRC Funding Supports <a href="https://www.humanitieswithoutwalls.illinois.edu/news/cafecitos">"The Latinx Obstetric Violence Project"</a></p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1533252023-05-15T08:03:00-04:002023-05-22T11:28:54-04:00Family guy: Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler broadens perspectives on fatherhood, raising healthy children<p>In his Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory inside Corbett Family Hall, Lee Gettler has freezers full of saliva samples (as well as fingernail clippings) from people from around the world. By studying the chemical composition of these specimens, the associate professor of anthropology has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood. Gettler has focused on testosterone levels in men — in places as nearby as South Bend and locations as far away as the Philippines and the Republic of the Congo — and how those levels change (or don’t change) as they grow, age, and become fathers. His goal is to examine and share the diverse ways that fathers and families around the world raise children, and to support the wide range of approaches to bringing up healthy youth.</p><figure class="image-default"><img alt="Lee Gettler Lab" height="800" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/509345/fullsize/gettler_lab.jpg" width="1200">
<figcaption>By studying the chemical composition of saliva samples, Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood. Here, he works with samples in his Corbett Family Hall lab alongside anthropology Ph.D. student Sana Saiyed.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/lee-gettler/">Lee Gettler</a> can tell a lot about a man based on his spit.</p>
<p>It’s not about whether he does it on a baseball field, with watermelon seeds, or not at all. Gettler is much more interested in what’s inside it. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/undergraduate/student-opportunities/research/lab-research/">Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory</a> inside Corbett Family Hall, Gettler has freezers full of saliva samples (as well as fingernail clippings) from people from around the world. By studying the chemical composition of these specimens, the associate professor of <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a> has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood.</p>
<p>“For a long time, there have been questions in anthropology about how humans evolved to cooperate to raise children,” he said. “It’s important to think about where fathers fit into that cooperative network. Fathers have traditionally been thought of only as providers, and<strong> </strong>I have tried to expand that conversation.”</p>
<p>Gettler has focused on testosterone levels in men — in places as nearby as South Bend and locations as far away as the Philippines and the Republic of the Congo — and how those levels change (or don’t change) as they grow, age, and become fathers. </p>
<p>His goal is to examine and share the diverse ways that fathers and families around the world raise children, and to support the wide range of approaches to bringing up healthy youth.</p>
<p>“How children learn to parent and why they mimic or diverge from the care they received growing up are very important questions for how we can encourage healthy environments for children across generations,” Gettler said.</p>
<h3>Testosterone tradeoffs</h3>
<p>In his small hometown in Minnesota, <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/lee-gettler/">Gettler</a> and his childhood friends joked about how men — including their dads — seemed to get bigger as they aged and become stronger once they had children.</p>
<p>Back then, he hadn’t heard of anthropology — a multidimensional exploration of what it means to be human, past and present, nearby and distant. But now, Gettler is proving that he was onto something as an adolescent<strong>, </strong>just in a different sense than he and his friends intended.</p>
<p>“Important biological changes that men experience as parents are largely invisible to the naked eye,” he said, “but they’re visible in terms of the potential behaviors that come along with them.”</p>
<p>As an undergraduate at Notre Dame studying anthropology, Gettler ’05 was fascinated by the discipline. And when he learned that less than 5 percent of male mammals care for their young, he began wondering why human fathers were among the few who did. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Important biological changes that men experience as parents are largely invisible to the naked eye, but they’re visible in terms of the potential behaviors that come along with them.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That curiosity has led Gettler to make discoveries about fathers’ invisible development across the globe. What he’s found is an interesting paradox — as young adults, men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to find long-term partners, but later are more likely to be in marriages with strife. Men with lower testosterone levels when their babies are born are more involved caregivers and, in turn, the sons of involved dads have lower testosterone levels <a href="http://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202874119">when they themselves become fathers</a>.</p>
<p>Whether higher or lower testosterone levels — and behaviors and qualities associated with each — are valued depends on the culture in which the men live, Gettler has found, and can’t be deemed as good or bad, or better or worse. But understanding the impact that hormone levels can have on men and their families paints a more complete portrait of the complexities of fatherhood. </p>
<p>“Testosterone mediates tradeoffs between mating and parenting,” he said. “Men’s hormone physiology responds to major life transitions, including marriage and fatherhood, and men’s hormones relate to their behaviors as parents and partners.”</p>
<h3>Spit takes</h3>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Lee Gettler" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/508675/400x/lee_gettler.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Gettler, himself an involved father of two, says there is still a lot to learn about how fathers shape their children’s potential as parents, but the pieces are starting to come together.</figcaption>
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<p>In order to better understand those complexities of fatherhood, Gettler needs physical samples — and lots of them. </p>
<p>Obtaining saliva from study participants is easy and noninvasive, Gettler said. People only have to spit — or take part in “passive drooling,” as it’s jokingly referred to — into small tubes. He then analyzes saliva samples that contain hormones — primarily cortisol and testosterone — in his lab. </p>
<p>Gettler and his team have collected plenty of such samples in Cebu, a metropolitan center of nearly 1 million people in the Philippines. While there, he met residents and learned about their culture when walking from his neighborhood to the university, and by joining in pickup basketball games. Working as part of a unique, longitudinal study that has tracked a large number of people in Cebu since birth, he also found evidence of the intergenerational effects of fathering, informed by 40 years’ worth of data.</p>
<p>Gettler and colleagues <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202874119">discovered</a> that Filipino sons whose fathers were present and involved with raising them during adolescence had lower testosterone when they became fathers than did sons whose fathers were less involved or didn’t live with them during that stage.</p>
<p>There is still a lot to learn about how fathers shape their children’s potential as parents, he said, but the pieces are starting to come together.</p>
<p>“To me, this shows how<strong> </strong>parenting and fathering, particularly, can have lasting effects across generations, not just through behavior but also through biology,” said Gettler, who is also a faculty fellow of the <a href="https://globalhealth.nd.edu/">Eck Institute for Global Health</a> and the <a href="https://shaw.nd.edu/">William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families</a>. “But there has been even less research on the effect of fathers on children’s biology, which can directly impact their future health.”</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TIHDarXV3Aw?rel=0" width="1280"></iframe></p>
<h3>Nurturing nature</h3>
<p>That 2022 study, like many of his previous projects, received funding from the National Science Foundation. Gettler’s research has also been supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation, and the Rukavina Family Foundation, among others. In the last five years alone, the researcher has participated in 39 peer-reviewed studies, including 14 as principal investigator/lead author. In 2020, in recognition of his substantial contributions to human biology, and the promise of future significant discoveries, the Human Biology Association presented Gettler with its Michael A. Little Early Career Award.</p>
<p>Twelve years ago, Gettler broke new ground with a study of 600 men in the Philippines that documented how men’s testosterone plummets during their 20s when they transition from being single and child-free to being coupled and having children. </p>
<p>After becoming fathers, the men experienced dramatic declines in testosterone (more than 25 percent on average); the declines were substantially greater than age-related declines of the single nonfathers. In that same <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1105403108?cookieSet=1">longitudinal </a><a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1105403108">project</a> — he also learned that single child-free men with high testosterone were more likely to become partnered fathers within 4.5 years than their counterparts with low testosterone.</p>
<p>Gettler also discovered that partnered fathers who spent time with their children for three or more hours a day had lower testosterone than fathers who didn’t care for their kids. The study, he said, demonstrated that the transition to fatherhood leads to big, meaningful changes in testosterone. Put another way, biology adjusts to fatherhood.</p>
<p>The findings drew considerable attention from the press, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/research/13testosterone.html"><em>New York Times</em></a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/testosterone-nose-dives-in-fathers-and-hands-on-dads-study-says/2011/09/13/gIQAEA5gPK_blog.html"><em>Washington Post</em></a>, <a href="https://healthland.time.com/2011/09/13/why-do-dads-have-lower-levels-of-testosterone/"><em>Time</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/09/17/140557571/fatherhood-not-testosterone-makes-the-man">NPR</a> (it also caught the attention of late-night comedians — Stephen Colbert joked about the study <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/113617799670276096?s=20">on Twitter</a> and Conan O’Brien referenced it in a monologue on his show).</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">A new study says fatherhood leads to a drop in testosterone. It's the kind of thing I used to get furious about before I had kids.</p>— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/113617799670276096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2011</a>
</blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>During the media blitz, reporters sometimes asked Gettler if the results indicated that men were turning into women. What message, they asked, did he have for men worried that being an involved father was emasculating?</p>
<p>Gettler, himself an involved father of two who enjoys conversationally communicating his discoveries — in interviews and blogs, and on podcasts and Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/leegettler?lang=en">@LeeGettler</a>) — had a succinct response: Testosterone doesn’t equal manliness. </p>
<p>Women also produce and utilize testosterone, which plays a role in cognitive health, bone mass, and the growth and health of reproductive tissues. In men, it regulates immune function, bone mass, fat distribution, muscle mass and strength, as well as the production of red blood cells and sperm. </p>
<p>His study was actually good news for men, he said, as it indicates the frequent portrayal of men as bumbling fools lacking the capacity to parent isn’t true. Men, like women, are biologically adapted to parenting. </p>
<p>“People conflate testosterone and masculinity and conflate one biological signal in human bodies with a very complex gender role that has many social expressions,” he said.</p>
<p>Humans were able to evolve the way they did because of the expansiveness of their brains, he said, which requires a long developmental period of 15 or more years. And because humans often had more than one child in close succession, considerable time and energy were needed to raise them. </p>
<p>Mothers, he said, needed a cooperating partner. Evolutionarily, fathers became an important part of that package. </p>
<p>“Testosterone is one of the key mechanisms that probably was pulled into this evolution of invested human fatherhood,” said Gettler. “We still see the biological signatures of that today in families in diverse settings around the world. We’re one of the few species that evolved to have dads engage in this kind of costly care.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“People conflate testosterone and masculinity and conflate one biological signal in human bodies with a very complex gender role that has many social expressions.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>‘Shaped by the world’</h3>
<p>Gettler gained additional <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X18301703">insights</a> about testosterone, men’s bodies, and dads engaged in costly care when he studied fathers of newborns in the childbirth center at Memorial Hospital in South Bend. He and his team collected hormone data from new dads in the first hour after their babies were born.</p>
<p>Men whose testosterone level was lower when their children were born were more involved months later as parents — changing diapers, playing, and doing household tasks related to the baby — than counterparts with higher testosterone levels. </p>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Lee Gettler Office" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/508677/400x/lee_gettler_office.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Gettler in his office in Corbett Family Hall, home of the Department of Anthropology.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dev.22121">new dads also experienced a spike in oxytocin</a> (a hormone associated with empathy, trust, and relationship-building) when they held their newborns for the first time. New fathers had the largest increase in oxytocin, while more experienced dads had higher overall oxytocin. </p>
<p>The hormone plays an important role in lactation and mother-infant bonding across mammals, but these findings show it is also primed to respond in dads’ bodies, from the earliest moments of parenting.</p>
<p>“For mothers, we see robust changes in their bodies going through pregnancy, birthing, and breastfeeding,” Gettler said. “It was long-assumed that men were along for the ride. Now, we know men’s bodies have other capacities to respond that facilitate their role in families.”</p>
<p>To better understand how culture impacts biology and fathering, Gettler also examined men’s testosterone levels in relation to their expected social roles in two communities in the Republic of the Congo. </p>
<p>“One of the things that I’m really interested in as an anthropologist is how culture pushes around these biological mechanisms and can really affect how they’re expressed,” he said. “We’re shaped by the world we operate in.”</p>
<p>That is evidenced by BaYaka and Bandongo men. While both societies value fathers as providers, the communities’ significant differences helped Gettler and collaborators tease out the role of culture.</p>
<p>Among the egalitarian BaYaka — where child care is shared and spousal conflict is frowned upon — men forage for food and share it with the community. Those considered by peers to be the best fathers/providers had lower testosterone than other men in the community. </p>
<p>And among the patriarchal, hierarchical Bandongo — where child care is less of a father’s responsibility — men fish and farm for food. Sometimes they engage in risky behavior to secure those resources. Men considered to be the best fathers/providers in this society had higher testosterone than their peers. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“One of the things that I’m really interested in as an anthropologist is how culture pushes around these biological mechanisms and can really affect how they’re expressed. We’re shaped by the world we operate in.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“It’s important to understand that what it means to be a good dad is based on the way the culture values it,” Gettler said of the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-70958-3.epdf?sharing_token=Z81ErLsrN8NRIJU1r8vOUtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PUVNCaQ6J7dmDDj942JgP5hsOnYXEmmemFo0KGxhyLl6lt6PjPsRCPFGEkVGPDqBuRx3Kp_pYsTpQQfbmRLKEenxbJgm7iXKL2yBoCMthWGixnEPok3sHkijC8EzPQ42c%3D">findings</a>.</p>
<p>While men with lower testosterone in the BaYaka community were viewed as the best dads and men with higher testosterone in the Bandongo community were viewed as the best dads, men in both communities with higher testosterone had more marital conflict.</p>
<p>Higher testosterone is linked to physical attributes (greater muscle mass and strength) and social dynamics (competition, pursuit of status, and resources) that can attract mates. But testosterone-linked behaviors — competitiveness, dominance, lower empathy — can interfere with relationship stability.</p>
<p>“Indeed, men with higher testosterone have been shown to be more likely to have marital problems and to be divorced in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world,” he said, “and men with lower testosterone are described as more committed and supportive by their partners.”</p>
<h3>Expanding the scope </h3>
<p>Gettler’s research now also examines young people’s health. And, it turns out, he can also often tell how well a child’s parents get along based on the youth’s fingernails.</p>
<p>In BaYaka society, where there’s a strong cultural emphasis on cooperative caregiving, Gettler explored how family dynamics and marital discord correspond to children’s stress.<strong> </strong>He did so by comparing the level of cortisol — a stress hormone — in youth fingernails with men’s fulfillment of locally valued father roles. </p>
<p><a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0031">He found that</a> children with higher cortisol levels had parents in marriages with more conflict. They also had fathers who were less-effective providers and less generous when it came to sharing resources.</p>
<figure class="image-left"><img alt="Lee Gettler Hormones Health Human Behavior Lab" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/508673/400x/lee_gettler_hormones_health_human_behavior_lab.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Gettler is now working on a project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that builds on his prior research on the biology of family life in the Congo Basin. He’s exploring the role of adolescents as change-makers in communities where new jobs, technology, and trade practices are being introduced, and where economic and social transitions are occurring.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And in the patriarchal, hierarchical Bandongo society, children in families with more parental strife had greater intrinsic <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31724171/">epigenetic age acceleration</a>. That is, their biological “age” was older than their chronological age. </p>
<p>“We know that accelerated biological aging is strongly predictive of long-term mortality and risk of disease, which suggests family conflict has long-term implications for children's health and well-being,” he said.</p>
<p>Gettler is now working on a <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2120835&HistoricalAwards=false">project</a>, funded by the National Science Foundation, that builds on his prior research on the biology of family life in the Congo Basin. He’s exploring the role of adolescents as change-makers in communities where new jobs, technology, and trade practices are being introduced, and where economic and social transitions are occurring.</p>
<p>His research team also is examining how these social and economic transitions — that include experiences of inequality — shape how adolescents’ genes are expressed, and whether there are long-term health implications.</p>
<p>As communities in the United States also are undergoing significant economic and cultural shifts, Gettler said understanding the impacts those changes have on youth will be key to timely and effective interventions. </p>
<p>The amount of time that many fathers in the U.S. spend with their children has increased fairly dramatically in the last couple of decades. Simultaneously, he said, they’re still valued for their role as a provider.</p>
<p>Personally, Gettler said, having academic knowledge about fathering doesn’t always translate to personal expertise. Sometimes, he has second-guessed himself as a dad because of it. Being a father, though, has consistently informed his research interests. </p>
<p>“As a dad and co-parent, watching kids go through different phases has taught me a great deal about how to think about types of questions we might ask about fathers,” he said.</p>
<p>And, as it turns out, those humorous observations that he and his friends made as adolescents about fatherhood changing men were right. </p>
<p>But for the wrong reasons. </p>
<p>“Some things we were jokingly saying might cause changes in men, like carrying your babies around, actually have real, profound biological effects — just not the ones we were attributing to it,” he said. </p>
<p>“We were defining what might change men when they became fathers based on things we had experienced with our own dads. And those types of behavioral patterns are the ones that we have now tracked to these hormone shifts.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Some things we were jokingly saying might cause changes in men, like carrying your babies around, actually have real, profound biological effects — just not the ones we were attributing to it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Beth Staples</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/family-guy-notre-dame-anthropologist-lee-gettler-broadens-perspectives-on-fatherhood-raising-healthy-children/">al.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">March 22, 2023</span>.</p>Beth Staplestag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1498162023-04-21T09:34:00-04:002023-04-21T09:35:09-04:00Cara Ocobock Wins AABA and Leakey Foundation Communication and Outreach Award!<p dir="ltr">Dr. Cara Ocobock (University of Notre Dame) received the 2023 American Association of Biological Anthropologists and Leakey Foundation Communication and Outreach Award in honor of Camilla M. Smith. Her nomination materials documented a wide range of visible and impactful public engagement…</p><p dir="ltr">Dr. Cara Ocobock (University of Notre Dame) received the 2023 American Association of Biological Anthropologists and Leakey Foundation Communication and Outreach Award in honor of Camilla M. Smith. Her nomination materials documented a wide range of visible and impactful public engagement activities, which emphasize concerns about equity, access and inclusion. Her communication and outreach activities have significant impacts both within and beyond this field. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The awards will be presented at the Annual Business meeting in Reno on April 21, 2023.</p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1521362023-04-03T10:18:00-04:002023-04-03T10:18:37-04:00PhD Simona Spiegel receives NSF-GRFP!<p>We are very pleased to share that Simona Spiegel was selected to receive a 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). This is a very competitive award, and it is an enormous recognition of Simona's research project. It is also a great validation of our department's…</p><p>We are very pleased to share that Simona Spiegel was selected to receive a 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). This is a very competitive award, and it is an enormous recognition of Simona's research project. It is also a great validation of our department's strength in integrative anthropology! </p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1521322023-04-03T08:05:00-04:002023-04-03T08:06:44-04:00Prof. Jim McKenna wins prestigious Frans Boas Human Biology Award!<p>Emeritus Professor <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/james-mckenna/">Jim McKenna</a> won the 2023 Frans Boas Award, the highest honor a member of the Human Biology Association can receive for exemplary scientific contributions to human biology in science, scholarship, and other professional service.</p> <p>Congratulations…</p><p>Emeritus Professor <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/james-mckenna/">Jim McKenna</a> won the 2023 Frans Boas Award, the highest honor a member of the Human Biology Association can receive for exemplary scientific contributions to human biology in science, scholarship, and other professional service.</p>
<p>Congratulations Jim!</p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1520972023-03-31T13:15:00-04:002023-04-10T12:55:07-04:00Family guy: Associate professor Lee Gettler broadens perspectives on fatherhood, raising healthy children<p>In his Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory inside Corbett Family Hall, Lee Gettler has freezers full of saliva samples (as well as fingernail clippings) from people from around the world. By studying the chemical composition of these specimens, the associate professor of anthropology has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood. Gettler has focused on testosterone levels in men — in places as nearby as South Bend and locations as far away as the Philippines and the Republic of the Congo — and how those levels change (or don’t change) as they grow, age, and become fathers. His goal is to examine and share the diverse ways that fathers and families around the world raise children, and to support the wide range of approaches to bringing up healthy youth.</p><figure class="image-default"><img alt="Lee Gettler Lab" height="800" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/509345/fullsize/gettler_lab.jpg" width="1200">
<figcaption>By studying the chemical composition of saliva samples, Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood. Here, he works with samples in his Corbett Family Hall lab alongside anthropology Ph.D. student Sana Saiyed.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/lee-gettler/">Lee Gettler</a> can tell a lot about a man based on his spit.</p>
<p>It’s not about whether he does it on a baseball field, with watermelon seeds, or not at all. Gettler is much more interested in what’s inside it. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/undergraduate/student-opportunities/research/lab-research/">Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory</a> inside Corbett Family Hall, Gettler has freezers full of saliva samples (as well as fingernail clippings) from people from around the world. By studying the chemical composition of these specimens, the associate professor of <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a> has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about — fatherhood.</p>
<p>“For a long time, there have been questions in anthropology about how humans evolved to cooperate to raise children,” he said. “It’s important to think about where fathers fit into that cooperative network. Fathers have traditionally been thought of only as providers, and<strong> </strong>I have tried to expand that conversation.”</p>
<p>Gettler has focused on testosterone levels in men — in places as nearby as South Bend and locations as far away as the Philippines and the Republic of the Congo — and how those levels change (or don’t change) as they grow, age, and become fathers. </p>
<p>His goal is to examine and share the diverse ways that fathers and families around the world raise children, and to support the wide range of approaches to bringing up healthy youth.</p>
<p>“How children learn to parent and why they mimic or diverge from the care they received growing up are very important questions for how we can encourage healthy environments for children across generations,” Gettler said.</p>
<h3>Testosterone tradeoffs</h3>
<p>In his small hometown in Minnesota, <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/lee-gettler/">Gettler</a> and his childhood friends joked about how men — including their dads — seemed to get bigger as they aged and become stronger once they had children.</p>
<p>Back then, he hadn’t heard of anthropology — a multidimensional exploration of what it means to be human, past and present, nearby and distant. But now, Gettler is proving that he was onto something as an adolescent<strong>, </strong>just in a different sense than he and his friends intended.</p>
<p>“Important biological changes that men experience as parents are largely invisible to the naked eye,” he said, “but they’re visible in terms of the potential behaviors that come along with them.”</p>
<p>As an undergraduate at Notre Dame studying anthropology, Gettler ’05 was fascinated by the discipline. And when he learned that less than 5 percent of male mammals care for their young, he began wondering why human fathers were among the few who did. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Important biological changes that men experience as parents are largely invisible to the naked eye, but they’re visible in terms of the potential behaviors that come along with them.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That curiosity has led Gettler to make discoveries about fathers’ invisible development across the globe. What he’s found is an interesting paradox — as young adults, men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to find long-term partners, but later are more likely to be in marriages with strife. Men with lower testosterone levels when their babies are born are more involved caregivers and, in turn, the sons of involved dads have lower testosterone levels <a href="http://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202874119">when they themselves become fathers</a>.</p>
<p>Whether higher or lower testosterone levels — and behaviors and qualities associated with each — are valued depends on the culture in which the men live, Gettler has found, and can’t be deemed as good or bad, or better or worse. But understanding the impact that hormone levels can have on men and their families paints a more complete portrait of the complexities of fatherhood. </p>
<p>“Testosterone mediates tradeoffs between mating and parenting,” he said. “Men’s hormone physiology responds to major life transitions, including marriage and fatherhood, and men’s hormones relate to their behaviors as parents and partners.”</p>
<h3>Spit takes</h3>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Lee Gettler" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/508675/400x/lee_gettler.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Gettler, himself an involved father of two, says there is still a lot to learn about how fathers shape their children’s potential as parents, but the pieces are starting to come together.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to better understand those complexities of fatherhood, Gettler needs physical samples — and lots of them. </p>
<p>Obtaining saliva from study participants is easy and noninvasive, Gettler said. People only have to spit — or take part in “passive drooling,” as it’s jokingly referred to — into small tubes. He then analyzes saliva samples that contain hormones — primarily cortisol and testosterone — in his lab. </p>
<p>Gettler and his team have collected plenty of such samples in Cebu, a metropolitan center of nearly 1 million people in the Philippines. While there, he met residents and learned about their culture when walking from his neighborhood to the university, and by joining in pickup basketball games. Working as part of a unique, longitudinal study that has tracked a large number of people in Cebu since birth, he also found evidence of the intergenerational effects of fathering, informed by 40 years’ worth of data.</p>
<p>Gettler and colleagues <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202874119">discovered</a> that Filipino sons whose fathers were present and involved with raising them during adolescence had lower testosterone when they became fathers than did sons whose fathers were less involved or didn’t live with them during that stage.</p>
<p>There is still a lot to learn about how fathers shape their children’s potential as parents, he said, but the pieces are starting to come together.</p>
<p>“To me, this shows how<strong> </strong>parenting and fathering, particularly, can have lasting effects across generations, not just through behavior but also through biology,” said Gettler, who is also a faculty fellow of the <a href="https://globalhealth.nd.edu/">Eck Institute for Global Health</a> and the <a href="https://shaw.nd.edu/">William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families</a>. “But there has been even less research on the effect of fathers on children’s biology, which can directly impact their future health.”</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TIHDarXV3Aw?rel=0" width="1280"></iframe></p>
<h3>Nurturing nature</h3>
<p>That 2022 study, like many of his previous projects, received funding from the National Science Foundation. Gettler’s research has also been supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation, and the Rukavina Family Foundation, among others. In the last five years alone, the researcher has participated in 39 peer-reviewed studies, including 14 as principal investigator/lead author. In 2020, in recognition of his substantial contributions to human biology, and the promise of future significant discoveries, the Human Biology Association presented Gettler with its <a href="https://www.humbio.org/Michael-A.Little-Award">Michael A. Little Early Career Award.</a></p>
<p>Twelve years ago, Gettler broke new ground with a study of 600 men in the Philippines that documented how men’s testosterone plummets during their 20s when they transition from being single and child-free to being coupled and having children. </p>
<p>After becoming fathers, the men experienced dramatic declines in testosterone (more than 25 percent on average); the declines were substantially greater than age-related declines of the single nonfathers. In that same <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1105403108?cookieSet=1">longitudinal </a><a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1105403108">project</a> — he also learned that single child-free men with high testosterone were more likely to become partnered fathers within 4.5 years than their counterparts with low testosterone.</p>
<p>Gettler also discovered that partnered fathers who spent time with their children for three or more hours a day had lower testosterone than fathers who didn’t care for their kids. The study, he said, demonstrated that the transition to fatherhood leads to big, meaningful changes in testosterone. Put another way, biology adjusts to fatherhood.</p>
<p>The findings drew considerable attention from the press, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/research/13testosterone.html"><em>New York Times</em></a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/testosterone-nose-dives-in-fathers-and-hands-on-dads-study-says/2011/09/13/gIQAEA5gPK_blog.html"><em>Washington Post</em></a>, <a href="https://healthland.time.com/2011/09/13/why-do-dads-have-lower-levels-of-testosterone/"><em>Time</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/09/17/140557571/fatherhood-not-testosterone-makes-the-man">NPR</a> (it also caught the attention of late-night comedians — Stephen Colbert joked about the study <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/113617799670276096?s=20">on Twitter</a> and Conan O’Brien referenced it in a monologue on his show).</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">A new study says fatherhood leads to a drop in testosterone. It's the kind of thing I used to get furious about before I had kids.</p>— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/113617799670276096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2011</a>
</blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>During the media blitz, reporters sometimes asked Gettler if the results indicated that men were turning into women. What message, they asked, did he have for men worried that being an involved father was emasculating?</p>
<p>Gettler, himself an involved father of two who enjoys conversationally communicating his discoveries — in interviews and blogs, and on podcasts and Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/leegettler?lang=en">@LeeGettler</a>) — had a succinct response: Testosterone doesn’t equal manliness. </p>
<p>Women also produce and utilize testosterone, which plays a role in cognitive health, bone mass, and the growth and health of reproductive tissues. In men, it regulates immune function, bone mass, fat distribution, muscle mass and strength, as well as the production of red blood cells and sperm. </p>
<p>His study was actually good news for men, he said, as it indicates the frequent portrayal of men as bumbling fools lacking the capacity to parent isn’t true. Men, like women, are biologically adapted to parenting. </p>
<p>“People conflate testosterone and masculinity and conflate one biological signal in human bodies with a very complex gender role that has many social expressions,” he said.</p>
<p>Humans were able to evolve the way they did because of the expansiveness of their brains, he said, which requires a long developmental period of 15 or more years. And because humans often had more than one child in close succession, considerable time and energy were needed to raise them. </p>
<p>Mothers, he said, needed a cooperating partner. Evolutionarily, fathers became an important part of that package. </p>
<p>“Testosterone is one of the key mechanisms that probably was pulled into this evolution of invested human fatherhood,” said Gettler. “We still see the biological signatures of that today in families in diverse settings around the world. We’re one of the few species that evolved to have dads engage in this kind of costly care.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“People conflate testosterone and masculinity and conflate one biological signal in human bodies with a very complex gender role that has many social expressions.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>‘Shaped by the world’</h3>
<p>Gettler gained additional <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X18301703">insights</a> about testosterone, men’s bodies, and dads engaged in costly care when he studied fathers of newborns in the childbirth center at Memorial Hospital in South Bend. He and his team collected hormone data from new dads in the first hour after their babies were born.</p>
<p>Men whose testosterone level was lower when their children were born were more involved months later as parents — changing diapers, playing, and doing household tasks related to the baby — than counterparts with higher testosterone levels. </p>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Lee Gettler Office" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/508677/400x/lee_gettler_office.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Gettler in his office in Corbett Family Hall, home of the Department of Anthropology.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dev.22121">new dads also experienced a spike in oxytocin</a> (a hormone associated with empathy, trust, and relationship-building) when they held their newborns for the first time. New fathers had the largest increase in oxytocin, while more experienced dads had higher overall oxytocin. </p>
<p>The hormone plays an important role in lactation and mother-infant bonding across mammals, but these findings show it is also primed to respond in dads’ bodies, from the earliest moments of parenting.</p>
<p>“For mothers, we see robust changes in their bodies going through pregnancy, birthing, and breastfeeding,” Gettler said. “It was long-assumed that men were along for the ride. Now, we know men’s bodies have other capacities to respond that facilitate their role in families.”</p>
<p>To better understand how culture impacts biology and fathering, Gettler also examined men’s testosterone levels in relation to their expected social roles in two communities in the Republic of the Congo. </p>
<p>“One of the things that I’m really interested in as an anthropologist is how culture pushes around these biological mechanisms and can really affect how they’re expressed,” he said. “We’re shaped by the world we operate in.”</p>
<p>That is evidenced by BaYaka and Bandongo men. While both societies value fathers as providers, the communities’ significant differences helped Gettler and collaborators tease out the role of culture.</p>
<p>Among the egalitarian BaYaka — where child care is shared and spousal conflict is frowned upon — men forage for food and share it with the community. Those considered by peers to be the best fathers/providers had lower testosterone than other men in the community. </p>
<p>And among the patriarchal, hierarchical Bandongo — where child care is less of a father’s responsibility — men fish and farm for food. Sometimes they engage in risky behavior to secure those resources. Men considered to be the best fathers/providers in this society had higher testosterone than their peers. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“One of the things that I’m really interested in as an anthropologist is how culture pushes around these biological mechanisms and can really affect how they’re expressed. We’re shaped by the world we operate in.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“It’s important to understand that what it means to be a good dad is based on the way the culture values it,” Gettler said of the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-70958-3.epdf?sharing_token=Z81ErLsrN8NRIJU1r8vOUtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PUVNCaQ6J7dmDDj942JgP5hsOnYXEmmemFo0KGxhyLl6lt6PjPsRCPFGEkVGPDqBuRx3Kp_pYsTpQQfbmRLKEenxbJgm7iXKL2yBoCMthWGixnEPok3sHkijC8EzPQ42c%3D">findings</a>.</p>
<p>While men with lower testosterone in the BaYaka community were viewed as the best dads and men with higher testosterone in the Bandongo community were viewed as the best dads, men in both communities with higher testosterone had more marital conflict.</p>
<p>Higher testosterone is linked to physical attributes (greater muscle mass and strength) and social dynamics (competition, pursuit of status, and resources) that can attract mates. But testosterone-linked behaviors — competitiveness, dominance, lower empathy — can interfere with relationship stability.</p>
<p>“Indeed, men with higher testosterone have been shown to be more likely to have marital problems and to be divorced in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world,” he said, “and men with lower testosterone are described as more committed and supportive by their partners.”</p>
<h3>Expanding the scope </h3>
<p>Gettler’s research now also examines young people’s health. And, it turns out, he can also often tell how well a child’s parents get along based on the youth’s fingernails.</p>
<p>In BaYaka society, where there’s a strong cultural emphasis on cooperative caregiving, Gettler explored how family dynamics and marital discord correspond to children’s stress.<strong> </strong>He did so by comparing the level of cortisol — a stress hormone — in youth fingernails with men’s fulfillment of locally valued father roles. </p>
<p><a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0031">He found that</a> children with higher cortisol levels had parents in marriages with more conflict. They also had fathers who were less-effective providers and less generous when it came to sharing resources.</p>
<figure class="image-left"><img alt="Lee Gettler Hormones Health Human Behavior Lab" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/508673/400x/lee_gettler_hormones_health_human_behavior_lab.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Gettler is now working on a project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that builds on his prior research on the biology of family life in the Congo Basin. He’s exploring the role of adolescents as change-makers in communities where new jobs, technology, and trade practices are being introduced, and where economic and social transitions are occurring.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And in the patriarchal, hierarchical Bandongo society, children in families with more parental strife had greater intrinsic <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31724171/">epigenetic age acceleration</a>. That is, their biological “age” was older than their chronological age. </p>
<p>“We know that accelerated biological aging is strongly predictive of long-term mortality and risk of disease, which suggests family conflict has long-term implications for children's health and well-being,” he said.</p>
<p>Gettler is now working on a <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2120835&HistoricalAwards=false">project</a>, funded by the National Science Foundation, that builds on his prior research on the biology of family life in the Congo Basin. He’s exploring the role of adolescents as change-makers in communities where new jobs, technology, and trade practices are being introduced, and where economic and social transitions are occurring.</p>
<p>His research team also is examining how these social and economic transitions — that include experiences of inequality — shape how adolescents’ genes are expressed, and whether there are long-term health implications.</p>
<p>As communities in the United States also are undergoing significant economic and cultural shifts, Gettler said understanding the impacts those changes have on youth will be key to timely and effective interventions. </p>
<p>The amount of time that many fathers in the U.S. spend with their children has increased fairly dramatically in the last couple of decades. Simultaneously, he said, they’re still valued for their role as a provider.</p>
<p>Personally, Gettler said, having academic knowledge about fathering doesn’t always translate to personal expertise. Sometimes, he has second-guessed himself as a dad because of it. Being a father, though, has consistently informed his research interests. </p>
<p>“As a dad and co-parent, watching kids go through different phases has taught me a great deal about how to think about types of questions we might ask about fathers,” he said.</p>
<p>And, as it turns out, those humorous observations that he and his friends made as adolescents about fatherhood changing men were right. </p>
<p>But for the wrong reasons. </p>
<p>“Some things we were jokingly saying might cause changes in men, like carrying your babies around, actually have real, profound biological effects — just not the ones we were attributing to it,” he said. </p>
<p>“We were defining what might change men when they became fathers based on things we had experienced with our own dads. And those types of behavioral patterns are the ones that we have now tracked to these hormone shifts.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Some things we were jokingly saying might cause changes in men, like carrying your babies around, actually have real, profound biological effects — just not the ones we were attributing to it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Beth Staples</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/family-guy-notre-dame-anthropologist-lee-gettler-broadens-perspectives-on-fatherhood-raising-healthy-children/">al.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">March 22, 2023</span>.</p>Beth Staplestag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1510892023-02-16T13:30:00-05:002023-02-16T13:31:24-05:00Poem by PhD Kefen Budji published in SAPIENS!<p>Anthropology PhD Kefen Budji's poem was selected as part of the Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human collection and has been published in the anthropological online magazine - SAPIENS (audio and text).<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.sapiens.org/culture/the-path/&source=gmail&ust=1676656984752000&usg=AOvVaw3ESz1cJm3KUiAYgt6ioQ62"></a>…</p><p>Anthropology PhD Kefen Budji's poem was selected as part of the Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human collection and has been published in the anthropological online magazine - SAPIENS (audio and text).<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.sapiens.org/culture/the-path/&source=gmail&ust=1676656984752000&usg=AOvVaw3ESz1cJm3KUiAYgt6ioQ62" href="http://www.sapiens.org/culture/the-path/" target="_blank">www.sapiens.org/culture/the-path/</a></p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1508432023-02-08T08:43:00-05:002023-02-08T08:43:58-05:00New Article by Prof. Aidan Seale-Feldman<p><strong><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/879810/pdf">Psychedelic Identity Shift: A Critical Approach to Set And Setting</a></strong></p><p><strong><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/879810/pdf">Psychedelic Identity Shift: A Critical Approach to Set And Setting</a></strong></p>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1505422023-01-27T13:07:00-05:002023-01-27T13:07:59-05:00Anthropologist wins NEH fellowship to explore toll of climate change in Sierra Leone<p>Notre Dame anthropologist <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/catherine-bolten/">Catherine “Cat” Bolten</a> has been awarded a <a href="https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-247-million-208-humanities-projects-nationwide">National Endowment for the Humanities</a> fellowship to support the writing of her book that examines links between food insecurity, human population growth and wildlife depletion, land politics and degradation, and climate change in Sierra Leone.</p><p>University of Notre Dame anthropologist <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/catherine-bolten/">Catherine “Cat” Bolten</a> has been awarded a <a href="https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-247-million-208-humanities-projects-nationwide">National Endowment for the Humanities</a> (NEH) fellowship to support the writing of her book that examines links between food insecurity, human population growth and wildlife depletion, land politics and degradation, and climate change in Sierra Leone.</p>
<p>The associate professor of <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a> and <a href="https://kroc.nd.edu/undergraduate/supplementary-major-or-minor/">peace studies</a> is one of 70 scholars — from among more than 1,030 applicants nationwide — to be awarded the competitive fellowships, which were announced Tuesday. </p>
<p>When she learned she had won the award, Bolten’s first reaction was disbelief, then giddiness. </p>
<p>“Finally, it settled into, ‘They believe in the project as much as I do,’” she said. “And that was a great feeling.”</p>
<p>Her award continues the University’s record success with the NEH, the federal agency that seeks to strengthen the republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying lessons of history to Americans. Since 2000, Arts and Letters faculty have earned <a href="https://al.nd.edu/about/the-faculty/fellowship-record/">more NEH fellowships than any other private university</a> in the country. </p>
<p>“I am delighted to see one of our anthropology faculty receive this support from the NEH, especially for work in the environmental humanities, an area of research that is vital to our understanding of the present and hope for the future,” said Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the <a href="http://al.nd.edu/">College of Arts and Letters</a>. “I am thrilled and proud that Cat has continued our strong track record in earning NEH fellowships and grants across a wide range of disciplines.”</p>
<p>Bolten developed her NEH proposal with <a href="https://isla.nd.edu/people/joshua-hubbard/">Josh Tychonievich</a>, the research development program director in the college’s <a href="https://isla.nd.edu/">Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts</a>. She also participated in an NEH writing group hosted by the institute, which provided faculty opportunities to work together on proposals and receive support and feedback from colleagues and staff. </p>
<h3>A new way forward</h3>
<p>Bolten was inspired to write the book while contemplating feedback from journal editors who rejected her article submissions generated through research from her work on the <a href="http://tonkolilichimpanzeeproject.com/">Tonkolili Chimpanzee Project</a> in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Each reviewer provided contradictory guidance and indicated they were unsure of which direction her multifaceted research should take. </p>
<p>A book, she decided, was the best way to make that all clear.</p>
<p>“After the third or fourth rejection, I was sitting on my couch, slightly paralyzed, not knowing what to do with this project,” said Bolten, who also is the director of doctoral studies at the <a href="https://kroc.nd.edu/">Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies</a> and a concurrent associate professor of <a href="https://africana.nd.edu/">Africana studies</a>. “Suddenly, everything came together in my mind. I grabbed the nearest notepad, and in 12 minutes, I wrote the basic outline for the book.”</p>
<p>Within three days, she had an eight-page outline. And two months later, she had a book proposal. The book, Bolten’s third, is tentatively titled “Unknowing the World: Humans, Chimpanzees, and Climate Change in Sierra Leone.”</p>
<p>“Unknowing” refers to the paralysis and loss of sense of self that people feel when the wisdom of the ages fails them and they no longer have the capacity to create and invent to tackle pressing challenges.</p>
<p>“Essentially, we’ve reached a point where the speed of change is accelerating past the ability of generational knowledge to innovate,” she said.</p>
<h3>Cascading effects</h3>
<p>Bolten has been studying Sierra Leone for two decades, publishing more than a dozen articles and two books, “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520273795/i-did-it-to-save-my-life">I Did It to Save My Life: Love and Survival in Sierra Leone</a>” and “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/serious-youth-in-sierra-leone-9780190886684?cc=us&lang=en&">Serious Youth in Sierra Leone: An Ethnography of Generation and Globalization</a>.” </p>
<figure class="image-left"><img alt="Cat Bolten Sierra Leone" height="312" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/499841/450x/cat_bolten_sierra_leone.jpg" width="450">
<figcaption>Bolten in the Sierra Leone jungle.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her research for the new book began with the Tonkolili Chimpanzee Project, which, in the midst of unprecedented deforestation, strives to conserve wild chimpanzees who raid farmers’ crops in order to survive. The project aims to stop farmers from hunting chimpanzees by reimbursing them for lost crops, and minimizing conflicts between people and chimpanzees. </p>
<p>“If you really dig down deep with people in Sierra Leone, they know that they need chimpanzees in their forest in order for the forest to be healthy,” said Bolten, who is also a faculty fellow of the <a href="https://globalhealth.nd.edu/">Eck Institute for Global Health</a>, <a href="https://pulte.nd.edu/">Pulte Institute for Global Development</a> and <a href="https://reilly.nd.edu/">Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values</a>. “They know this, but they can’t think about this every day when their kids are crying from hunger.”</p>
<p>Creating a sustainable future, Bolten said, is more than just trying to reverse the statistics on rising carbon dioxide levels and the number of species going extinct — and it’s about more than conserving one environment or one species. It involves asking real questions about what a livable world looks like. </p>
<p>“There’s often an instance of what I call the ‘politics of post-colonial blame,’ which is that it’s very easy to ignore long histories of colonialism when you’re looking at people struggling in their environments right now,” she said. “It’s easier to say, ‘Slash-and-burn agriculture is bad and that’s why your land is dying,’ rather than asking what much longer politics were involved in this.”</p>
<p>Bolten has been studying past politics in Sierra Leone’s long history — including its civil war, the exploitative commercial farming practices of British American Tobacco, the colonial railway built in the 1890s and myriad cascading effects — to learn about the impacts those forces and events have had on the present. </p>
<h3>A livable future</h3>
<p>These and other intertwined histories need to be understood if a livable future is possible, Bolten said. </p>
<p>It doesn’t mean trying to restore a fully natural, indigenous, conserved environment either, she said, noting that wild chimpanzees now frequently nest in a plantation tree from Indonesia that was introduced by the colonial government. And one of their primary food sources is the mango, which was introduced by the Portuguese. Another is a genetically engineered oil palm introduced through United Nations extension offices 90 years ago.</p>
<p>“We can’t ignore the fact that these trees have histories of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism attached to them,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean the chimps won’t nest in them or eat them.”</p>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Cat Bolten Classroom" height="267" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/499842/400x/cat_bolten_classroom.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Bolten in the classroom with Notre Dame graduate students.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is much to be learned from the chimpanzees, Bolten said, who have adapted faster and better to the degraded landscape than people. They’ve altered both their feeding and nesting practices to survive. </p>
<p>That’s not the case with humans.</p>
<p>“The villages look the same, the people act the same, they farm the same,” Bolten said. “They’re not able to ask themselves if a village should be here in this highly eroded area. Villages used to move all the time. It was a cycle of movement and adaptation. But now, humans feel stuck because the population has grown quickly. They have doubled down on maintaining villages they currently have, even as they are aware that they are draining the resources, and the land is never able to bounce back.”</p>
<p>For Bolten, the answers to these complicated challenges can only come through a multifaceted approach that both embraces and goes beyond science and social science. </p>
<p>“I always tell my students that the most important thing about research is learning to ask the right question,” she said. “That’s what I see happening so infrequently right now. I want people to ask better questions and find creative, non-disciplinarily isolated ways to answer them.”</p>
<p class="attribution"><em>Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Beth Staples</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/anthropologist-wins-prestigious-neh-fellowship-to-explore-toll-of-climate-change-in-sierra-leone/">al.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">Jan. 13</span>.</em></p>Beth Staplestag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1521032023-01-19T13:25:00-05:002023-03-31T13:25:24-04:00Anthropology alumna Fauvé Liggans-Hubbard named 2023 Rangel Fellow<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal"></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal"></span></span></span></p>
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<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal">“Living abroad for the past five years, I was often the first Black and/or American my foreign students met, so I believe it is important for U.S. diplomats abroad to reflect the diverse American population,” said Fauvé <span data-scayt-word="Liggans" data-wsc-id="ld36go2tcaj0l4d7n" data-wsc-lang="en_US" style="text-align:start">Liggans</span><span style="float:none; text-align:start">-Hubbard</span>. “These experiences, along with many others, solidified my passion for cultural exchange, and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of a program that aims to increase diversity in the U.S. Foreign Service.”</span></span></span></p><p>University of Notre Dame alumna Fauvé Liggans-Hubbard has been named a 2023 Rangel International Fellow. </p>
<p>Liggans-Hubbard is a 2017 graduate from Matteson, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts in <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a>. She was a Chatteris Teaching Fellow in Hong Kong and a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in South Korea. She currently works as an AmeriCorps member in St. Louis.</p>
<p>In applying for the award, she worked closely with the <a href="https://cuse.nd.edu/">Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement</a>, which promotes the intellectual development of Notre Dame undergraduates through scholarly engagement, research, creative endeavors and the pursuit of fellowships.</p>
<p>“The Rangel fellowship is one of the most well-funded and connected opportunities for graduate study that CUSE works with, and Fau is a very fitting selectee given her incredibly impressive and continuous engagement on the global stage in Hong Kong and then South Korea,” said Elise Rudt-Moorthy, national fellowships senior program manager with CUSE. “Working with her is always a pleasure, and I know she will represent our country exceptionally as a foreign service officer.”</p>
<p>The Rangel fellowship is a U.S. Department of State program that attracts and prepares young people for international service careers. It supports outstanding seniors and college graduates through two years of graduate study, internships, mentoring and professional development activities, with the aim of promoting greater diversity and excellence in the Foreign Service. Fellows who successfully complete the program receive appointments as foreign service officers for a period of five years.</p>
<p>Liggans-Hubbard, for her part, plans to pursue a master’s degree in international relations or affairs or foreign service. Long term, she hopes to make a career in the foreign service.</p>
<p>“When I read the congratulatory email on becoming a 2023 Rangel Fellow, I literally fell out of my chair,” Liggans-Hubbard said. “I had this overwhelming feeling of gratitude, validation and excitement for the future. Living abroad for the past five years, I was often the first Black and/or American my foreign students met, so I believe it is important for U.S. diplomats abroad to reflect the diverse American population. These experiences, along with many others, solidified my passion for cultural exchange, and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of a program that aims to increase diversity in the U.S. Foreign Service.”</p>
<p>Expressing appreciation for the support of others, she said, “Firstly, I want to thank God, my mother, and all the family and friends that have always supported me and continue to do so. Secondly, receiving this award would not have been possible without Elise Rudt-Moorthy, CUSE and its amazing faculty, and Professor Connie Mick. Many thanks to them for their guidance and support through this application process and many others before.”</p>
<p>Liggans-Hubbard is Notre Dame’s second Rangel fellow. Alumna DeJorie Monroe, the first, received the award last year. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in global human development, with a specialization in education and human capital, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>For more on this and other fellowship opportunities, visit <a href="https://cuse.nd.edu/">cuse.nd.edu</a>.<br>
</p>
<p>Contact: Erin Blasko, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-4127, <a href="mailto:eblasko@nd.edu">eblasko@nd.edu</a></p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Erin Blasko</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://news.nd.edu/news/alumna-fauve-liggans-hubbard-named-2023-rangel-fellow/">news.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">January 18, 2023</span>.</p>Erin Blaskotag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1503882023-01-18T16:10:00-05:002023-01-19T16:11:06-05:00Anthropology alumna Fauvé Liggans-Hubbard named 2023 Rangel Fellow<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal"></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal"></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal"></span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align:start"><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="font-weight:400"><span style="white-space:normal">“Living abroad for the past five years, I was often the first Black and/or American my foreign students met, so I believe it is important for U.S. diplomats abroad to reflect the diverse American population,” said Fauvé <span data-scayt-word="Liggans" data-wsc-id="ld36go2tcaj0l4d7n" data-wsc-lang="en_US" style="text-align:start">Liggans</span><span style="float:none; text-align:start">-Hubbard</span>. “These experiences, along with many others, solidified my passion for cultural exchange, and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of a program that aims to increase diversity in the U.S. Foreign Service.”</span></span></span></p><p>University of Notre Dame alumna Fauvé Liggans-Hubbard has been named a 2023 Rangel International Fellow. </p>
<p>Liggans-Hubbard is a 2017 graduate from Matteson, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts in <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a>. She was a Chatteris Teaching Fellow in Hong Kong and a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in South Korea. She currently works as an AmeriCorps member in St. Louis.</p>
<p>In applying for the award, she worked closely with the <a href="https://cuse.nd.edu/">Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement</a>, which promotes the intellectual development of Notre Dame undergraduates through scholarly engagement, research, creative endeavors and the pursuit of fellowships.</p>
<p>“The Rangel fellowship is one of the most well-funded and connected opportunities for graduate study that CUSE works with, and Fau is a very fitting selectee given her incredibly impressive and continuous engagement on the global stage in Hong Kong and then South Korea,” said Elise Rudt-Moorthy, national fellowships senior program manager with CUSE. “Working with her is always a pleasure, and I know she will represent our country exceptionally as a foreign service officer.”</p>
<p>The Rangel fellowship is a U.S. Department of State program that attracts and prepares young people for international service careers. It supports outstanding seniors and college graduates through two years of graduate study, internships, mentoring and professional development activities, with the aim of promoting greater diversity and excellence in the Foreign Service. Fellows who successfully complete the program receive appointments as foreign service officers for a period of five years.</p>
<p>Liggans-Hubbard, for her part, plans to pursue a master’s degree in international relations or affairs or foreign service. Long term, she hopes to make a career in the foreign service.</p>
<p>“When I read the congratulatory email on becoming a 2023 Rangel Fellow, I literally fell out of my chair,” Liggans-Hubbard said. “I had this overwhelming feeling of gratitude, validation and excitement for the future. Living abroad for the past five years, I was often the first Black and/or American my foreign students met, so I believe it is important for U.S. diplomats abroad to reflect the diverse American population. These experiences, along with many others, solidified my passion for cultural exchange, and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of a program that aims to increase diversity in the U.S. Foreign Service.”</p>
<p>Expressing appreciation for the support of others, she said, “Firstly, I want to thank God, my mother, and all the family and friends that have always supported me and continue to do so. Secondly, receiving this award would not have been possible without Elise Rudt-Moorthy, CUSE and its amazing faculty, and Professor Connie Mick. Many thanks to them for their guidance and support through this application process and many others before.”</p>
<p>Liggans-Hubbard is Notre Dame’s second Rangel fellow. Alumna DeJorie Monroe, the first, received the award last year. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in global human development, with a specialization in education and human capital, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>For more on this and other fellowship opportunities, visit <a href="https://cuse.nd.edu/">cuse.nd.edu</a>.<br>
</p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Erin Blasko</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://news.nd.edu/news/alumna-fauve-liggans-hubbard-named-2023-rangel-fellow/">news.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">January 18, 2023</span>.</p>Erin Blaskotag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1502062023-01-10T13:17:00-05:002023-01-10T13:17:32-05:00New article by Dr. Golitko and PhD candidate Lauren Finnigan!<h2><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X22004801?dgcid=author">"A pXRF analysis of historic brick chemical data throughout the Lake Michigan Morainic region, United States"</a></h2><h2><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X22004801?dgcid=author">"A pXRF analysis of historic brick chemical data throughout the Lake Michigan Morainic region, United States"</a></h2>Eileen Baranytag:anthropology.nd.edu,2005:News/1520992022-12-11T13:18:00-05:002023-03-31T13:27:37-04:00How Asha Barnes ’18 mapped out a career in urban planning using skills from anthropology and Africana studies<p>Maps don’t just show us where things are located — for urban planner Asha Barnes ’18, they also reveal stories about who we are and how we live our lives. Majoring in anthropology and Africana studies at Notre Dame allowed Barnes to explore humanity and identity using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She’s now employed these research techniques in her career, continuing to give back by telling the stories of those who have been silenced. “It was through my education that I was able to put to words my own experience as an Afro-American woman living in this country,” said Barnes, now an associate planner at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “It was through my education at Notre Dame that I was able to learn the skills that I have now to collect and tell the stories of other people and advocate for communities that I’ve worked with.”</p><figure class="image-default"><img alt="Asha Barnes Thumbnail" height="800" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/488936/fullsize/asha_barnes_thumbnail.jpg" width="1200"></figure>
<p>Maps don’t just show us where things are located — for urban planner Asha Barnes ’18, they also reveal stories about who we are and how we live our lives.</p>
<p>Majoring in <a href="http://anthropology.nd.edu/">anthropology</a> and <a href="http://africana.nd.edu/">Africana studies</a> at Notre Dame allowed Barnes to explore humanity and identity using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She’s now employed these research techniques in her career, continuing to give back by telling the stories of those who have been silenced.</p>
<p>“It was through my education that I was able to put to words my own experience as an Afro-American woman living in this country,” said Barnes, now an associate planner at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “It was through my education at Notre Dame that I was able to learn the skills that I have now to collect and tell the stories of other people and advocate for communities that I’ve worked with.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was through my education at Notre Dame that I was able to learn the skills that I have now to collect and tell the stories of other people and advocate for communities that I’ve worked with.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>A sense of empathy</h3>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Asha Barnes In Paris" height="405" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/488939/300x/asha_barnes_in_paris.jpg" width="300">
<figcaption>Barnes (first row, second from left) with friends during her study abroad experience in Paris.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Barnes was always intrigued by language and culture, especially seeing how they had shaped her own identity as the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant mother and African American father on the South Side of Chicago.</p>
<p>Though she began Notre Dame on a pre-med track, Barnes discovered that anthropology and Africana studies allowed her to study her long-held passions and explore her identity in a meaningful and contextualized way. </p>
<p>“Those classes were very important to me, fostering my own sense of self — my identity,” she said.</p>
<p>She found that anthropological research techniques — from surveys to interviews to participant observation (studying a community or situation through immersion) — allowed her to better comprehend peoples’ everyday lives and motivations.</p>
<p>“It’s through anthropology that we begin to open our minds to different cultures, different peoples, different truths, different walks of life,” she said. “It fostered a sense of empathy in me that I continue to carry today.”</p>
<h3>The value of mentorship</h3>
<p>During her time at Notre Dame, Barnes worked closely with many professors who helped her gain research experience and discover her interests.</p>
<p><a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/people/faculty/alex-e-chavez/">Alex Chávez</a>, the Nancy O’Neill Associate Professor of Anthropology, was one of Barnes’ most pivotal mentors, serving as the advisor for her senior thesis on religiosity in Jamaica. </p>
<figure class="image-left"><img alt="Asha Barnes And Maria Mckenna" height="426" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/488940/350x/asha_barnes_and_maria_mckenna.jpg" width="400">
<figcaption>Barnes with Africana studies faculty member Maria McKenna at Commencement in 2018.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“He was a huge influence on the work that I was doing at Notre Dame and continues to be an influence now in the way that I practice anthropology,” said Barnes, who received funding from the <a href="https://anthropology.nd.edu/">Department of Anthropology</a> to travel to Jamaica for her research. “He definitely is, for me, the standard of what anthropologists should be.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://africana.nd.edu/undergraduate-programs/doan-scholars/">Doan Scholar</a> also worked alongside<a href="https://africana.nd.edu/"> Department of Africana Studies</a> faculty <a href="https://africana.nd.edu/people/maria-k-mckenna/">Maria McKenna</a> and <a href="https://africana.nd.edu/people/stuart-greene/">Stuart Greene</a> in conducting research about education in South Bend and working with middle school students in the city on building soft skills.</p>
<p>The experience inspired her to spend a year doing full-time service work in public education through City Year following her graduation. Barnes, who had attended Chicago Public Schools, returned to the district to teach seventh- and eighth-grade students at Deneen Elementary School.</p>
<p>She soon found that her two majors offered insight into the lives of her students and how she could enable success for them in the classroom. </p>
<p>“It really gave me an understanding of how to practice education differently, taking into account Afro-American experiences,” she said.</p>
<p>After City Year, Barnes wanted to continue working with youth. She spent a year working as a program coordinator for Spark, a nonprofit which works to improve children’s futures by connecting them with a variety of career exploration resources, leveraging partnerships with companies like Google and LinkedIn.</p>
<p>Being mentored by Notre Dame professors who were dedicated to improving the lives of those who had been disadvantaged or disempowered had inspired Barnes to do the same. </p>
<p>“Working with them created a greater sense of urgency to serve people and advocate for communities that don’t necessarily have the power to advocate for themselves,” she said.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I come from a community that’s been divested in and that’s been impacted by the legacy of segregation in Chicago, and it doesn’t have a champion and is lacking in power. I think of it now as my duty to come back and give back, and fortify those communities that have been left behind.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>Advocating for communities</h3>
<p>During her sophomore year, Barnes had served as a team anthropologist with the<a href="https://engagement.nd.edu/community-partners/coalitions/"> Bowman Creek Educational Ecosystem</a>, a coalition that brought together resources from Notre Dame and the City of South Bend. The team worked to provide revitalization and environmental solutions to flooding and contamination around Bowman Creek in the southeast side of the city, a racially diverse and economically divested area.</p>
<p>Witnessing how the team worked with the community to address public health made Barnes interested in urban planning and its potential to foster healthy neighborhoods. </p>
<p>“I come from a community that’s been divested in and that’s been impacted by the legacy of segregation in Chicago, and it doesn’t have a champion and is lacking in power,” she said. “I think of it now as my duty to come back and give back, and fortify those communities that have been left behind.”</p>
<figure class="image-right"><img alt="Asha Barnes Uiuc Degree" height="249" src="https://al.nd.edu/assets/488938/450x/asha_barnes_uiuc_degree.jpg" width="350">
<figcaption>Barnes with family after receiving her master's degree from the University of Illinois.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That experience and others — including a Youth Empowerment and Urban Environments course with Greene and McKenna — ultimately inspired her to complete a master’s degree in urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, adding technical skills to her portfolio such as making maps using computer software, analyzing census data, and telling stories through data visualization.</p>
<p>The historical knowledge Barnes gained from her undergraduate education proved invaluable for understanding how urban planners can serve community needs.</p>
<p>“If you look at the state of American cities, especially Chicago, and how segregated it and other cities are, I’m able to utilize my knowledge of the African diaspora, of African American culture, to better assist or advocate for those communities,” Barnes said.</p>
<p>Barnes is already using anthropological methodologies in her new role at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, a government organization working with municipalities throughout northeast Illinois. </p>
<p>Since her start in June, Barnes has been working primarily on two projects: ensuring that all municipalities are compliant with the American with Disabilities Act and helping the community of Austin on Chicago’s West Side implement its quality-of-life plan to uplift the neighborhood.</p>
<p>These projects require Barnes to utilize the research skills that she developed from her anthropology degree. </p>
<p>“Urban planning is a lot of data collection and data analysis, which is something that anthropologists do in general,” Barnes said. “We take both qualitative and quantitative data and try to tell the story with that. And that’s something that I learned during my time at Notre Dame.”</p>
<p>For Barnes, a Notre Dame liberal arts education unlocked the past as the key to a brighter future.</p>
<p>“You gain a greater understanding of the world that we live in,” she said, “of the history that we are working with or contending with, and you gain tools that you need to rectify past wrongs.”</p>
<p class="attribution">Originally published by <span class="rel-author">Hailey Oppenlander</span> at <span class="rel-source"><a href="https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/how-asha-barnes-18-mapped-out-a-career-in-urban-planning-using-skills-from-anthropology-and-africana-studies/">al.nd.edu</a></span> on <span class="rel-pubdate">October 11, 2022</span>.</p>Hailey Oppenlander