The film festival will focus on ethnographic films
produced by members of our department
among others. We are honored to have as our guest world famous and controversial
anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Chagnon)
who will be answering questions about two of his films made while he was
professor at Penn State. Dr. Chagnon is well known for his study of the
Yanomamo and I think the Penn State community as well as the public at large
would be interested in watching his films as well as the Q&A that will
follow.
The history of anthropological films at Penn State stretches back to the 1940s
and the department was extremely active with more than 50 films and televisions
shows produced by faculty through the early 1990s. A brief history of
anthropological films at Penn State is attached. As a recent graduate of
the department, Kirk French is spearheading an effort to revive the tradition
of film making at Penn State both through his own documentary work (http://www.kirkdfrench.com/index_files/Page562.htm)
as well as by chairing this Festival.
The film festival will be held on Saturday, April 10th from noon to 6pm and
will feature four films and discussions by professors from the Anthropology
Department as well as our featured speaker, Dr. Chagnon, who will be discussing
two films made while he was professor at Penn State. The schedule of the films will be: http://www.clubs.psu.edu/up/agsa/filmfest.html
At the Festival's end, we will be hosting a reception at the Nittany Lion Inn
so that audience members will have a chance to mingle informally with the
discussants.
Kirk French is invited to
give a lecture at Brown University on Thursday, April 8 at 6:30pm. He will be presenting a talk entitled "The
Waters of the Ancient Maya and the Hydroarchaeological Approach" at the Fluid
Thinking: Exploration of Water in Society at the Mellon Graduate
Workshop.
The Department of
Anthropology is the featured department on campus for the Pennsylvania
Junior Science and Humanities Symposium.
The event takes place on Monday, March 29 at 7pm.
Kirk French will deliver the
keynote address at the Pennsylvania
Junior Science and Humanities Symposium on Sunday, March 28 at 7pm at
the Penn Stater Conference Hotel. His
talk is entitled "Hydroarchaeology: A New Approach to Understanding the Past".
Joan Richtsmeier will attend a dinner to honor female faculty promoted to Full Professor of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Richtsmeier was promoted to Full Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology in 1999 becoming the 55th female Full Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which was established in 1893. Richtsmeier moved her lab to Penn State in 2000.
Margaret Brown Vega recently received a Satellite Imagery Award from the GeoEye
Foundation in support of her postdoctoral research project on prehispanic
warfare. The project, titled Awqa Pacha (Times of War), is a multi-year study of
fortifications along the central and north coasts of Peru. Satellite imagery and
other remotely sensed data have greatly facilitated the identification of
fortified hilltops in the study region. The satellite images, from the Huaura
Valley, permit remote examination of an area for which no other data are
available.
The research is funded by an NSF Minority Postdoctoral
Research Fellowship. It is being undertaken in collaboration with Penn State
faculty in the Anthropology GIS Lab (Nathan Craig and Carrie Hritz), and under
the mentorship of George Milner and David Webster.
Read more about the
GeoEye Foundation: http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/corporate/foundation/Default.aspx
If you are interested in getting experience using the 3dMD system please contact John to volunteer for data collections events. Events take place at night and typically require 6-7 hour blocks of time to drive to the location, collect images, and return. Contact John at jms1043@psu.edu for further information.
