News

Professor White's article, in collaboration with Catherine Draycott, titled "Why the Whiteness of Archaeology Is a Problem" was featured in SAPIEN's Best of 2020! Congrats Professor! Check out his article below!

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/archaeology-diversity/

Recent 2020 UC Berkeley Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages & Literatures (Arabic) BA graduate, Nicholas Shafer, becomes one of 44 Marshall Scholars that will begin study in the United Kingdom in Fall 2021 and will pursue study at the University of Oxford and the University of Sussex.

The anthropology department has held discussions around the unnaming of Kroeber Hall and around the university's lack of compliance with CalNAGPRA. Wanting to extend these discussions beyond the department, anthropology graduate students, in consultation with indigenous members of the campus community, drafted two resolutions that were introduced to the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly. On November 5 the Graduate Assembly approved these resolutions and took the official position in support of unnaming Kroeber Hall based on his harmful legacy to local indigenous communities.

We want to congratulate one of Archaeology Graduate Students, Mario Alberto Castillo for being awarded the UC President's Pre-Professoriate Fellowship from The University of California's Hispanic Serving Institution Doctoral Diversity Initiative. 

This is what Mario had to say about why their Pre-Fellowship promotes diversity and inclusion in Academia. 

The Anthropology Department has created a “Virtual Front Desk” page on the website! Students and staff can find information and resources using the clickable links embedded in the virtual office. There is also the option to meet with our Student Assistants over Zoom to answer your specific questions.  We hope that this virtual office will provide clarity and support in an online space.

As chair of the UC Berkeley anthropology department, I write to express my department’s support for the initiative to un-name Kroeber Hall. The act of un-naming, as we see it, takes an important step in addressing and acknowledging a long history of violence toward Native Americans in which UC Berkeley and the anthropology department are implicated. This act gives momentum to the long-overdue work of repair for historical injury. 

Congratulations to Professor William White on receiving the Hellman Fellow Fund. 

A blurb about his Fellow award: 

From the UC Berkeley Anthropology Faculty:

Dr. Karen Lisa Greene has passed away at a hospital near her home in Kampala, Uganda, of cerebral malaria. Dr. Greene was a superb, rigorous, and passionate scholar whose impact both as a teacher and critical innovator in child rights has been international.  She leaves her daughter Whitney and close friends and family worldwide.  

Dr. Greene did her MA in folklore and PhD in medical anthropology at Berkeley.  She was learned, with additional training in education, in critical theory, in Khmer language, and in the governance of refugees and rights. 

Professor Sarah Vaughn was a guest speaker for a Berkeley Conversations: COVID-19 video titled "Understanding and seeking equity amid COVID-19". Professor Vaughn brings ethnography to this conversation, raising awareness to how communities in the Caribbean "approach disaster preparedness and climate adaptation". 

Check it out!

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/04/21/understanding-and-seeking-equity-amid-covid-19/

The 2020 Urban Ethnobiology Fellowship winner is Natasha Fernandez-Perez!

"Since the 1990s, increasing numbers of Coptic Orthodox Christians have immigrated to the United States particularly through the Diversity Visa, or Green Card Lottery.

Due to her outstanding contributions to archaeology, Professor Hastorf was selected as the 2020 recipient of SAA's Book Award – Scholarly for The Social Archaeology of Food Thinking about Eating from Prehistory to the Present.  Professor Hastorf will recieve the award Friday, April 24, 2020 at the Annual Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony in the Austin Convention Center. Congrats Professor Hastorf!