Anthropology at Tulane University

Melissa Beske
I received my B.A. in anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 2004 and came to the graduate program at Tulane in fall of that year. I am currently a Ph.D. Candidate in cultural anthropology with a focus in gender and violence among the Mestizo and Creole populations of western Belize. Previous field experience includes three field seasons with the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project at the sites of Baking Pot and Caracol, one field season with the Center for Social Wellbeing in Carhuaz, Peru, subsequent research on New Orleans street performers, and several years of domestic violence research in affiliation with Cornerstone Foundation NGO and the Women's Department in San Ignacio, Belize.
mbeske@tulane.edu

Marc Blainey

B.A. in Anthropology (University of Western Ontario), M.A. in Anthropology (Trent University)
Regional interests: New World (particularly Amazonia and Mesoamerica), Europe (specifically the transnational movement and importation of foreign religious beliefs and practices here)
Theoretical interests: existential and phenomenological anthropology, ethnometaphysics, shamanism, neo-shamanism, entheology, cognitive archaeology, iconography, Mayan hieroglyphs
Ph.D. Dissertation Research Focus: I plan to conduct ethnography with European converts to the Santo Daime church, a syncretic religious affiliation combining Catholic and Afro-Brazilian traditions with elements of indigenous Amazonian shamanism. Assemblages of this group gather regularly to imbibe Ayahuasca tea, a potent entheogen, in a sincere ceremonial context. I would like to delve deeper in identifying possible links between this ritual behaviour and the metaphysical assumptions underlying the associated beliefs. The long-term fieldwork that I will eventually conduct for my Ph.D. dissertation research will focus on developing a comprehensive familiarity with the ideational orientation of adherents to the Santo Daime congregation in Belgium.
mblainey@tulane.edu

Lauren Brasington

lbrasing@tulane.edu

Dan Castilow

dcastilo@tulane.edu

David Chatelain

dchatela@tulane.edu

Ximena Chavez Balderas

xchavezb@tulane.edu

Diane Davies
Maya archaeology, the development of sociopolitical complexity, mortuary analysis, reuse and reoccupation, identity, memory, and landscape studies. Dissertation research at the ancient Maya site of San Bartolo, El Peten, Guatemala.
ddavies@tulane.edu

Brittany Dement

bdement1@tulane.edu

James Dugan
I began the doctoral program at Tulane in the Fall of 2001, with a concentration in Linguistic Anthropology. I spent my year of fieldwork (2004-2005) in lowland Guatemala, collecting folklore in the Ch’orti’ Maya language, and am currently writing a dissertation describing the grammar of that language. Courses taught include ANTH103 Languages of the World, ANTH330 History of Writing Systems, and ANTH760 Spoken Nahuatl Language. My secondary research area is Christian Fundamentalism in North America, and its impact on indigenous peoples.

http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~jdugan/
jdugan@tulane.edu

Stacy Dunn
StacyD1234@aol.com

Lukas Friedl

lukas.friedl@gmail.com

Thomas Gallareta Negron
tomasgn@sureste.com

Joanna Gautney

jgautney@tulane.edu

Wade Glenn
Cultural Anthropology - religion, gender, and medical anthropology. I am studying a popular syncretic religion in Venezuela known as the Cult of Maria Lionza which combines indigenous, African, and European traditions. My research focuses on spirit possession, traditional medicine/shamanism, politics, economics, and urban anthropology.
wglenn@tulane.edu

Fae Goodman

I came to Tulane’s graduate program in 2008, after receiving an honors BA in Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Louisville. My research interests include gendered performance and identity, community studies, and the anthropology of romantic love. I am currently involved in research on the worker community at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the longest-running lesbian separatist event in the US.

fgoodman@tulane.edu

Jennifer Griffin Yoshizawa
Archaeological investigation of the site of Teuchitlan, Jalisco, Mexico .
jenng@yahoo.com

Haley, Bryan

bhaley@tulane.edu

Ashley Heaton
I came to Tulane's graduate program in 2003 after receiving my B.A. from Vanderbilt University earlier that year. My focus in Andean archaeology. I am currently involved in archaeological investigations directed by Dr. Alexei Vranich (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthroplogy) at the site of Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia.
aheaton1@tulane.edu

Rebecca Hill
Archaeological investigations at the Maya site of Kiuic, Mexico .
rhill1@tulane.edu

Haley Holt

hholt@tulane.edu

Sherman Horn, III

shorn@tulane.edu

Rachel Horowitz

rhorowit@tulane.edu

Alexander Hulse

ahulse@tulane.edu

Vance Hutchinson
I received my B.A. in Archaeology from Simon Fraser University, 1997, and my M.A. in Anthropology from Northern Illinois University, 2000.

I suppose I could be considered a paleoanthropologist and human paleontologist. My primary interests lie in the biological and demographic aspects of the archaic-modern human transition. My undergraduate research focused mainly on East Asian Homo erectus . My M.A. thesis investigated the taxonomic affiliation of a Middle Paleolithic Morrocan child from the site of Mugharet el 'Aliya and the skeletal morphology of Neandertal children in general. I have been excavating two Middle Paleolithic sites in Portugal with Dr. Trenton Holliday, with the express hope of uncovering human fossil material. Currently, Dr. Holliday and myself are in our second field season at the Lagar Velho Norte Alto site in east central Portugal . It is up the road from he now famous Lagar Velho main site and we are interested in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of the area, but desperately hote to find Neandertal(s).
vhutchin@tulane.edu

Erlend Johnson

ejohnso8@tulane.edu

Christopher Jones
cjones10@tulane.edu

Whitney Karriger

wkarrige@tulane.edu

Nicole Katin

nkatin@tulane.edu

Eman Khalifa

ekhalifa@tulane.edu

Maxime Lamoureux-St. Hilaire

mlamoure@tulane.edu

Bryan Lenz

I received my BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and my MSc from Oxford Brookes University in 2004, where I studied loud-call vocalizations in black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra). Currently, I am interested in several areas. My focus is on the effects of habitat fragmentation on primate behavior and habitat use, but I am also interested in all conservation issues. I will be conducting my dissertation fieldwork in the Neotropics at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project just north of Manaus, Brazil.

sanstapetum@yahoo.com

Krystin Mallon Andrews

kmallona@tulane.edu

Natalia Mauricio

nat_mauricio@hotmail.com

Jayur Mehta

jmehta@tulane.edu

Matthew Moriarty
I received my B.A. in history and anthropology from Amherst College and I am currently engaged in the preparation of my Ph.D. dissertation. My dissertation is focused on the ancient Maya center of Trinidad de Nosotros, a port site located on the north shore of Guatemala's Lake Petén Itzá. Two seasons of field investigations have revealed Trinidad to be a small, but complex center with a history of occupation extending from ca. 800 BC up to the present day. Trinidad's local importance was probably greatest during the Late Classic period (ca. AD 550 – 850) when it served as the principal port and gateway to the nearby political capital of Motul de San José. My research examines the structure of economic transactions between these two centers and the nature of politically and ritually charged activities at Trinidad as a means of assessing various models for ancient Maya political economy. My broader research interests include settlement patterns, port studies, ceramic analyses, obsidian trade, ethnoarchaeology, political economy, the ancient Maya ballgame, and archaeological research design.
mmoriar@tulane.edu

Nina Neivens de Estrada

ninaneivens@yahoo.com

Megan O'Connell

Matthew Olson

Evan Parker

Caroline Parris

Erin Patterson

Cristina Pop
cpop@tulane.edu

Dustin Reuther

dreuther@tulane.edu

Kristen Ritchotte-Sardinha

Roberto Rivera

Michael Rodgers

Allen Rutherford

Sarah Saffa

Daniella Santoro

Daniella Santoro is a PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology at Tulane University conducting dissertation field research on local health disparities and narratives of aging amongst senior African American men in New Orleans. The central question of who defines health and how we contextualize conceptions of healthy bodies and communities has brought her to the study of secondline parades, Mardi Gras Indian practices, Afro-Creole expressive culture, healing and performance, dance and movement studies, and other embodied cultural forms. Additional research circulates around questions relating to the intersections of religion and health care in the contemporary United States, organ transplant, and integrative medicine and medical pluralism. Daniella also researches the social history of flamenco and dances in a New Orleans based flamenco company, Micaela y Fiesta Flamenca.

dsantoro@tulane.edu

Michael Saunders

msaunde3@tulane.edu

Valerie Schoof

My research interests center around sexual selection theory; specifically, I am interested in reproductive strategies, mate choice and mating competition of primates (both human and non-human). My doctoral research will focus on the reproductive strategies of male white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus) in Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica. I will be studying male behavior and collecting fecal samples that will be assayed for androgen and cortisol content. I am also hoping to analyze parasite load of the fecal samples to examine the effects of testosterone and cortisol on immunocompetence.

vschoof@tulane.edu

Claire Sheller

clairesheller@gmail.com

Trent Stockton

Archaeological investigations at the Maya site of Xuenkal, Mexico.

tstockto@tulane.edu

Daniel Sullivan

dsulliv@tulane.edu

Rebecca Taylor-Perryman

rtaylorp@tulane.edu

Willem Van Essendelft

Jonathan West

Jessica Wheeler

James Whitaker

Karen Wu

Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli
Archaeology of Central Mexico
nxiuhtec@tulane.edu

Qiaoyun Zhang

zqy@gmail.com

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