Museums field trip, Medical anthro, CAPA room, IUN Party reminder, spring advising



We have scheduled a two day field trip over Spring Break (Thurs Fri Mar 18 & 19)

to two museums in southern Illinois.

We will be going to Dickson Mounds museum, where there once were native burials

exposed for the public to see, but there is a large museum and still very much to see now -- we hope to get a behind the scenes tour. For more info, visit

 http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismsites/dickson/homepage.htm

After staying overnight we will visit the Cahokia Mounds site

and museum; dozens of Mississippian era mounds still exist there; the tallest is Monks

Mound, which is about 100 feet high and a thousand feet long. Visit

http://medicine.wustl.edu/~mckinney/cahokia/cahokia.html

This field trip is being offered as a one credit hour class ANTH E300 (a paper about the

museums is required), and we have reserved the Student Life mini-bus for transportation.

Costs will involve a motel room for a night (share if you want), meals, a contribution for the cost of the bus (estimate $30), and admission to the Cahokia museum (we will try to get discounted admissions). It is my understanding that the Anthropology Club may help out here and pick up part of the tab, but no official vote has been taken.

Priority on the bus goes to students who register for this as a class, but anyone can come along who is not registered, but you might have to car pool it. I am sure there will be a 'smokers' car at least, lol.


Medical anthropology website and course:

Students have asked about the spring IUN medical anthropology course, eg what is it, how is it different from the Bioanthropology course, etc. Best way is to visit the huge website that the late Clarke Johnson created and which is both a self learning source and a part of the course itself. go to http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/indexmedicalanthropology.htm

An old syllabus is at http://www.iun.edu/%7Eanthronw/MedicalAnthropSyllabusCJ1999.htm

and the detailed description is:

A200/E445 MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (Also offered as Sociology S362)

Course Objectives: to understand the relationship between health, culture, and disease;

to examine other biomedical traditions in the understanding and treatment of disease;

and to explore biocultural approaches to contemporary health problems.

SPECIAL TOPICS: Non-Western medicine, homeopathic systems of curing,

shamanism and witchcraft, culture-bound syndromes, ethnopharmacology,

ethnopsychiatry, the relationship between stress and the immune system,

biocultural epidemiology, origins of epidemic diseases, and the critical anthropology

of health during sociocultural change. The co-evolution of human culture, human biology, and disease will also be reviewed. This course is intended for students in anthropology, psychology, human biology, sociology, and health care professions; it seeks to interrelate behavioral science, health science, and the humanities. More detailed information and course content can be found at the course Web Site. A & S Group IIIB social science credit. E445 carries graduate credit for some Master's degrees. Instructor: Christine Malcom


The Bioanthropology course is quite different, iit is more like an intensive version of certain parts of the A105 Human Origins course, and deals with human biology and anatomy; the description is B200/B400 BIOANTHROPOLOGY/BIOANTHROPOLOGY & FORENSICS An intensive but broad course in human evolutionary biology. Topics include the basics of: forensic anthropology (including aging and sexing the skeleton), human anatomy and dentition, growth and development (including the process of twinning), genetics, evolution (in both theory and fossil analysis), biomechanics (including bipedalism and chewing), and human variation (especially that variation we sometimes call "race"). Related non-human topics include mammal/reptile differences, primate comparative functional anatomy, and the adaptive radiation of mammals. Course has a required "hands on the specimens" lab section B201.

B400 allows students to also study more forensics in additional lab projects.

A & S Group IIIA natural science credit. Instructor: Bob Mucci,. Sample syllabus at

http://www.iun.edu/%7Eanthronw/B200syllabus.htm


Other courses: we also have two archaeology courses: Intro at the Portage site on Thursday nights, taught by Marisa Fontana, who was a guest speaker last semester and who took two IUN students on her dig during the summer, and an Indians Before Columbus course on campus taught by our very own Dr Mik Stokely on MW afternoons.


If you have not registered for classes yet, please do so this week, as advance registration closes at 5 pm Fri Dec 19, and you will have to wait until January and get in lines at IUN. You can add/drop classes this week for free, it will cost $$ in January. Register on line at: http://regweb.indiana.edu/

I can do advising for anthropology students via email, just respond to this newsletter with your student ID #, and I will be on campus Tuesday all day except for a 2:30 to 4 pm A105 review session.



The announcement I sent out earlier for the CAPA meeting for tomorrow had no room number, so here it is again:

The next CAPA meeting will be on Sunday Dec 14, from 3-5. The meeting room is in the SAC Building on Kenmore, room 270. You enter in the same entrance as if you were going to  Levan. However, instead of going left into Levan you would go straight ahead. There are stairs and escalators in the center.

Here is the site for the campus map: http://www.depaul.edu/maps/lpc/

The discussion for this meeting will be in a round table fashion, so we welcome everyone to participate and bring ideas, examples, problems, and solutions regarding the topic, which will be:

 Methods Round Table (Qualitative and Quantitative)

    Most ethnographic projects include in their scope

    relevant quantitative data, like ages, how many times

    people have done a certain activity, the census data

    of the geographic area, and much more. How do you

    manage the resulting mass of qualitative and

    quantitative information? What works for you, and what

    problems have you run into? Are there software

    applications that you use?

    This meeting will be an open discussion and forum for

    sharing ideas. We would like to encourage people to

    bring examples or visuals from projects to aid in the

    discussion if possible. We will be inviting several

    people with experience in different aspects of

    qualitative / quantitative information synthesis

    methods to discuss their experiences.

    I look forward to seeing you all on Sunday.

    Michael

    Michael Chapman

    Executive Director

    Ethnographic Research

    MindSPARK Consulting LLC

    http://www.mindsparkconsulting.com

T: 773.989.9281

F: 312.873.3714

michael@mindsparkconsulting.com


PARTY

The IUN sociology & anthropology department holiday party will be held on the

evening of Saturday December 20, 2003 at IUN professor Jack Bloom's

house near Valparaiso; we expect a large crowd. All students, former

students, staff and faculty with any connection to the clubs or department

are invited to join us. It's a great opportunity to meet and talk with other

people who are interested in the same things as you are. Come any time

after 7 pm, and we expect to go late; families are most welcome.

It's pot luck, so please bring a dish or chips or soda to share;

ethnic dishes and snacks are encouraged. BYOB if you're 21

and also bring a designated driver.

Address is 189W150N, phone is 219-477-5740.

Driving directions: From the interchange of I-65 & US 30 in

Merrillville, go east on US 30 a little over 10 miles to the stoplight of

N250W (first light after passing Sherwood Forest);

go south on N250W less that a half mile to W150N

(also known as Horn Rd) and go east a half mile.

Soon after the stop sign, look for a big red brick house on

a hill on the north side of road; Jack's house is the next one to the

east and marked by a sign "Black Belt Blvd".

  If you are coming from I-80, you can also go south on Indiana 49

to US 30 west and go 3 miles to Hayes-Leonard Street south,

then west on 150N to the Black Belt Blvd driveway.

If the driveway is full, park on the grass where you see other cars.

Note: Mapquest and other internet maps

give the wrong location for the address; the correct map is found by typing

in 189 W Horn Road Valparaiso Indiana, even though there are no signs

calling 150N by the name of Horn Road, lol.

please come to the party, and invite your students.


--

Bob Mucci

Associate Professor and Coordinator of Anthropology

Indiana University Northwest

3400 Broadway, Gary IN 46408

219-980-6607


RMucci@iun.edu


http://www.iun.edu/~anthronw



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