The Department has just heard from Emily Williams '99, who is working for Teach for America in the Mississipi Delta. (Photo below.) "It's been everything I hoped it would be," she reports. "While I do feel prepared by my Soc degree to think and reflect on the social phenomena surrounding me, I was not quite prepared to actually DEAL with them--much less TEACH." Emily encourages Williams students interested in working on a thesis or WSP 99 related to the Mississippi Delta to contact her (emilyjwilliams@hotmail.com). "I'd love to host an ambitious young researcher," she says.
While in Michigan to give a lecture at the U of M, Michael Brown had the pleasure of meeting Sallie Han, Williams '92. She and her husband, Jason Antrosio '92, are living in Ann Arbor while she finishes her doctorate in anthropology and Jason, who has just completed his doctorate in anthropology at Johns Hopkins, continues his research and tests the job market. "If you have any students interested in studying U.S. middle class families," Sallie writes in a followup email message, "please let them know that there are a bunch of people here--including me--who are doing just that at the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life."
Cat Bolten '98, who studied Anthropology at Cambridge last year, has been accepted to the doctoral program in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She also managed to earn a place on the British national kickboxing team, where she acquired skills that will serve her well in academic life . . . As if that weren't enough, Cat reports that upon return to the US in September 2000 she managed snag a project consultancy in Kigali to conduct an evaluation of the UNHCR projects on 'co-existence' of former combatants and refugees in Rwanda. Then early next year she will begin three or four months of research in Ivory Coast on the post-conflict needs of women and girls in Sierra Leone, part of a a joint project sponsored by the World Food Programme and the World Bank.
Paul Ham and Matt Libby, both Class of 1997, stopped by Stetson Hall on their way to meet clients in the North Berkshires, which is having its own Internet boomlet. They have both left their previous jobs to sell software that Paul helped to invented while developing his own web portal, www.yourcompass.com.
Michael Brown ran into Leslie Heald '93 in Williamstown last spring. She is finishing her doctorate in Historic Preservation at the University of Oregon. She recently married Rene Vellanoweth, an archaeologist.
Jennifer Patico '94 is wrapping up her doctorate in Anthropology at NYU. At last year's annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, she presented a paper entitled "Consumption, Comparison, and 'Crisis': Everyday Narratives of Civilization and Progress in Russia." Other anthropologists on or near the job market include Yuet (Adam) Chau '93, who has finished his doctorate at Stanford, and Wendi Haugh '91, who is writing her dissertation at Penn.
Cindy McPherson Frantz '91 recently mentioned to Prof. Peter Just that she has accepted a two-year Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at Amherst College after completing her doctorate in Psychology at U Mass. We're glad that Amherst decided to raise its standards so dramatically by hiring Cindy.
Jane Roper '96 writes to say that she hasn't lost the travel bug despite the demands of her job as an advertising copywriter. When we heard from her, she was just embarking on a three month trip to South America, following in the footsteps of James Orton--but we hope returning safely from Lake Titicaca. (See Student News for the Orton story.)
Finally, Mac Stocco '98, an Astrophysics major at Williams, contacted Bob Jackall to say that he has been accepted into the doctoral program in Sociology at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
