Faculty News, Spring 2000

Anthropology & Sociology faculty, 1999-2000. Left to right: Carolyn Hsu, David Edwards, Gilbert Tostevin, Peter Just, Gilliane Monnier, Michael Brown, Robert Jackall. Missing: Jean Bacon.

Recent issues of the Williams Record have included profiles of various members of the department and their classes. Bob Jackall's new course on violence was covered in March. Michael Brown was the subject of a faculty profile in January. Brown (pictured to left engaged in ethnographic observation of the non-participant variety at the Hash Bash, Ann Arbor's notorious annual celebration of altered states) was also mentioned in the The University of Michigan's University Record for his contribution to a round-table discussion at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnobiology in March.
Members of the department continue to be active on the publishing front. Peter Just recently co-authored Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford U Press) and expects to see Dou Donggo Justice in print before year's end.
Bob Jackall and his wife Janice Hirota, an anthropologist, will see Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advertising (U Chicago Press) in bookstores this summer. Jim Nolan and Dave Edwards are awaiting publication of new books at Princeton University Press and the University of California Press, respectively.

Counting titles already published or in production, and excluding series editorships, the lifetime publication record of the seven regular members of ANSO now stands at 19 books--remarkable productivity for a liberal-arts college or even for a major research university.

Antonia Foias will be excavating in the Peten region of Guatemala during the final semester of her sabbatical leave, Fall 2000. Her research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, will explore economic relations in the Classic Maya period.
Jean Bacon continues her applied research in the North Berkshires. Among other projects, she is undertaking, with support from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, a study of the quality of medical care provided to uninsured patients. She is also studying substance-abuse prevention strategies in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Health.
Jim Nolan, who returns from his Fulbright year at the University of Loughborough this summer, will spend the fall at the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences completing his current project on the drug-court movement in the UK and the US.
Members of the department are supervising the summer research of several Williams students thanks to a new program funded by the Dean of the Faculty. These projects range from field research on court proceedings in West Africa to a study of anti-gang policing tactics in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Judith Locke, who has long taught the successful Winter Study Period course Anthropology & Sociology 012 "Children and the Courts," was recently named an associate justice of the Juvenile Court, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Despite her new responsibilities, she plans to offer the WSP course again in January 2001.
Carolyn Hsu, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology in 1999-2000, has accepted a job at Colgate University. Gilbert Tostevin and Gilliane Monnier, both Visiting Assistant Professors of Anthropology, will continue at Williams for an additional year.