Spring 2006  

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Washington University in
St. Louis

Department of Anthropology

College of Arts & Sciences

Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

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Chair's Letter

We are pleased to provide the first issue of the Washington University Anthropology Newsletter. We have heard from many of you that you feel a strong connection to the department, and we hope this e-newsletter will make it easier for you to find fellow alumni and catch up on news. We have included an Alumni Connection, which lists alumni by state, as well as Class Notes organized by year of graduation. If you are not listed, we hope you will send us your information for subsequent issues. We are always interested in hearing what our alumni are doing with their anthropological training. In this issue, we profile alumna Chris Linden, a 1990 AB graduate of our department who works as an alternative sentencing specialist with the Missouri State Public Defender.

Updates from the department are included in the newsletter, but I want to let you know that Patty Jo Watson, senior archaeologist, long-time faculty member, and former chair, retired in June 2004. We still miss her as a scholar, teacher, and colleague, but she continues to make contributions to old world, new world and to theoretical archaeology from her home in Montana. You will find a letter from Pat by clicking here. Following Pat’s retirement, Professor T.R. Kidder and Assistant Professor Michael Frachetti were hired as new world and old world archaeologists, respectively.

Let me provide a quick overview of our department. We continue to thrive as a strong three-field program with growing linguistics and medical anthropology components. We have 27 tenured and tenure-track faculty members, and we are searching to fill a new junior position in physical anthropology. Our faculty members are active in research around the world, with projects in Europe, East and Central Asia, Africa, Central and South America, the Middle East, and the United States, and they bring the excitement of their research to their teaching. We have 54 students in our graduate program and awarded five PhDs in the past academic year. Our undergraduate program is very large, with 270 majors. Our Medicine and Society program for undergraduates interested in combining anthropology with careers in medicine or public health has 70 students enrolled.

The Department of Anthropology lost its founder and first chair when John W. Bennett, distinguished anthropologist in residence, died February 1, 2005. John had a long and remarkable career as an anthropologist, and he established a separate anthropology department that has continued to prosper since its establishment in 1968. An obituary can be found by clicking here.

This newsletter includes profiles of Robert Sussman, primatologist and senior faculty member, as well as information on Michael Frachetti, old world archaeologist and the newest member of the faculty.

To share the triumphs of our community, we also include notes on faculty, graduate student, and undergraduate student publications, grants, and awards.

Enjoy the newsletter, and please keep in touch. You can reach us by contacting Kathleen Cook at hkcook@artsci.wustl.edu or by returning the card available here as pdf. We hope you will let us know where you are and what you are doing, including any personal news you would like to share with your fellow alumni.

Richard Smith
Ralph E. Morrow Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthroplogy