SU in Macau.  Dr. Shari Jacobson will be the 2009 program director for Susquehanna University's exchange program with the University of Macau, in Macau, China. Students interested in studying in China for the spring semester of 2008-2009 academic year should contact Dr. Scott Manning, Director of Cross Cultural & Off-Campus Programs.

Frederick Douglass Institute for Academic Excellence's 8th Annual Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference.  The conference, with the theme Globalization, Ethnicity and the Quest for Ancestral Heritage,” was held April 17–18 at Bloomsburg University. Dr. Simona Hill was faculty chair for the “Ethnic and Ancestral Heritage in Culture” session. Anthropology minor Thérèse D’Auria Ryley (’09) presented a paper titled “Islamist Reform Movements in Senegal, Post-colonization to the Present,” based on her study abroad experiences.

Dr. Simona Hill Speaks at Honors Day Luncheon.   Dr. Simona Hill was invited to speak at the Honors Day Luncheon for Alpha Lambda Delta by its Executive Board on April 13. The title of her speech was “Honors, Leadership, and the Cultivation of Diva-ness.”

Research on Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians.  Dr. Shari Jacobson has two paper presentations based on her current sabbatical project on conservative Christians. The first, titled "Secularism, Neoliberalism, and the Protean Shape of Religious Advocacy in Christian America," will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Ethnological Society, held jointly this April with the Society for the Anthropology of North America. The second, titled "Made in the Image of God: Bible-Believing Christians and the Politics of Life," will be presented in May at the annual meeting of the Society for Cultural Anthropology.

Mid-Atlantic Women's Studies Association (MAWSA) 2008 Conference. The MAWSA annual conference was held at Penn State University, Abington College, March 29. MAWSA supports and promotes feminist/womanist teaching, learning, research, and service at all levels of education and serves as a locus of information about the inter-disciplinary field of Women's Studies. The theme for the 2008 conference was “Privilege & Prejudice” and the keynote speaker was Peggy McIntosh. The conference investigated the question: “How do race, gender, class, and other aspects of identity still shape experience?” Susquehanna University's Honors Program underwrote the student essay contest; Sociology and Anthropology students were especially encouraged to submit a paper or otherwise participate in the conference.

Dr. John Bodinger de Uriarte Presents Paper at Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.   John Bodinger de Uriarte, assistant professor of anthropology, presented a paper titled “Crazing the Glass Boxes—Indigeneity, Museums, and the Politics of Representation” as part of the November 29 panel “Thinking Outside the Glass Box: The Legacy of Michael Ames” for the 2007 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, D.C. The paper explores how the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center and the National Museum of the American Indian work to explode and re-imagine the “glass boxes” of museum design and the exhibition of Native collections.

Department Welcomes Anne Marie Houser as Adjunct Instructor of Anthropology Anne Marie Houser is a PhD. student in Cultural Anthropology at Temple University, and has been teaching anthropology, sociology, and women's studies courses for the past five years on campuses including Penn State, Drexel, Rutgers, and Temple Universities. Her courses this semester are Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and Introduction to Women’s Studies. Houser's areas of study embrace issues of race, ethnicity, disability, social policy, and transnationalism. Her dissertation topic focuses on the lived realities of children and adults in the United States with severe skin disorders. Houser has conducted research in both mainstream society and in a camp setting for people with chronic skin disorders; she has been a director of the camp for the past 14 years. Ms. Houser resides locally in Catawissa, with her husband Don (a taxidermist), three daughters (Little Annie, Stevie, and Madison), and three grandsons (Zacri, Riley, and Gaege). Aside from camp, her interests include coaching and playing various sports.

Dr. Andrew Knight Joins Department as Visiting Professor of Sociology Dr. Andrew Knight arrives at Susquehanna University from Michigan State University where he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Food Safety Policy Center. In this capacity, he conducted numerous research projects related to agriculture food safety, and policy, including a representative national and state of Michigan survey on consumers’ perceptions of the food system, and an examination of risk perception and management models. Previously, Dr. Knight was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Sociology and Geography at Arkansas State University, where he taught classes in applied sociology, rural sociology, theory, and introductory sociology. He also spent one year at the University of Maine, Orono as a Thoreau Fellow while finishing his dissertation and taught courses on science & technology and sustainable development. Knight received his PhD. in Rural Sociology from The Pennsylvania State University in 2002. His research has focused primarily on agricultural, technology, environmental, and risk perception issues. While at Susquehanna University, Dr. Knight will teach Principles of Sociology, a special topics course on Rural Sociology (Fall), and a special topics course on Environmental Sociology (Spring). In addition to academic pursuits, Dr. Knight is an avid Penn State Football and Pittsburgh Penguins fan and enjoys cycling, hiking, live music, and movies.