Issue No. 1--Fall 1998

WELCOME!    After many years of thinking about a newsletter for our expanding network of Anthropology and Sociology alumni, as well as for other alums who have worked closely with individual members of the department, we've decided to take the leap via the World Wide Web.  The Web will allow us to update our documents more frequently and to include links to ongoing projects here at Williams and elsewhere.  We hope that it brings you a little closer to Williams classmates, faculty, and the constantly changing worlds of our two disciplines. To that end, we look forward to hearing your news--where you've been and what you've done since graduation.  (Snapshots are always welcome; pre-scanned photos in GIF or JPEG formats are even better.)  We'll do our best to see that the information is posted here in a timely fashion.

Williams ANSO today. The department now has seven regular faculty members.  (For the homepages of current staff, click here.)  After two centuries of reflection, the College finally decided to add archaeology to the curriculum, which it did in the person of Prof. Antonia Foias.  Antonia, whose principal interest is Maya civilization, has worked for many years in the Peten rainforest of Guatemala, and in the summer of 1998 she undertook her second season of fieldwork with Williams students.   (For a brief description of this year's field season, click the glyph below.)

Hired the same year as Antonia was James L.Nolan, Jr., a sociologist trained at the University of Virginia.  Jim teaches courses related to American law and politics, technology and society, and sociological theory.   He's also been prolific on the writing front: NYU Press has just published his book The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century's End.  Although academic reviews of the book are not yet available, it was singled out for praise by Francis Fukuyama in the Summer 1998 issue of the journal The Public Interest.

Other members of the department have been equally busy over the last three years, having published six books with major university presses and many essays in professional journals and edited volumes.  Several have grappled with controversial topics.  Robert Jackall's just-published Wild Cowboys: Urban Marauders and the Forces of Order, has earned praise as well as criticism for its unvarnished description of the circumstances that led to the capture and conviction of members of a notorious New York drug gang.  His unsentimental portrait of American judicial process seems to have touched a raw nerve in some quarters.  Michael Brown's ethnographic study of the New Age, The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age, has also irked some reviewers because of Brown's decision to focus on the social meaning of New Age practices rather on their truth value or plausibility.

Reviews of Brown's and Jackall's books can be found by clicking on their names, which will take you to Harvard University Press, publisher of both titles. Alternatively, you can scan reviews at Amazon.com--where, incidentally, Paul Ham '97 (paulh@amazon.com), a Sociology graduate, is inventing the future of American retail.  Omni Magazine's online interview of Michael Brown, which discusses his book, can be accessed by clicking here.

Other recent books: Jean Bacon published Life Lines: Community, Family, and Assimilation among Asian Indian Immigrants (Oxford, 1996), based on her ethnographic study of Indian immigrants in the Chicago area; David Edwards saw the release of the first volume of his multi-volume series on Afghan history and culture, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier (U. California, 1996); and Jim Nolan saw the re-issue in paper of his edited volume The American Culture Wars: Current Contests & Future Prospects (U Virginia, 1996).


--Covers of some books recently published by ANSO faculty--

New projects.  Bob Jackall continues to work on two books, one a continuation of his research on homicide detectives in New York, the other an analysis (in which he collaborates with his wife, Janice Hirota, an anthropologist) of advertising and public-relations tentatively entitled Experts with Symbols.  Jean Bacon is writing up the results of her recent twelve-month research visit to India as a Fulbright Fellow. 

Peter Just is co-authoring an introduction to sociocultural anthropology with John Monahan of Vanderbilt University, and they expect Oxford University Press to publish the book by Fall 1999.  David Edwards is spending the '98-99 academic year as an NEH Fellow at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is working on the next volume of his Afghan trilogy.  Jim Nolan reports that he's made significant headway on his third book, tentatively called Reinventing Justice: Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Drug Court Movement, which is based on his study of American drug courts (a therapeutic alternative to incarceration for those convicted of drug use and possession) and their social significance.

Finally, Michael Brown (when he's not clumsily coding HTML documents like this one) is moving forward with a new book on the future of cultural property.  This past summer, he made a research trip to Wyoming, where he interviewed people involved in negotiations about the care of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel and Devils Tower National Monument, places of religious significance to many American Indian groups of the Plains and Rocky Mountain region.

Big Horn Medicine Wheel, Wyoming; general view of site (M. F. Brown)

Big Horn Medicine Wheel; religious offerings left by Native Americans (M.F. Brown)
 
For additional photos from Brown's research trip, click here.
 

Curricular initiatives.  Members of the department are offering a host of new courses this year.  For readers who graduated some years ago, of course, all of Prof. Foias's archaeology courses will be new.  Since joining us, she's been able to offer such courses as "The Rise and Fall of Civilizations," "Pyramids, Bones, and Shards: What is Archaeology?", and "Mesoamerican Civilizations."  Last year Jim Nolan taught a new course on the sociology of law and this year will offer the courses "Technology and Modern Society" and "Drugs and Society." 

Bob Jackall is developing a new course called "Following the Leader: Charisma, Tradition, and Bureaucracy," part of a new cluster of inter-disciplinary courses related to leadership.  Jean Bacon is offering a new entry-level course on race relations that will emphasize basic academic skills, including writing and public speaking.  Her course is part of a new college-wide Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills Initiative.  Finally, Peter Just will again co-teach a course called "Sacred Geographies" with Bill Darrow in the Religion Department.  Several of the department's courses--among them, Prof. Foias's introduction to archaeology and Prof. Jackall's "Crime in the Streets"--are so popular that the department can scarcely meet student demand.

Alumni news.   Despite the difficult state of the academic job market, a surprising number of Williams grads have managed to snag good positions after completing their graduate work in Anthropology or Sociology  We've recently learned that Laura Ahearn '82 and Melissa Johnson '84 have completed their PhDs in anthropology and taken positions at the University of South Carolina and Southwestern University, respectively.  Late last fall, Michael Brown ran into Anne Lewinson '87, one of the department's first official anthropology majors, who recently married and is winding up her graduate work in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.   Cindy McPherson (now Franz) '91 recently had her second child and is continuing her graduate work in social psychology at UMass.   Her classmate, Wendi Haugh '91 is going great guns on her doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently doing fieldwork in Botswana.  On a lecture trip to California, Brown was delighted to see Cathy Clayton '88, who is in the final stages of her doctoral work in anthropology at UC-Santa Cruz.

Not all of our graduates are anthropology and sociology wonks: many are making their mark in other fields, from business to the arts.  William Aprill '90 is a practicing psychotherapist in New Orleans.   Luisa Rios '97 has entered the Wagner School of Public Affairs in NYC.  Rick Fearon '88 received his MBA from Wharton several years ago and is doubtless putting his training to good work in the world of venture capital.  Many of you have read about the success of Bo Peabody '94, who heads the Internet startup Tripod.com, one of the Web's busiest intersections, which was recently acquired by the firm Lycos. If we haven't mentioned you and your accomplishments (or if we have, but erred on the facts), please contact us.  We'll post your communiques, manifestos, and photographs in the next installment of ANSO News, which should be ready for the Web early in 1999.   Who knows?  By then we may be able to build sound and video into this site!