Department of Anthropology

(contact Jennifer Anderson )

(contact Sandra Cate )

Sandra Cate, Ph.D. (Lecturer)

Education:
Ph.D. - UC Berkeley, 1999

Interests:
Dr. Cate offers courses in social-cultural anthropology. Her work examines transnationalism and global culture, tourism, consumption and exchange, art in cultural context, folklore, and religion and ritual. She has done fieldwork in Southeast Asia — most recently in Laos — and among Southeast Asian communities in the U.S. and Europe. Her latest book, Making Merit, Making Art: A Thai Buddhist Temple in Wimbledon (2002), is is now available from University of Hawai'i Press.

(contact Soo Choi)

(Contact Chuck Darrah)

Charles N. Darrah, Ph.D. (Professor)

Education:
Ph.D. - Stanford, 1990

Interests:
Dr. Darrah directs our new graduate program in Applied Anthropology and offers graduate and undergraduate courses courses in cultural anthropology, ethnographic methods, and applied anthropology. He is interested in the relationship of technology  and organization to work and skills; industrial ethnography; anthropology of education; and identity and culture in Silicon Valley.  His research on work has resulted in the book, Learning and work: An exploration in industrial ethnography.Since 1991 he has been working with Jan English-Lueck at San Jose State developing the Silicon Valley Cultures Project (SVCP). He is a research affiliate of the Institute for the Future and will be our next departmental chairperson. For more information, visit the homepage for The Silicon Valley Cultures Project. For information on his new book, Busier than Ever, visit our faculty news page.

(contact Jan English-Lueck )

Jan English-Lueck, Ph.D. (Professor)

Education:
Ph.D. - UC, Santa Barbara, 1985

Interests:

Jan English-Lueck received her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, studying social change and community among alternative health practitioners. This research resulted in the book, Health in the New Age: A Study in California Holistic Practices. She went on to investigate visions of the future among science and technology workers in the People's Republic and Hong Kong, resulting in the book Chinese Intellectuals on the World Frontier.

Since 1991 she has been working with Chuck Darrah at San Jose State developing the Silicon Valley Cultures Project (SVCP). In the course of this research, she has investigated information technologies in the homespace and workplace, and the complex dance of work, home and community life in Silicon Valley and other global technopols. Her new book,  Cultures@SiliconValley is now available. She is a research affiliate of the Institute for the Future. For more information, visit her faculty homepage or the homepage for The Silicon Valley Cultures Project. For information on her new book, Busier than Ever, visit our faculty news page.

(contact Karen Fjelstad)

Karen Fjelstad, Ph.D. (Lecturer)

Education:
Ph.D. - University of Hawaii, 1995

Interests:
Karen is a cultural anthropologist with interests in gender, religion, and cross-cultural psychiatry. She teaches courses in Culture and Personality and the Emerging Global Culture.

Karen has studied spirit possession among Vietnamese-Americans in Silicon Valley and Vietnamese in Hanoi. Karen has been working with Aid to Children Without Parents, an organization which helps disadvantaged children in Vietnam. Her most recent project was to help build an elementary school in Dam Sam hamlet, central Vietnam.

(contact Roberto Gonzalez)

Roberto Gonzalez, Ph.D. (Associate Professor)

Education:
Ph.D. - UC, Berkeley 1998

Interests:
Roberto Gonzalez is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work focuses upon the relationship between humans and their environment; science, technology, and society; militarism and culture; and anthropological ethics. He has conducted ethnographic research in Latin America and the United States. Professor Gonzalez teaches a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses on anthropological theory and methods, social and cultural controls, global processes, and economic anthropology. He has published many articles in academic journals, newspapers, and other periodicals. Professor Gonzalez has also published three books: Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (2001), Anthropologists in the Public Sphere: Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power (2004), and American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (2009).

(Contact Jonathan Karpf)

Jonathan Karpf (Lecturer)

Education:
ABD - UC, Berkeley, 1980

Interests:
Jonathan Karpf offers courses in physical anthropology, human and non-human primate behavior and evolution, human heredity, new and old world archaeology, and human sexuality. His research interests include human evolution, the biological basis of behavior, non-human primate behavior and ecology, and the use of forensic anthropology to promote human rights, especially in Guatemala. He also teaches an innovative new, hands-on course in the Archaeology of Metals (ANTH 187).

(contact Mark McCoy )

Mark D. McCoy, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor)

Education:
Ph.D. - UC Berkeley, 2006

Interests:

Mark D. McCoy is an archaeologist who studies the development of complex, hierarchical societies on Pacific islands, especially the Hawaiian Islands. His research interests include social landscapes, agriculture, and paleodemography, and his methodological expertise is in the use of spatial technology, digital archaeology, and lithic analysis.

Dr. McCoy received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He has chaired sessions at meetings of the Society for American Archaeology and the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology and presented, or co-authored presentations, for meetings of the American Anthropology Association and International Congress of Easter Island and Pacific Studies. Papers on his research have appeared in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Geoarchaeology, and the Journal of the Polynesian Society and he has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Arizona Memorial Museum Association. For more information visit his homepage.

(contact Marco Meniketti)

Marco Meniketti's Faculty Webpage

Marco Meniketti, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor)

Education:
Ph.D. - Michigan State University, 2004

Interests:
Marco Meniketti is an Anthropological Archaeologist with scholarly training in Historical, Industrial and Nautical archaeology. He has broad interests ranging from the age of exploration to colonial and industrial development, which he approaches from world-systems perspective. His focus is on diasporic populations and identity formation among marginalized communities, particularly in the Caribbean. Current projects include investigation of maritime slave communities and the ethnicity of exploration.

For more about Dr. Meniketti visit his Caribbean Historical Archaeology website.

(contact Carol Mukhapadyay)

Mukhopadyay, Carol (Professor)

Education:

Ph.D - University Riverside, 1980

Interests:

Dr. Mukhopadhyay offered courses in gender and culture, human sexuality, language and culture, theory, and methodology. Her research interests include sexual division of labor (in households, occupations and science and technology); folk theories of gender; and multicultural education. She has recently completed The Cultural Context of Gendered Science: the case of India, a report on the gender gap in science education in India funded by the National Science Foundation. Read her article:
A Feminist Cognitive Anthropology: The Case of Women and Mathematics

(Contact Tracey O'Rourke)

Tracey O'Rourke (Lecturer)

Education:

Ph.D - University of Michigan, 1994

Interests:

Dr. O'Rourke is a physical anthropologist with an emphasis in Paleoanthropology.  She is particularly interested in archaic and modern humans and the question of Modern Human Origins.  Her research has included work on everything from Eocene primates to modern humans with an overriding question about variation and how it is interpreted.

(contact Lorna Pierce)

Lorna Pierce ( Lecturer)

Education:
Ph.D. - University of Tennessee, 1987

Interests:
Dr. Pierce is a physical anthropologist who specializes in skeletal biology, paleopathology, and forensic anthropology. Her current research in human osteology focuses on the epidemiology of pathological lesions in prehistoric populations and the determination of biological heritage in modern skeletal remains.

(contact William Reckmeyer)

William Reckmeyer Faculty Website

William Reckmeyer, Ph.D. (Professor)

Education:
Ph.D. (Russian Studies) - American University, 1982; post-doctoral studies (Leadership) - Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Interests:
Dr. Reckmeyer is a systems scientist/cybernetician who offers undergraduate and graduate courses in leadership, global affairs, national strategy, and systems science.  His work as a scholar and practitioner has primarily focused on using collaborative systems approaches to develop more integrative solutions for complex strategic, organizational, and technological challenges.  This has included more than thirty multi-year applied projects (strategic planning efforts, policy studies, leadership development programs, scientific research, etc) for academic, government, corporate, non-profit, and philanthropic clients in the United States and Europe. 

Bill currently serves as Faculty Chair of the International Study Program in Global Citizenship at the Salzburg Global Seminar, Strategic Advisor & Core Faculty Member with the CA Agricultural Leadership Foundation, and Strategic Advisor to the CA Levees Roundtable.  He has also served as Chief Systems Scientist for the Systems of Systems Center of Excellence (2003-2006) and as a Visiting Professor or Fellow at more than a dozen major universities in the United States and abroad – including Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (2005-2006), University of Maryland’s Burns Academy of Leadership (2000-2005); Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education (1993-1999), and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology’s PhD Program in Systems Science (1986-1993).  A former President of the American Society for Cybernetics (1983-1985), Bill was a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow (1988-1992) and has been a Salzburg Fellow several times (1995-2004).

(contact Guadalupe Salazar)

Guadalupe Salazar, Ph.D (Assistant Professor)

Education:

Ph.D. - UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley, 2004

Interests:

Dr. Salazar teaches courses in medical anthropology, Latin America, Urban Anthropology, culture & conflict, childhood & youth, violence, and social suffering. Her current research projects explore the lived experience of street children in Chile and quality of life among children and adolescents with stigmatizing chronic illness.

(contact Robert Simpkins)

Robert Simpkin's Faculty Webpage

Robert Simpkins (Lecturer)

Education:
MA, Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1995
ABD, Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison 2005

Interests:
Robert Simpkins is by training an Archaeologist, but tries his best to maintain a traditional four-fields approach in his research and teaching. His major geographic area of specialization is South Asia, and his topics of research include complex social organization and the development of urbanism and long-distance trade networks, architecture and social landscapes, and writing systems and visual communication.

Robert has conducted fieldwork in Asia and North America, including four years with the Harappa Archaeological Research Project and two field seasons excavating at the Bronze Age city of Harappa, Pakistan, and five years with the Office of the State Archaeologist at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. His current research project examines the growth and expansion of the Qutb Shahi Dynastic State, a lineage of rulers that controlled a large part of the eastern Deccan of South India from their capitals of Golconda and Hyderabad in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Qutb Shahis were famous around the world for their diamond and pearl markets, beautiful architecture and gardens, but are largely unknown to American audiences.

(contact Elizabeth Weiss)

Elizabeth Weiss's Faculty Webpage

Elizabeth Weiss, Ph.D., (Assistant Professor)

Education:

Dr. Weiss completed her B.A. in anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996 and finished her M.A. in anthropology from California State University, Sacramento in 1998. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in Environmental Dynamics (an interdisciplinary program involving anthropology and the geosciences), which she completed in 2001. From 2002 to 2004, she was a post-doctoral research associate at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Interests:
Elizabeth Weiss is an assistant professor in the Anthropology Department who is teaching physical anthropology courses, such as osteology, introduction to human evolution, and forensics. Her primary research expertise is in post-cranial studies using CT scans, X-rays, and metrics on past populations to reconstruct lifestyles and better understand bone biology.

For a list of publications, conference presentations, and her curriculum vitae, please visit Elizabeth Weiss's personal home page: http://www.anthrosciences.com.

(contact Kathleen Zaretsky)

Kathleen Zaretsky (Lecturer)

Education:
ABD - UC, Berkeley, 1972

Interests:
Kathleen Zaretsky teaches courses in cultural anthropology, culture and conflict, film, human development, and human sexuality. Her research interests include indigenous peoples' movements, utopian communities, gender and sexuality, India, and Guatemala.