Department of Anthropology

Isidore Lobnibe, Assistant Professor and Chair
Robin Smith, Professor
Misty Weitzel, Adjunct Assistant Professor

Isidore Lobnibe
Assistant Professor and Head of Anthropology
Ph.D., Univerisity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 2007 (Anthropology)
M.A., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 2002 (Anthropology)
B.A. Diploma of Education, University of Cape Coast 1995

HSS 210B
lobnibei@wou.edu
503 838 8306

Research: I am a Socio-cultural anthropologist trained in the historical tradition, specializing in Ghana/ West Africa. My research interests include the peasant economy; agrarian and environmental systems, labor migration, political economy, social organization, historiography, popular culture and the Black diaspora. I conducted my most recent field research among northern Ghanaian migrant farmers in villages of south-central Ghana, which resulted in my doctoral dissertation. I had earlier also participated in several anthropological projects on Dagara settlement history and earthshine boundaries in northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso under the direction of Professor Carola Lentz. Currently, I am embarking on a major research project on the ethnography of prison farms and labor in Ghana.

Teaching: the courses I teach are Cultural Anthropology, Transnational Migration, Africa, Africa through Film, and Ethnographic Methods. I am also developing a course in Transnational Islam in Europe and the US.

Web site: http://www.wou.edu/~lobnibi/

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Robin Smith
Professor
Ph.D., University of Florida 1982 (Anthropology)

HSS 209
smithr@wou.edu
503 838 8357

On leaveWinter Quarter 2012

Research: I am a North American archaeologist with interests in both prehistoric and historic period cultures. I have worked at sites in the Southeast ranging from the Late Archaic and Contact eras to the Spanish Colonial, Seminole War and Plantation periods. In Oregon I have dug in the Cascades, Willamette Valley and Coast regions at Native American and Euro-American sites. I enjoy initiating students in the methods of scientific discovery and the joys and challenges of teamwork. My courses are primarily related to archaeology but include a number of other interests, including how humans evolved and gender as the fundamental organizing principle in human societies. Currently I am pursuing opportunities to increase my knowledge of past and present cultures of Canada.

Teaching: Physical Anthropology, Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology, World Prehistory, Human Evolution, North American Prehistory, Mothers and Daughters, Research Methods in Archaeology, Laboratory Methods in Archaeology, Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Women Anthropologists, Field Methods in Archaeology, History and Theory of Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Northwest Indian Cultures, and Indian America.

Website: http://www.wou.edu/~smithr/

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Misty Weitzel
Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.A., OSU 1992 (Anthropology), MAIS, OSU 1998 (Archaeology), Ph.D., University of Alberta 2005 (Bioarcheology)

Office: HSS 223
weitzelm@onid.orst.edu
503 838 8520

Research: My research is in the field of bioarchaeology. I am interested in combining aspects of physical anthropology and archaeology, specifically the excavation and analysis of human remains in both archaeological and forensic contexts. I am primarily concerned with human taphonomy or all of the environmental and cultural process that influence humans from the time of death to the time of recovery. I have studied these processes at an early Bronze Age cemetery in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia. Currently, I am developing replication experiments in taphonomy in which domestic pigs are used as human analogues as well as analyzing bone from a Bronze Age cemetery in Cyprus.

Teaching: I teach Archaeology at WOU. My other teaching interests are: Osteology, Osteoarchaeology, Mortuary Archaeology, Forensic Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Biological and Cultural Constructions of Race

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Contact

Department of Anthropology 503-838-8357 | or e-mail: smithr@wou.edu