Department of Anthropology

Anthropology Faculty
Sarah Cunningham, Adjunct Instructor
Celeste Henrickson, Adjunct Instructor
Isidore Lobnibe, Associate Professor
Joan E. Paluzzi, Visiting Assistant Professor
Robin Smith, Professor and Chair

Anthropologists in Other Departments
Misty Weitzel, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice

Isidore Lobnibe
Associate Professor 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/~lobnibei/

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

HSS 209
smithr@wou.edu
503 838 8357

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, Visual Anthropology, 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
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
B.A., OSU 1992 (Anthropology), MAIS, OSU 1998 (Archaeology), Ph.D., University of Alberta 2005 (Bioarcheology)

Office: Maaske Hall
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