Anthropology Spotlight

CU Denver faculty, staff and students are invited to CU’s 2021 Cannabis and Psychedelic Symposium Saturday April 17, via Zoom . Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology Marty Otañez, the opening plenary speaker, will present “Transformative Cannabis: Exploring Ways to Unite Cannabis Consumers, Weed Workers and Multi-State Operators.” The virtual...

Michael Kilman, Instructor in the anthropology department, along with anthropologist Kyra Wellstrom recently published the book Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers . The book features core concepts of real cultures to help readers understand how cultural systems work. What makes cultures...

Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities , edited by Associate Professor of Anthropology Christopher Beekman (with M. Charlotte Arnauld and Grégory Pereira) is the first focused, book-length discussion of migration in central Mexico, west Mexico and the Maya region. Looking beyond the conceptual dichotomy of sedentism versus mobility, the...

In November 2020, Marty Otañez, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Jassy Grewal, a legislative advocate with the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council, published "Health and Safety in the Legal Cannabis Industry Before and During COVID-19" in New Solutions : A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy...

Associate Professor of Anthropology Marty Otañez was featured in the podcast episode Cannabis Workers' Rights and Social Responsibility , produced by Cannabis Science Today. The podcast covers how to build a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable cannabis industry, and avoid the pitfalls of Big Tobacco. Otañez shares his research on...

Associate Professor of Anthropology (Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow and Montgomery Fellow) Charles Musiba was a panelist for an online conversation from the Denver Museum of Nature and Sciences called COVID-19—Social Distancing and the Origin of Human Sociality. Musiba joined Curator of Arachnology and Evolutionary Biologist Paula Cushing to discuss why...

Jamie Hodgkins, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, recently had a paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews . Archaeology has shown that South Africa was critical to the evolution of our species (Homo sapiens) during the Pleistocene. The now-submerged continental shelf formed its own ecosystem, the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP), where early humans...

Convo from the Couch is a new program hosted online by Colorado State Senator Kerry Donovan. On Wednesday, April 22, Christopher S. Beekman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, talked about his project, “Lessons on migration from archaeology: a project by the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis.” The series gets the community together...

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Christine Sargent is the Spring 2020 American Center of Oriental Research-NEH fellow . During her ACOR fellowship, Sargent will be working on her first ethnographic monograph, which is based on her Ph.D. dissertation. While at ACOR this spring, Sargent will continue visiting familiar faces from her...

Charles M. Musiba, Associate Professor of Anthropology, recently received the Montgomery Fellowship in Residence. Other prominent fellows of the program include Richard Leakey, Steven Jay Gould, Nobel Peace winner Wangari Maathai, former President Gerald Ford, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Toni Morrison, and Yo-Yo Ma. Musiba will be taking residence in the...