The UConn Department of Anthropology would like to congratulate Luke Anderson, Daniel McCloskey, and Srishti Sadhir on being accepted to the 2019 University Scholars program for undergraduate students at the University of Connecticut. The University Scholar program is a competitive program that allows for undergraduate students to design and build an in-depth study surrounding projects relating to their individual interests. Students work with faculty members in order to create innovative project ideas that have a global impact.
Luke Anderson created a project titled “Cultural Food Habits as a Social Factor of Health Among Iraqi Migrants in New Haven, Connecticut: A Focused Ethnographic Study”. He states that health disparities in diet-related diseases are well documented in refugee and immigrant populations across areas in the Western world where they have been resettled, but efforts to improve health outcomes and nutrition in these populations often lack a focus on culture. Luke’s project plans work with local immigrants to relate their perceptions of the nutrition of the food they eat to how this food is grounded in their cultural identity.
Daniel McCloskey centered his project around the concept of gender in regards to fraternity men. His project, titled “Brothers as Men: Masculinity, Homosociality, and Men’s Violence among Fraternity Men” will focus on engaging fraternity men about their constructions of masculinity and how it affects their behavior. He plans to use this information to critique and test both Connell’s Hegemonic Masculinity Theory and Anderson’s Inclusive Masculinities Theory, as well as connect with both ideas of homosociality and views of sexual violence.
Srishti Sadhir is an undergraduate Anthropology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology double major who works closely with the Zooarchaeology lab here in the department. Her project, titled “An Archaeological Study of Human Hunting Adaptations to Climate Change at Wadi Madamagh, Jordan” will analyze human adaptations to climate change at the archaeological site of Wadi Madamagh in Jordan during the Last Glacial Maximum. By examining the faunal assemblage at this site, which spans the Late Upper Paleolithic to Early Epipaleolithic periods (25,000-18,000 years ago), the assemblage may be associated with significant changes in foraging efficiency.
More information about their work can be found at: https://universityscholars.uconn.edu/