Current Issue: 2025

From the Desk of the Editor: Dr. Sara Withers

The 2024-2025 academic year has been one where our students addressed the role and impact of anthropology in the world—not just in academic settings, but the ways in which the discipline of anthropology can lead the way in creating a more equitable and just way of representing and supporting communities and people in the real world. Below, you will find wide-ranging examples of the exceptional work our students do, in academic settings from introductory-level Honors courses to the culminating capstone course for our majors. The authors have submitted ethnography reviews, course projects, conference posters and presentations, and multi-semester independent research projects. Their areas of focus range from the lives of migrant farm workers to medieval brooches, and from mummies to missing persons’ cases and unsolved murders. Despite the wide-ranging topics, there are clear threads running through these works—through-lines of thought that indicate what our students have come to know as a core part of their field of study. In short, anthropology is the study of humankind—past, present, and future—and therefore the discipline’s theories and methods can be wielded not just to provide us with a greater understanding of the diversity of human experience, but perhaps even more importantly, based on deep historical, cultural, and practical knowledge, to advocate for positive change within the discipline and in the world around us.

The cover art for this year’s issue, Anterior Anatomical Drawing of a Skull, was created by Harriet Pearce and inspired by her work in Dr. Samantha Crane’s ANTH 660: Human Osteology.

Section I features work by four students from Dr. Amy Michael’s Spring 2025 ANTH 797: Race and Racism in Biological Anthropology. This collection of research papers represents these students' semester-long research into—and critical analysis of—major themes related to the history of the field of biological anthropology: American anthropologists' engagement with the eugenics movement, the intersection of biological anthropology and the "human zoos" of the World's Fairs, the racialized history of early forensic anthropology research and methods, repatriation efforts and restorative justice in skeletal collections, and contemporary approaches to reckoning with the harmful past of our field. Gloria Bonham, in Progression of World’s Fairs and the Anthropological and Social Impact it Holds, explores the meanings and functions of World’s Fairs over time, and also evaluates the complicated legacy of anthropology’s role in the representation of cultures at these sites. As Bonham points out, these questions of observation, representation, and public exhibition are not only complex, but are ones that the discipline still grapples with. Keelan Coronati gives readers a personal and detailed historical explanation of the tangled relationship between anthropology and the field of eugenics in Heredity vs. Environment: Anthropology in Relationship to Eugenics. Through this nuanced discussion, Coronati goes far in convincing readers that eugenics is not a thing of the past, but a theory whose dangers persist in today’s world, and is therefore worthy of our engagement. In the third essay in this section, Theresa Iafolla explores the different ways in which the media reports on missing persons, particularly addressing issues of race- and class-based biases in this reporting. In Missing White Woman Syndrome: Racial Bias in Media, Law Enforcement, and Forensics, Iafolla analyzes the notion of “missing white woman syndrome.” In doing so, she unpacks the ways it can be understood across media coverage, law enforcement practices, forensic science, and public policy, ultimately calling for institutional change in the methods and approaches utilized in missing persons cases. Finally, In Separating Fact from Fiction: the Dehumanization and Fictionalization of Egyptian Mummified Remains, Arianna Lavigne asks what happens when a fictionalized version of Egyptian mummies becomes synonymous with the real culture that prepares their dead this way. Lavigne raises important questions such as, what gets lost as other cultures are dehumanized? And, what should the role of museums and educators be to counter the stereotypes and cultural assumptions being made?

Section II highlights the work of Caroline Savage, a student in Dr. Sara Withers’ ANTH 411 Honors: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, in the Fall of 2024. Savage’s ethnography review of Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies by Seth Holmes, is thorough and timely, and details the ways in which Holmes, a physician-anthropologist, wields the notion of violence to explain the experiences of migrant farmworkers in California, Washington, and Oaxaca, Mexico. As a conclusion to her review, Savage adeptly draws connections between Holmes’ ethnographic data and theoretical arguments about the work and lives of these immigrant communities, and the present and future economic stability and migration policies of the United States.

Section III features Elizabeth Christopher’s, Brooches in Early Medieval Burials in England, the final research paper for her McNair Scholars research project with Dr. Samantha McCrane. In this work, Christopher explores how 5th-9th Century Anglo-Saxon brooches were used in funerary rituals. Through a detailed analysis of the distribution of funerary brooches in medieval burials, she argues that these objects may help us understand individual agency and sociocultural and communal markers of identity such as social status and mobility.

Section IV consists of Julie Gallo’s Cold Case File: Gilgo Beach Murder, a detailed exploration of the investigations into a series of unsolved murders in Long Island, New York between 1990 and 2010. Gallo was a student in ANTH 550: Introduction to Forensic Anthropology, with Dr. Samantha McCrane. In this research, she creatively provides readers with background information about the killer’s victims, suspects, eventual arrests, and more, while also critically considering how modern forensic anthropological methods may be of value to this case, all in the format of a mock case file.

Section V showcases Maria Hagan’s research project for ANTH 797: Race and Racism in Biological Anthropology, a Spring 2025 course with Dr. Amy Michael. Her project, How the Commerce of Human Remains Dehumanizes the Dead, which culminated in an Undergraduate Research Conference presentation, addresses ethical and legal questions surrounding the buying and selling of human remains on social media sites and across state and international borders. Hagan’s work points to possible changes to both social media policy and state and federal law that could have a positive impact on curtailing the practice.

Finally, Section VI highlights multiple anthropology students’ research posters presented at the Undergraduate Research Conference and/or in Honors ANTH 415: Human Evolution, Fossils, and DNA in Spring 2025 and Fall 2024, respectively. All of these projects were mentored by Dr. Samantha McCrane. When browsing through these research projects, readers will get a sense of the broad scope of biological anthropological research across sub-fields such as genetic and forensic anthropology, biomechanics, and neurology, as well as the practical applications of anthropological knowledge and methodologies beyond academia.

• Nicholas Castrucci, “The Human Brain’s Reward System’s Susceptibility to Substance-Related Addiction”
• Julia Melanson and Riley Woolverton, “A Study of Trauma Linked to Contemporary Human Sacrifice Practices: A Pilot Study Exploring Machine Learning in Criminological Analysis”
• Travis Parke, “Shock Absorbance of Different UNH Artificial Turf Fields and Implications for Student Athletes”
• Harriet Pearce, “Gendered Term Usage in Forensic Science Publications (2002-2024)”
• Kyra Batchelder, “Pesticides' Implications on Forensic Cases”
• Brendan Wright, “Psychological Traits Causing the Belief in Ghosts”
• Alexandra Rassias, “Highlands vs Lowlands: An Analysis of Genetic Adaptations Associated with Linguistic Diversity in Papua New Guinea”
• Kaitlyn Newton, “Comparative Analysis of Algorithms for Fingerprint Recognition”
• Varda Kotlyarsky, “Prevalence of Rock-Climbing Injuries of Humans and Contributing Factors”