Mind the Gap, But Don\u27t Fret the Platform

This brief essay makes the case for effective online teaching and learning in anthropology. It addresses areas of traditional faculty resistance to online teaching and suggests that inline teaching has unique strengths and possibilities that can be used to encourage excellence in teachers and students in online anthropology courses

Los niños como actores culturales en las interpretaciones arqueológicas: grafitis del siglo XIX en San Salvador, Bahamas

Evidence of children in the material record can be both elusive and ambiguous, and most typical and comfortable interpretations of the archaeological record create a view of the past where adults are the only cultural actors. Literature on the archaeology of childhood presents a challenge for archaeologists to rethink their assumptions about childhood and to approach the archaeological record in a way that enables the social, economic, and symbolic contributions of children to become viable parts of the stories we tell about life in the past. This paper presents and engages this particular aspect of the literature on the archaeology of childhood using the case of graffiti identified at a former 19th century plantation site on the island of San Salvador, The Bahamas. Initial interpretations of graffiti in these contexts focused on the symbolic meanings and archival functions of such artwork in the world of adults. A careful examination of the graffiti, however, indicates that children were likely responsible for the creation and consumption of this artwork, and that a different set of symbolic meanings and social functions may have been the motivation behind its creation.Las evidencias sobre la infancia en el registro arqueológico pueden ser tan esquivas como ambiguas, y las interpretaciones sobre el registro arqueológico más cómodas y típicas crean visiones del pasado en las que los adultos son los únicos agentes culturales. La bibliografía sobre arqueología de la infancia representa el reto de repensar las asunciones realizadas sobre la infancia y una aproximación diferente al registro arqueológico para que las contribuciones sociales, económicas y simbólicas de los individuos infantiles formen parte de las historias que contamos sobre la vida en el pasado. Este texto presenta y trata este aspecto particular del tema usando como caso de estudio los grafitis documentados en una antigua plantación del siglo XIX en la isla de San Salvador de las Bahamas. Las interpretaciones iniciales sobre los grafitis se centraban en el significado simbólico y en las funciones de archivo de estas representaciones por parte del mundo adulto. Un análisis más cuidadoso nos indica que los individuos infantiles fueron probablemente los responsables de la creación y consumo de estas representaciones y que existen diferentes significados simbólicos y funciones sociales distintas que pueden haber motivado su creación

University Students and Local Museums: Developing Effective Partnerships with Oral History

This is a descriptive paper that details the collaboration between a group of twenty-one DePaul University students and the Exhibitions Committee of the Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC) in the spring of 2010.  The students were all junior and senior Anthropology Majors participating in a course on applied-anthropology, or the applications of anthropological methods and perspectives outside of an academic setting.  CAMOC is a significant, volunteer-driven Chicago museum devoted to the collection, study, and exhibition of materials relating to the Chinese-Americans and Chinese-Canadians who settled in the regions between the coasts of these nations.  The museum first opened its doors in 2005, and in 2008 suffered a devastating fire resulting in the loss of most of the collections and exhibits.  DePaul students partnered with the Exhibitions Committee to collect, archive, and display oral histories of community members to assist in their rebuilding efforts.  The presentation of this particular project focusing on three significant ideas: (1) The importance of developing a project that can be brought to fruition in the course of a single collaborative episode, (2) The types of infrastructure that should be provided by the partners in such a collaboration, and (3) The necessity of creating a project that can simultaneously address the needs of a small museum and the educational goals for student participants

Critical Perspectives on Our Current Moment: An Experiment in Teaching for 2020

During the summer of 2020, the DePaul College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (LAS) offered twenty-two incoming students a special interdisciplinary online course, giving them the opportunity to learn and reflect on the crises of 2020 with faculty, staff, and one another. This article’s authors (who are the class’s faculty and students) describe the construction and execution of this course and reflect on the experience. Course topics included “the social contract; equity and justice; historical, cultural, and artistic responses to upheaval; global interconnections; and the way forward.” The course fulfilled DePaul’s mission to help students “engage questions of intellect and ethics in our contemporary world.” Students created reflective maps that connected what they were learning to their own lives and feelings, and they submitted videos explaining the project. Five appear in this article, illustrating how students learned to think differently and embark on new kinds of action

SGAS 143845.1+145407: A Big, Cool Starburst at Redshift 0.816

We present the discovery and a detailed multi-wavelength study of a strongly-lensed luminous infrared galaxy at z=0.816. Unlike most known lensed galaxies discovered at optical or near-infrared wavelengths this lensed source is red, r-Ks = 3.9 [AB], which the data presented here demonstrate is due to ongoing dusty star formation. The overall lensing magnification (a factor of 17) facilitates observations from the blue optical through to 500micron, fully capturing both the stellar photospheric emission as well as the re-processed thermal dust emission. We also present optical and near-IR spectroscopy. These extensive data show that this lensed galaxy is in many ways typical of IR-detected sources at z~1, with both a total luminosity and size in accordance with other (albeit much less detailed) measurements in samples of galaxies observed in deep fields with the Spitzer telescope. Its far-infrared spectral energy distribution is well-fit by local templates that are an order of magnitude less luminous than the lensed galaxy; local templates of comparable luminosity are too hot to fit. Its size (D~7kpc) is much larger than local luminous infrared galaxies, but in line with sizes observed for such galaxies at z~1. The star formation appears uniform across this spatial scale. In this source, the luminosity of which is typical of sources that dominate the cosmic infrared background, we find that star formation is spatially extended and well organised, quite unlike the compact merger-driven starbursts which are typical for sources of this luminosity at z~0.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

MUSiC : a model-unspecific search for new physics in proton-proton collisions at root s=13TeV

Results of the Model Unspecific Search in CMS (MUSiC), using proton-proton collision data recorded at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1), are presented. The MUSiC analysis searches for anomalies that could be signatures of physics beyond the standard model. The analysis is based on the comparison of observed data with the standard model prediction, as determined from simulation, in several hundred final states and multiple kinematic distributions. Events containing at least one electron or muon are classified based on their final state topology, and an automated search algorithm surveys the observed data for deviations from the prediction. The sensitivity of the search is validated using multiple methods. No significant deviations from the predictions have been observed. For a wide range of final state topologies, agreement is found between the data and the standard model simulation. This analysis complements dedicated search analyses by significantly expanding the range of final states covered using a model independent approach with the largest data set to date to probe phase space regions beyond the reach of previous general searches.Peer reviewe