University of Florida Press: Journals
Not a member yet
2180 research outputs found
Sort by
Ongoing Work with Adult Skeletal Age Estimation: What Works and What Doesn’t
No full textImproving adult age-at-death estimates using visible features of the human skeleton has been the subject of much research because such assessments are critical elements of forensic investigations and bioarchaeological studies. Beginning in 2014, a National Institute of Justice (NIJ)–funded research team developed a set of age-informative skeletal traits; collected reference data from collections in the United States, Portugal, Thailand, and South Africa; evaluated traits for their applicability; and developed alternative ways to generate age estimates from those traits. Here we present a comparison of two ways to produce age estimates: Stephen D. Ousley’s machine learning approach available as beta version computer software (TA3-ML) and an analytical procedure that originated with the version of transition analysis introduced two decades ago with different skeletal characteristics (TA3-TA). The two approaches are evaluated using the same 41 modern Portuguese and American skeletons. Both methods rely on NIJ-project skeletal data (TA3), but the number of traits used differs, as do reference sample sizes and compositions. Estimates generated through TA3-TA more closely approximate reported ages throughout adulthood than those from TA3-ML. Nevertheless, there remains a problem with underestimation in the TA3-TA approach, and neither method is ready for widespread implementation. Ongoing work is being directed toward resolving these issues by adjusting the mix of NIJ-project traits used in TA3-TA
Menstrual Methodologies: On Menstrual Pain and the Importance of Ungendering Bleeding
No full textAbstract: This article develops “menstrual methodologies” for ungendering menstruation and attending to the chronic pain and dysphoria present in menstrual embodiment. Specifically, it unfolds from the experiences of a nonbinary person with undiagnosed endometriosis through developing a series of menstrual methodologies, including ungendering menstruation; thinking with pain through crip time, crankiness, and autoethnography; and a justice-based approach to menstruation; followed by an application of these methodologies to a recent case study. Following on an autobiographical prelude, I begin with an introduction to menstrual methodologies and next outline each one. Menstrual methodologies, I argue, provide a toolkit not only for those who study menstruation and menstruators but for researchers across disciplines who are interested in questions of gender, embodiment, pain, medical science, justice, and disability.
Bones at Home: Supporting Haptic Learning and Universal Design beyond the Biological Anthropology Laboratory
No full textRemote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a range of pedagogical challenges for anthropology laboratory courses. In biological anthropology courses such as Human Osteology, hands-on experience is essential to achieving learning outcomes, including basic bone and feature (i.e., landmark) identification, identification from fragmentary remains, and age and sex estimation. To address the need for training that includes object-based, tactile (haptic) learning in fields such as biological anthropology and archaeology, all Human Osteology students at Mount Royal University and the University of Manitoba took home plastic model skeletons. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how well remotely educated undergraduates (REUs) met human osteology learning objectives when supported by plastic model skeletons at home. We present the results of a survey designed to test core osteological skills obtained by REUs in comparison with undergraduates educated with in-person laboratory components (IPUs) and experts in the field (zero to four and five or more years of experience). REU scores did not differ significantly from those of IPU or Junior Experts with less than five years of experience. Students performed well in bone identification but were limited in their ability to apply common sex and age estimation methods and to identify incomplete elements. Our findings reinforce the importance of haptic learning and years of experience in human osteological learning. They support the use of take-home models as valuable resources in both remote and in-person undergraduate teaching. This work is a step toward more inclusive universal instructional design that can be applied across various anthropology laboratory courses
Three Weaving Songs
No full textThe weaving song (chanson de toile) is a genre of medieval French lyric poetry that takes its name from a dramatic situation that it frequently represents: a young noblewoman weaving (or spinning, or embroidering) in her room and thinking of her absent love. In nearly all of the twenty or so surviving examples, the story has a happy ending: the woman’s love appears and they are able to overcome some sort of obstacle and live happily ever after. (In the sole exception, the woman learns that her lover has been killed in a joust and retires to found an abbey.
Recipe for Identity: Constructing the Self in Chitrita Banerji's A Taste of My Life
No full textThe placement of recipes in a food memoir serves the unique function of contextualising a life story against culture, tradition, and history. They serve as a form of self-expression that looks at life in its entirety through an amalgamation of the material and abstract aspects of existence. For women in the diaspora, recipes not only enable them to maintain a link to the homeland through the preservation and perpetuation of foodways but also serve as a medium to adapt to the new country. Bengali-American historian and writer Chitrita Banerji’s A Taste of My Life: A Memoir in Essays and Recipes (2021) is structured as a three-course meal and uses recipes to frame liminal moments of existence. The food memoir traces the arc of Banerji’s life over seven decades—from her childhood in India, to her student life in the US, followed by married life in Bangladesh and culminates with her mature years spent dividing her time between the US and India. Banerji reconstructs her life through the food that has defined her with the recipes providing a structure for her transnational life that spans years and continents; they provide unity and coherence across space and time. This paper argues that the inclusion of recipes helps Banerji in constructing an identity that takes the whole gamut of her experiences into account. The recipes show her journey from dislocation to relocation and provide the scaffolding for the construction of a self that is reconciled and empowered. Banerji’s recipes articulate the way in which food anchors her, provides the impetus for her growth and gives her the means to reflect on life with a certain resolve tempered with a hint of nostalgia. Through her narrative we see how a recipe borrows as well as adapts, preserves as well as modifies. There is replication as well as recreation in a recipe, which is similar to a diaspora individual balancing assimilation with adaptation. Every recipe reveals a new facet of her identity and is crucial in her understanding of the self in relation to others
An Ontology of Necropolitical Governance: Otherness and Precarity of the Rohingya in Myanmar
No full textThe world witnessed one of the most devastating ethnic group exoduses in Southeast Asia in August 2017, with the Rohingya at its core. Enduring generations of repression, rampant sexual assault, and organized devastation implemented by the government of Myanmar, many Rohingya people were forced to flee to adjacent Bangladesh to seek safety. Despite being an integral aspect of Myanmar’s past, the state denies the Rohingya people their rights to citizenship. This omission from citizenship perpetuates their exclusion from Myanmar’s body politic. Employing Giorgio Agamben’s concept of homo sacer, this paper uses Habiburahman’s memoir, First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks, to examine how the state of Myanmar has been instrumental in orchestrating a systematic marginalization of the Rohingya. This process has reduced them to what Agamben terms as “bare life,” thereby ascribing them to a position of what Judith Butler terms as precarity. Utilizing Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, this article theorizes how the state abuses the precarious position of the Rohingya by creating “death worlds,” relegating them to the position of “the living dead,” ultimately culminating in the teleological inevitability of genocide
The Body, the Bomb, and the Domestication of the Technologies of Global Capitalism in the Postcolonial Science Fiction of Manjula Padmanabhan
No full text
