First, the changes: Since we last wrote, our Department Chair Jeanne Sept retired and moved to the Pacific Northwest. Dr Sept is now Professor Emerita and continues her research on African Prehistory and the contributions of Professor Glynn Isaac, who died tragically in the 1980s. Dr. Sept also served for many years here at IU as the Dean of Faculty, and was a mentor to many women in leadership roles, including myself. With her retirement, Shane Greene stepped in as an interim chair in fall 2019, and then I began my term in January 2020.

Just before IU went into a quarantine lockdown in March 2020 and a hiring freeze ensued, we were very lucky to hire two outstanding junior faculty members! Keitlyn Alcantara is a bioarchaeologist with a particular interest in food ways and community-engaged research, who joined us after finishing her PhD at Vanderbilt University in summer 2020, and Christina Collins, a cultural anthropologist also working on food and drink-related topics in East Africa, will join the faculty in fall 2021, having completed a postdoc at Princeton and her PhD from Duke University.

As IU moved to online classes, the Anthropology faculty pivoted to this modality with determination and creativity, anxious to ensure as much as possible that high quality instruction continued. Zoom became our new friend (and occasionally our adversary when technology conspires against us!), and many of us have discovered that some aspects of this mode of teaching provide new opportunities for engagement. Thanks to IU’s extensive testing regime that was implemented in fall 2020 (due in no small part to Aaron Carroll, IU’s COVID mastermind and host of weekly COVID webinars), we were able to hold some classes in person in fall and in spring 2021. We look forward to returning to in person classes in fall 2021, and we all wonder what that “new normal” will look and feel like.

It goes without saying that research by our faculty and graduate students has been disrupted by COVID19. Last year we converted our graduate student summer Skomp funding for dissertation feasibility work into a larger number of small grants, in order to provide a modest amount of financial support to keep students moving forward toward their degree even while fieldwork was not possible for most. Sadly we were not able to offer the Mary Suzanne Savage Fellowship for archaeological fieldwork, and it looks like we will not be able to do so this summer either. Faculty field research was similarly put on hold as international borders closed and domestic travel was likewise curtailed, but we turned to other writing or creative projects that we could do safely from home. Some, like Brian Gilley, who was in Italy with an IU study abroad program when the epidemic hit that country hard, initiated a more local project. So, we carry on and hopefully some field research will be possible this summer.

Concerns about racial injustice came to the fore in 2020, and department faculty and students have been reckoning with the ways in which we can and need to do so much better. Our newly formed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task force established our DEI statement and a standing DEI Committee, now led by Professor Marvin Sterling. Among the initiatives we have undertaken this year are the following: 1) efforts to de-colonize our curriculum and syllabi; 2) department-wide workshops on departmental collections, NAGPRA, and repatriation of Native American ancestral remains; and 3) committing as a faculty to providing better support and mentoring for our BIPOC students, to diversifying our faculty and student bodies, and to offering colloquia that elevate the voices of underrepresented scholars. Our DEI values will continue to guide departmental activities for the years to come and we have much work to do.

While IU is having in person graduations, no guests are allowed, and a department-specific event seems much more special, and we look forward to continuing this tradition in person in 2022!

Until next time, all best wishes,

Andrea Wiley
Professor and Chair, Anthropology