Last summer, exactly 30 years after I graduated from �ֲ���ý, my favorite professor retired, which led me to think about my early experiences with interdisciplinary thinking and international awareness — and how these tools prepared me for work and life.

To prepare for Steve Kemper’s retirement party, I dug through a box of college notebooks and papers that I had moved unopened from one apartment and city to the next for the past three decades.

Seen circa 1981, Steven Kemper joined the �ֲ���ý faculty in 1973 and retired in 2019 as professor emeritus of anthropology. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

I found a pastel-pink exam book, with my name in pencil on the cover. Inside, I saw my handwriting, no different from today’s.

As I began to read, I didn’t remember writing or knowing any of what was on these pages. My 19-year-old self possessed deep specific knowledge that is long gone from my memory, 30 years on. But I did recognize that this exam was for an anthropology course Steve taught my sophomore year, on culture and politics in South Asia.

Steve’s name doesn’t show up anywhere, but his handwriting is unmistakable. A cursive like no other: loopy, ornate, enthusiastic, and generous, with tails on letters like x, p, and y flowing down with a flourish. Steve had written comments in the margins, including a correction when I wrote “bride price” instead of “dowry.”

I learned from my exam that back when I was only 19, I knew a lot about what might be considered pretty esoteric things. Before this class, I knew nothing about South Asia. I enrolled by accident, thinking “South Asia” referred to what I now know is Southeast Asia. My father is a Vietnam War vet, and I wanted to learn more about Vietnam.

Instead, on the first day of class, Steve had pulled down a map from a roller above the chalkboard and drew me quickly into learning about India and its neighboring countries — including Sri Lanka, where I eventually spent many years and learned two of the languages spoken there.

Back then, I was focused on the details of the societies Steve instructed us about. I am sure I didn’t appreciate what was at stake, why this kind of learning matters so much.

Memories can be triggered by a whiff of an odor, a snippet of a song, or a taste of food: events, experiences, and emotions long ago tucked away spring up at a resonant prompt. Holding the exam book in my hand, I suddenly remembered working in the college library; studying for hours for Steve’s tests; re-reading books, articles, and lecture notes; taking new notes and writing practice responses to questions he had provided in advance.

When I remembered the library study sessions, I had an epiphany. There was something about the esoteric nature of the exam topics, and my absence of memory of the details of the materials but clear memory of studying for the test, that led me to really understand — just in time for my 30th Reunion — what I learned in college.

Professor of Anthropology Steven Kemper poses in his office in Pettengill Hall on Sept. 27, 2017. (Samuel Mironko ’21 for �ֲ���ý College)

Back then, I was focused on the details of the societies Steve instructed us about. I am sure I didn’t appreciate what was at stake, why this kind of learning matters so much.

I now see that Steve helped me to have a genuine interest in people unlike me, and to understand the necessity and value of the hard work of reading, researching, interviewing, seeing, feeling, talking, listening: all in the interest of making sense of how we live in the world, what matters most for people, and why.

From Steve, I learned how to identify what I know and what I don’t know.

In learning about the efforts toward justice by Mahatma Gandhi or by unionized workers in Calcutta, or in learning about menstruation practices among Tamils in Sri Lanka, I developed a lifelong attention to the values, customs, aspirations, and struggles of people near to and far from my daily life. Steve taught me that this kind of learning and understanding is hard but essential work.

Nowadays, I use that conviction to learn and understand, and to make sense of everyday conversations, first-hand experiences, and news items — say, about the Indian government’s revocation of special status for Indian-controlled Kashmir, debates about the separation of migrant families at the U.S.–Mexican border, or the causes and impacts of last spring’s Easter Sunday bombings in my beloved Sri Lanka. From Steve, I learned how to identify what I know and what I don’t know. I learned why it matters that I spend time to learn, humbly and with deep curiosity and respect.

Today I’m an anthropology professor, like Steve. I teach my students how to understand and respect people unlike themselves, and I teach them how this is the road to creating experiences of equity and justice.

Steve has retired from 45 years of transformative education. And yet, his work is not done. During this moment in American life where misunderstanding across communities reigns, educators of my generation and the next must step up and do more of this work.

Caitrin Lynch ’89

About Caitrin Lynch ’89

Caitrin Lynch is a cultural anthropologist at Olin College of Engineering.

In 2018, she delivered a TEDx talk about how in their work to create product and system designs that solve problems and enhance people’s lives.

In 1960, a doctoral student from California conducted an archaeological dig at a coastal site in southwest Alaska.

It was old-school archaeology, archaeologist as auteur. He excavated, took away more than 4,000 items including three sets of human remains, and in his dissertation characterized the site as a midden — essentially a dump — although his own field drawings suggested that a good-sized settlement had previously existed there.

More than 50 years later, in 2011, another doctoral student — an Alaska Native and future �ֲ���ý professor — brought a very different style of archaeology to the site, known as Temyiq Tuyuryaq in the native Yup’ik language and Old Togiak in English.

Archaeologist and Lecturer in Anthropology Kristen Barnett. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Kristen Barnett, in contrast to the 1960 visitor, returned to her native state to conduct what’s called indigenous archaeology: research that’s collaborative, driven by the needs and interests of the indigenous host community, and that addresses inequities in archaeological practice.

The community in this case, located across Bristol Bay from the archaeological site, is the Yup’ik village of Tuyuryaq, or Togiak. A lecturer in anthropology at �ֲ���ý since 2016, Barnett has twice brought students to Togiak for fieldwork.

And now Barnett’s achievements in indigenous archaeology have been recognized with major grant funding from the National Science Foundation: She recently received a three-year grant from the NSF worth $706,000 in cash and equipment to continue that work.

The grant is the foundation’s first, Barnett notes, to support what’s known as a research sovereignty model, in which “indigenous peoples engage with scientific study as active participants and sovereign decision-makers, rather than passive objects of study.”

During an 2017 anthropology Short Term course taught by Kristen Barnett, students head to work at an archaeological site in Old Togiak, Alaska. (Kristen Barnett/�ֲ���ý College)

Her Togiak project is “deeply ingrained in the community in every sense,” she says. Crucially, the research is guided by the residents’ interest in the ways their ancestors lived — including their adaptations to climate and ecology, responses to colonial influence, and, as Barnett says, how the ancestral culture is continued in “the traditions and practices of their contemporary descendants.”

‘A cousin village to my own’

Starting in the late 19th century, inhabitants of Old Togiak began crossing the bay and resettling at the site of today’s village.

A grassy shore with striking views of mountains across the water, Togiak sits at the top of Bristol Bay. There’s plenty of wind and precipitation, and temperature extremes range from the high 60s in July to the low teens in the winter. (Barnett’s pre-trip instructions to her Short Term students include a warning to leave the cotton socks at home — this is a place for wool.)

“Everybody knew that if an archeologist was there, it meant that things had been taken.”

The village is accessible only by water or air. Getting there from �ֲ���ý takes a series of flights, the last requiring a charter plane that holds six, necessitating multiple trips to get the full complement of a Short Term class there from the nearest large settlement, Dillingham (pop. approximately 2,400).

Salmon and herring are abundant, supporting both traditional subsistence lifestyles and a Togiak Fisheries cannery at the archaeological site — “built on top of the old village,” says Barnett.

About 85 percent of the residents are Alaska Native, as is Barnett. A member of Alaska’s Unangax (or Aleut) people, inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands and coastal mainland shared with Yup’ik territory, she describes Togiak as “kind of a cousin village to my own.”

During the 2018 experiential learning week at the Togiak School, local and �ֲ���ý students learn to map with GPS. (Kristen Barnett/�ֲ���ý College)

Barnett was a doctoral student at the University of Montana when she first conducted research there, in 2011. “I wanted to go home and work in my own community,” she says. Given the 1960 research effort, “this seemed like an obvious place to start.”

The 2011 visit led her to recover some of the items removed from the old village in 1960, including the human remains. Not many Togiak residents knew about the old dig 50 years after the fact — but nevertheless, Barnett says, “everybody knew that if an archeologist was there, it meant that things had been taken.”

She says, “We spent a year and a half tracking things down. And after the repatriation of those, the Traditional Council of Togiak decided that they wanted to explore more archeology there as a way of reclaiming their former village as a village rather than a dump.”

With NSF support, Barnett returned in 2015 to conduct preliminary geophysical work — soil core sampling, and subsurface and surface mapping. She joined �ֲ���ý in 2016, and brought 12 students to Togiak for Short Term in 2017.

A fox skull in the grid in a 2018 point-plotting exercise. (Kristen Barnett/�ֲ���ý College)

That visit and a second one, last spring, each began with a week in Togiak, coinciding with a scheduled experiential learning week at the K-12 Togiak School. The �ֲ���ý team resided at the school, gave local students a hands-on introduction to archaeology — and reversed roles with the locals when they could.

“We tried to incorporate activities where they were also teaching us,” such as village tours in which the Togiak students kids pointed out places meaningful to them, says one of the seven students who went in 2018, Carter Ros ’21 of Hailey, Idaho. (Six were taking the course and another student went along as a research assistant.) The �ֲ���ý group also ate seal and beaver caught and cooked by the Togiak students.

Fieldwork at Old Togiak followed the village stays. In addition to soil sampling, that work included site mapping that used GPS to assign coordinates to such landmarks as former houses. (The traditional houses consisted of circular pits roofed over with logs and sod, and decades after abandonment, what’s left are depressions often concealed by tall coarse grass.) This past year, the group laid a grid for excavation and even started to dig, but was thwarted by rain.

“We tried to incorporate activities where they were also teaching us.”

As a matter of fact, though, Barnett hadn’t originally intended to excavate at all. But at the end of the 2017 visit, the village’s Traditional Council invited her to come back and excavate — an invitation that resulted in the current NSF grant.

The 2017 visit was pivotal in another way: Three local students took part in the Old Togiak fieldwork and, Barnett says, their contributions “changed everything.” Their knowledge of the site’s stories and history threw into sharp relief the cultural conflict that has shaped so many places like Togiak: the clash between native communities and colonial expansion.

The Togiak students knew which families had owned buildings still standing in the old village. Something that “looked like just a piece of aluminum roofing in tall grass used to be a fish drying rack that belonged to a specific family.”

And, Barnett says, “there were numerous stories about the building of the cannery — skulls and long bones just coming out of disturbed burial sites.” (Two of the three Togiak students are at �ֲ���ý this week, attending A Model for Decolonizing Learning on College Campuses, an international conference organized by Barnett. An additional $50,000 NSF grant is supporting the conference.)

�ֲ���ý and Togiak students learn the basics of excavation together during the 2018 experiential learning week. (Kristen Barnett/�ֲ���ý College)

At the time of the 2001 Census, there were about 24,000 Yup’ik in the U.S., most of them in Alaska. (A different source adds that about 1,700 live in Russia.) Historically, Barnett explains, archaeologists have tended to think of the Yup’ik mostly in terms of who they are and how they live today — in a sense, severing them from their past.

But a site like Old Togiak bolsters the argument for taking the long view. As Barnett points out, radiocarbon dating has produced evidence of human activity taking place there as long as 3,000 years ago.

“Instead of going in with preconditioned ideas, we can actually look at the community in terms of a cultural landscape. We can think about the stories of elders — there are elders in the village who were raised over at the old village in pit houses — and think about the community a little bit differently,” she says.

Until recent years and the advent of indigenous archaeology, says Barnett’s student Carter Ros, “it’s just been archeologists going in, excavating someone else’s culture, and saying, ‘This is what happened and this is what went on here.’

“People like Kristen are starting to change that. It was refreshing to see how archeology could function, and do so much good, within a community.”

After all, Barnett says, “If we’re not integrating with community needs, we should probably rethink what we’re doing.”

The Bristol Bay Air Service plane that brought the �ֲ���ý group on the final leg to Togiak in 2017. (Kristen Barnett/�ֲ���ý College)

Here’s what it is like to spend the summer on a �ֲ���ý-funded project to record oral histories of the fishing community on Grand Manan in New Brunswick, Canada.

In the waters off Grand Manan Island, Kate McNally ’17 bands lobsters on the fishing boat “Island Bound”��in this photo taken by boat captain Russell Ingalls.

Name: Kate McNally ’17

Hometown: Deep River, Conn.

Major: Anthropology

Internship Sponsor: Otis Fellowship, providing grants of up to $6,000 for self-designed, innovative, and imaginative summer projects that address a student’s personal concern or interest in the natural world. In the fall, each fellow makes a public presentation to the campus community about the experience.

1. What was your project?

On the island of Grand Manan, in New Brunswick, I recorded oral histories of a fishing community that is in a state of cultural and economic flux.

The recordings of those interviews will contribute to community memory archived in the Grand Manan Museum and will form the basis for my own writing, in which I will reflect upon Grand Manan and its connection with the ocean.

2. Where did you live?

I lived and worked at Swallowtail Lighthouse. I also joined a lobster boat, which meant waking up very early to band lobsters

“On Grand Manan, I was everybody’s student.”

I did lighthouse repair and helped dulsers, people who gather dulse, a kind of seaweed, in the intertidal zone.

3. What have you learned?

First, you can do a lot when you put your mind to it. Second, strangers can be very kind, and quickly are strangers no longer — two very good things to learn if you hope to be a citizen of the world!

4. How did you use your anthropology major in this project?

In anthropology, you gain understanding of a place and a culture by finding people who can teach you about their lives and their perspectives.

Kate McNally ’17 photographed Bowlin Gaskill, a lifelong resident of the village of North Head on Grand Manan, as he participated in an oral history.

I find it inspiring to have teachers from every conceivable walk of life.

And on Grand Manan, I was everybody’s student.

I’ve also done biology coursework, so I was able to use my knowledge of the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy ecosystem to ask the question as an anthropologist: “What does this mean to the people who live here?

5. During this project, how did you manage your own privilege as someone who can enter and leave this community at will?

I researched the history and culture of Grand Manan before my arrival, but that told me nothing about the lives of people living there now.��I wanted to tell them that I wasn’t romantic, presumptive, insensitive, or ill-informed — but I simultaneously feared that all those words described me precisely.

Like many small, beautiful communities, Grand Manan is an incredibly tight year-round community and a tourist destination, too, so I was aware that I was treading an awkward line between the community and the tourists.

“Good things will happen that you didn’t expect — let them take you places!”

I dealt with that challenge in two ways. First, in oral history interviews I tried to listen honestly and wholeheartedly. Second, when I share my experience with the wider �ֲ���ý community in the fall, I will emphasize the complexity of this place that tourists so often and simply call “whimsical.”

I think that these strategies are a reciprocal response to the respect and kindness that was paid to me here.

6. What would you tell a younger �ֲ���ý student about the process of applying for a fellowship like this?

First, plan ahead. I started working getting information about the Otis Fellowship over a year before I applied, and every conversation helped me write my application.

The crew of the fishing boat “Island Bound” go about their work. (Kate McNally ’17)

Talk to members of the committee and previous fellows. Learn about the history and culture of the place you hope to go to, and don’t be afraid to email strangers!

Be comfortable with changing your plans. My fellowship was ever-evolving, right up until the last week.

Good things will happen that you didn’t expect — let them take you places! Frustrating things will happen that you didn’t expect. Think on them long enough to learn and reflect, but keep going.

��

Sydney Hare ’12.

Three recent �ֲ���ý College alumni return to campus to discuss how their experiences in Latin America have influenced their working lives in a panel presentation at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in the Keck Classroom, Room G52 of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Refreshments will be offered. The event has been organized by the Latin American studies program, in co-sponsorship with the Alumni Engagement office, the �ֲ���ý Career Development Center, the interdisciplinary studies division, the departments of politics and anthropology, and the Purposeful Work Initiative.

In a related event, the Latin American studies program, in collaboration with the Spanish department, presents an evening of Latin American music for guitar performed by Gregoíre Pearce, of Portland, Maine, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Both events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8204.

Alberto Means ’10.

The panel will discuss “purposeful work in Latin America by students who have engaged with the region through their �ֲ���ý educations,” explains Sonja Pieck, an associate professor of environmental studies and chair of the Latin American studies program, and one of the panel’s organizers.

“As a new major in the college curriculum, we want to raise awareness of the diversity of opportunities in the working world for LAS majors, and also see how an engagement with Latin America in the liberal arts tradition shaped these alumni.”

The panel speaks broadly to how young people can engage the world at large, in their intellectual pursuits, their volunteering, their activism and, finally, their careers.

The panelists are:

• Sydney Hare, a member of the class of 2012 who studied extensively in Chile during her �ֲ���ý education and now works in institutional equity sales at Deutsche Bank
  Securities in New York City;

Hannah Rae Porst ’11.

• Alberto Means, a member of the class of 2010 who studied in Brazil and now works in public engagement technology for Purpose, a New York City consultancy;
• Hannah Rae Porst, a member of the class of 2011 who has continued a project she started during her junior year at �ֲ���ý, working to support the indigenous culture of a Quechua community in Peru.

Hare majored in anthropology and Latin American studies at �ֲ���ý. She spent half of her junior year in Arica, Chile, where she worked closely with the transgender population in the city, and eventually wrote her thesis on the complexities of gender and citizenship in Chile.

At Deutsche Bank Securities, she focuses on delivering global research and products to U.S.-based clients. She credits her liberal arts background for distinguishing her in an industry where most of her peers come in with technical training. Her interest in international relations attracted her to an industry where she is constantly analyzing how world events inform financial conditions and policy.

Means’ early interest in Brazilian music and culture inspired him to study there during his junior year. While living in home-stays in Sao Paolo and Salvador, this politics major studied Portuguese, international economics and music, and worked with local musicians at a youth cultural center in Saramandaia.

In 2011, Means joined Purpose. That firm incubated Minhas Cidades, a cutting-edge Brazilian mobilization platform, and in 2013 Means worked in Rio de Janeiro advising a local social entrepreneur on mobilizing Brazilian youth on environmental justice issues. He is now developing strategy for a multinational food company that hopes to mobilize its global customer community to take action against tropical deforestation.

Since graduation, Porst has lived in Cusco, Peru, supporting the indigenous people of Q’eros, a remote region high in the Andes whose people are recognized as a “national living patrimony” because of the continuity of their ancient traditions. This work began in 2010 when she lived there while doing research as a junior majoring in Spanish and in art and visual culture.

As a senior, she received a Davis Projects for Peace grant to build the first primary school in the Q’eros village of Ch’allmachimpana. Porst founded the nonprofit Willka Yachay (“sacred wisdom” in the Quechua language) to develop programs enabling the Q’eros people to preserve their culture and develop their communities sustainably. She founded, built and administers a preschool, two primary schools, high school and adult school, in addition to other projects that support the community in myriad ways.

Devin Tatro ’14 of Haverhill, Mass., is the co-recipient of a Davis Project for Peace grant. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Two �ֲ���ý seniors have received a national award that will launch an initiative in Rwanda to support children of incarcerated people.

A 2014 Davis Project for Peace award has gone to Simone Schriger of Los Angeles and Devin Tatro of Haverhill, Mass., who, after graduating from �ֲ���ý, will spend this summer in Rwanda developing a program to foster resiliency and community among people whose parents have been imprisoned for reasons including their involvement in the 1994 genocide.

Simone Schriger ’14 of Los Angeles. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Established in 2007 by the late Kathryn Wasserman Davis, the Project for Peace program provides $10,000 apiece to initiatives promoting peace and addressing root causes of conflict. Learn more at .

Titled Restoration, Reconciliation and Rehabilitation: Empowering CIPs, Schriger and Tatro’s project will explore how children of incarcerated parents (CIPs) can develop coping skills conducive to their mental health.

The pair will establish the program with the Rwandan branch of Prison Fellowship International. They are basing their project on activities proven in U.S. CIP-advocacy programs, which they will adapt for Rwanda’s unique circumstances.

Imprisonment is a salient social and political issue in Rwanda, which ranks seventh worldwide for imprisoned population, according to Tatro and Schriger. Twenty years after the 1994 genocide, in which Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu, the nation is still working toward recovery — a situation presenting a unique context for more universal concerns about children of prisoners.

With some 120,000 individuals accused of genocidal crimes, Rwanda found distinctive ways — such as the “gacaca” courts adapted from tribal practices — to exercise justice in the years after the massacre.

“Achieving a peaceful society demands successful criminal reconciliation: healing broken relationships, repairing the damage done by crime and restoring an imprisoned offender to an integrated and productive member of society upon release,” Tatro and Schriger write in their Davis proposal.

Yet, they note, the children of prisoners have typically been neglected in the two decades of national healing.

“Rwandan CIPs are a critical missing link in national reunification and vital to the peace-seeking process.”

Schriger and Tatro bring complementary interests and skills to the project. Tatro, who has studied in Rwanda, is an honors anthropology major whose experience with field work will inform the pair’s research.

“Working with children of incarcerated parents as a demographic is something I’ve been interested in doing,” she says. “It’s a demographic that people don’t necessarily know how to help or deal with.

“A lot of these children go under the radar — it’s like losing a parent, but also involves shame and confusion. We will look into how this ties into their identity.”

An honors psychology major, Schriger is interested in the practice of restorative justice, a theme in Rwandan reconciliation and recovery efforts since the genocide. She believes that restorative justice methods are the key to an empowered community.

Restorative justice prioritizes the personal needs of the victim and the community over the abstract needs of the state. It fosters dialogue among the parties with the intent of redressing the victims’ grievances and rehabilitating the offender.

“It is based on the belief that justice has to be achieved through a process of reconciliation and conversation, rather than just banishing someone to a cell,” Schriger says.

The pair hope to bring that concept into the breach between imprisoned parents and their children, who are typically separated by barriers not only physical but emotional and social.

“We want to put children in contact with their parents,” says Schriger. “We want them to understand that their parents are real people — and that not everything has to be perfect, but that they can have working relationships.”

Tatro points out that her and Schriger’s project reflects a growing worldwide concern about the well-being of CIPs. “A lot of our work in designing this project was looking at programs in this country that address children with incarcerated parents — programs that are growing in number and influence.”

The project will be undertaken in partnership with Prison Fellowship Rwanda, a nonprofit related to Prison Fellowship International, an NGO that employs restorative justice techniques to aid prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims and their families.

Along with interventions by expert counselors, Tatro and Schriger will empower CIPs with resources for emotional catharsis and self-understanding, such as journaling, support groups and letter writing to imprisoned parents.

Drawing on Tatro’s anthropology training, the pair will also document the narratives of the children, “beginning to capture and interpret their unique position, and what it means for peacemaking, in a post-genocidal culture,” they write.

Tatro visited Rwanda in the fall of 2012 where she got hands-on experience in conflict resolution at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Rwanda Development Board.

She also conducted research in Uganda for her honors thesis in anthropology, which looks at the efforts of the Sebei people to market their ethnic and cultural heritage to tourists and international aid organizations.

Schriger, who received a prestigious Watson Fellowship this spring, worked with CIPs at a program for impoverished children in Los Angeles. She spent winter 2012 in Chile, where, in addition to studying at a local university, she conducted research for her honors thesis about perceptions of dating violence in that country.

Cultural anthropologist Caitryn Lynch ’89 wrote “Retirement on the Line.”

Caitrin Lynch ’89, author of a book studying a Massachusetts factory whose workers are a median age of 74, gives a talk based on her research at 4:15 p.m. Monday, Jan. 13, in Room G21 of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Lynch’s talk is titled Flexibility and Family: Older Workers and Questions of Exploitation in an American Factory. Sponsored by the anthropology department, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8295.

Lynch, who was an anthropology major at �ֲ���ý, is the author of Retirement on the Line: Age, Work and Value in an American Factory (Cornell University Press, 2012). The book’s research setting is the Vita Needle Company of Needham, Mass.

A family-owned factory founded in 1932, Vita makes needles, stainless steel tubing and pipes, and custom fabricated parts. As part of its unusual business model, the company seeks out workers older than the traditional retirement age. One worker, the company’s oldest at the time, retired at age 100.

The production workers are all part-time and none receive medical or retirement benefits — the employer banks on their eligibility for Medicare and Social Security benefits. The employer claims to be providing a social service to people otherwise unlikely to find paid work, and he admits to the financial savvy of the model.

In her �ֲ���ý presentation, Lynch will examine everyday workplace dynamics around notions of flexibility and family, and how they create an atmosphere where workers and employers alike appear to agree on the mutual benefit of a labor arrangement we may otherwise assume to be exploitative.

Lynch investigated what Vita’s commitment to an elderly workforce means for the employer, the workers and the community, as well as society more generally. In an era when people live longer and want (or need) to work into old age, Retirement on the Line provides inspiration and important lessons about the value of older workers.

Lynch, an associate professor of anthropology at Olin College, told The Boston Globe in 2012 that for many Americans getting old is like a vanishing act. “People don’t even look at them, and if they do look at them, they look at them with pity,” she said.

Benefiting from nearly five years of fieldwork at Vita, Lynch developed an intimate portrait of the people who work there, a nuanced explanation of the company’s hiring practices and a cogent analysis of how the workers’ experiences can inform our understanding of aging and work in the 21st century.

Vita’s mostly white male workers exemplify a range of personalities and class backgrounds and a diversity of reasons for working, Lynch says.

“Even those who come out of financial need also seek social engagement and purpose,” she says. “Indeed, Vita workers often invoke the health risks of idle retirement and claim that ‘working here keeps me alive.’ ”

“In today’s United States, when people live longer and need or want to work past the traditional retirement age, the Vita Needle Company challenges us to think carefully about the relationships between a company’s bottom line and the needs and wants of workers.”

Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Co-written by �ֲ���ý anthropologist Danny Danforth, the first comprehensive study of two children’s evacuation campaigns during the 1948 Greek Civil War has received the prestigious Edmund Keeley Book Prize.

Published in 2012 by the University of Chicago Press, Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory was co-written by Danforth, the Charles A. Dana Professor of History at �ֲ���ý, and Riki Van Boeschoten, associate professor of social anthropology and oral history at the University of Thessaly, Greece.

Based in Brunswick, Maine, the Modern Greek Studies Association awards the Keeley Book Prize to an academic book first published in English and dealing with modern Greece or a Hellenic theme. Children of the Greek Civil War shared this year’s first prize with The Balkan Prospect: Identity, Culture, and Politics in Greece after 1989 by Vangelis Calotychos.

The warring sides in the Greek Civil War evacuated 38,000 children from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries in the national government placed the rest in children’s homes elsewhere in Greece.

A point of contention throughout the Cold War, this controversial episode continues to fuel tensions between Greeks and Macedonians and within Greek society itself.

Marshaling archival records, oral histories and ethnographic fieldwork, Danforth and Van Boeschoten analyzed the evacuation process, the political conflict surrounding it, the children’s upbringings and their fates as adults cut off from their parents and their homeland.

They also give voice to seven refugee children who, as adults, recount their experiences and efforts to construct new lives in diaspora communities throughout the world. A much-needed corrective to previous historical accounts, Children of the Greek Civil War is also a searching examination of the enduring effects of displacement on the lives of refugee children.

“Danforth and Van Goeschoten grippingly tell the stories of thousands of Greek children relocated” during the war, writes K. Dubinsky for Choice Reviews Online. “Amid charges of communist baby snatching and fascist child manipulation, the book charts an astonishingly evenhanded and supremely well-researched course.

“Insisting that refugee children ought to occupy center stage in their own history, the authors support their argument with two chapters of testimony from the historical actors themselves remembering their own childhood experiences,” Dubinsky writes. “This innovative book ends with some insightful thinking about the production of historical memory. Highly recommended.”

Danforth has written three other books, all published by Princeton University Press: The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (with photographer Alexander Tsiaras; 1982); Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement (1989); and The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (1997).

From “Intricate Glances Will Meet Here.” (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

“I told the dancers to imagine that they’re embracing a partner,” says Colleen Fitzgerald ’14, describing passages in her dance piece “Intricate Glances Will Meet Here.”

“So there are a lot of moments when people will be wrapping their arms around the air. And that’s the partner that they don’t have.”

Colleen Fitzgerald ’14 (facing camera) is shown with Bridgette Chandhoke ’14 during a dress rehearsal of “Intricate Glances Will Meet Here.” (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

“Intricate Glances,” which Fitzgerald choreographed and which she and six other dancers (named below) perform on Dec. 6 and 7, could be described as a meta-tango. The piece draws heavily on that Argentinian dance form, which is very much about the dynamics within a couple.

But Fitzgerald looks instead at the dynamics of the people around the couples — how the group produces them and regards them, and how it takes them apart. Groups form within the group and disperse. In long walks around the dance floor to Nuevo Tango tunes by Astor Piazzolla, two dancers portray the vicissitudes of a long relationship. Outcasts are ultimately welcomed, while some insiders reject all comers.

“Intricate Glances Will Meet Here” takes place at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6, and 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave. The performance is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6161.

Fitzgerald of Granby, Conn., is double-majoring in anthropology and dance. With dance program director Carol Dilley as her adviser, she developed “Intricate Glances” as one of her two senior thesis projects. “What I was doing to create a dance stemmed from fieldwork that was anthropological and choreographic,” she says. “And my anthro thesis will ultimately be based in the dance and movement of tango.”

Fitzgerald put her interdisciplinary chops to work during extended research stays in the capital of tango, Buenos Aires, in 2012 and 2013. Last summer, in particular, she studied the tango as both a dancer and an anthropologist, conducting formal interviews with practitioners of the form.

“Intricate Glances” explores how groups and couples interact. Shown during a dress rehearsal are Bridgette Chandhoke ’14 and Mary Anne Bodnar ’16. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Her interviewees included non-Argentine dancers, tango traditionalists (and tradition is very potent in tango), and Argentinian innovators — in particular Brenda Angiel, whose company combines the vocabularies of modern dance, hip hop and tango with aerial dance.

Fitzgerald focused on ways that tango changes when it’s adapted by non-Argentine cultures. “When Europe picks it up and when America picks it up, it’s a totally different thing than what we see danced in Argentina,” she says. “I was interested in how different people are changing tango, and I added myself to the list” of those different people.

“I was concerned with doing the tango justice and learning enough about it,” as opposed to copping some moves and calling it good, Fitzgerald adds. “How do you make this specific type of movement your own? And then, what’s your relationship to the original?”

Dances are built from movement vocabularies, and for “Intricate Glances” Fitzgerald combined tango and modern dance elements. Sometimes that involved reconciling contradictions. The title of the piece, for instance, refers to the eye contact so important to tango, whether in seeking a potential partner all the way across the dance floor or fueling the tension once locked in an embrace. “It has an intensity and an intention behind it that’s really strong.”

“Intricate Glances” combines modern dance with tango, as exemplified here by Anna Lanoue ’15 and Lydia Rubenstein ’15. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

But in modern dance, says Fitzgerald, eye contact is less common. “So I’ve been trying to make my dancers comfortable looking at each other for long periods of time, at really close distances.”

Crucial to the development of “Intricate Glances” was Fitzgerald’s 2013 �ֲ���ý Dance Festival experience, directly after her return from Argentina.

“It was three weeks of living, sleeping, eating, taking dance classes with professionals in the field,” says Fitzgerald. “That gave me the opportunity to think about myself as a professional dance maker, and about how I could start that practice now with a dance thesis.”

The festival also demystified the choreographic process and planted the concept of a toolbox of techniques, tactics and approaches that a choreographer (or a creator in any field) brings to each situation. “I was drawing on all these ways of making movement, whether it be videotaping or using text from interviews — I had tons of field notes from Argentina.”

That toolbox comes in handy when, for instance, “you’re in a rehearsal and your dancers are all ready to go, and you’re like, ‘I’ve got nothing.’ There are these ways to get you over those hurdles, to use your choreographic process to the fullest.

“That was the biggest thing I learned for my thesis.”

As part of her thesis project, Fitzgerald is writing a critical assessment of the creation of “Intricate Glances.” She says, “It’s hard with art. Not everyone wants to think that way and not everyone wants to critique their own creation.”

Colleen Fitzgerald watches her dancers during a dress rehearsal of “Intricate Glances.” (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

For her, though, “the written portion helps a ton — it helps me verbalize some of what’s going on in my mind. I need some of that concreteness to see this journey that I’ve gone on.”

In short, the performances of “Intricate Glances” — despite all the work that has gone into them, from the dance itself to production and marketing chores — are only the tip of the senior thesis iceberg. “That’s what everyone will see. But the amount of personal learning, and learning between me and my cast, was far more important and extensive.

“Just figuring out how to blend anthropology and dance, that’s what I did with this thesis. And figuring out how to represent another dance that’s not mine. And that’s something that I want to explore as a choreographer outside of �ֲ���ý.”

Performing with Fitzgerald in “Intricate Glances Will Meet Here” are Bridgette Chandhoke ’14 of Fairfield, Va.; Mariya Manahova ’14 of Sofia, Bulgaria; Tomisha Edwards ’15 of Memphis, Tenn.; Anna Lanoue ’15 of Newton, Mass.; Lydia Rubenstein ’15 of Nashville, Tenn.; and Mary Anne Bodnar ’16 of New York City.

Fitzgerald’s pre-thesis research was supported by a Ruggles Scholarship, a Hoffman Research Support Grant and a Barlow Thesis Research Grant.

Bruce Bourque, senior lecturer in anthropology at �ֲ���ý and curator of archaeology at the Maine History Museum, talks about his new book, The Swordfish Hunters: The History and Ecology of an Ancient American Sea People.

Produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen with Doug Hubley.

Blues in the night is no fun. But blues in the evening can be a very good time indeed, as proven July 18 by musician Corey Harris ’91.

Harris visited �ֲ���ý to kick off the college’s brand-new Concerts on the Quad summer music series, dedicated to the blues in all its myriad forms.

The setting was the front porch of Coram Library, where the public presentations usually involve academic regalia, sunshine and some degree of heat.

Spotlighted by the last rays of the setting sun, Harris skipped the cap and gown but generated plenty of musical heat with an 80-minute set given largely to country blues.

�ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer introduced Harris. A casual Spencer, obviously pleased to be presenting the musician, had some fun with her introduction. Describing Harris as “a brilliant musician and �ֲ���ý alumnus,” she added, “I love having those two things in the same sentence.”

What makes the country blues aesthetic so cool, writes Doug Hubley, “is how big, complex and captivating a sound one player can wring from one guitar.” Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

She also offered a helpful amendment to his career bio, indicating that the “old Quad” should be added to his impressive list of career venues. Speaking of which, Harris came to �ֲ���ý fresh from a short Maine tour that brought him to the highly regarded Stone Mountain Arts Center, Brownfield, and Rockland’s North Atlantic Blues Festival.

As Harris recently told a Portland Press Herald reporter, “I think roots music is a good name for what I do, because I play the whole tree, you know?” His �ֲ���ý show did reflect his wide interests within music of the African diaspora, sparkling with sounds of the Caribbean, West Africa and Memphis R&B.

But blues, and really the acoustic country blues of the Deep South, was the heart of the show — perhaps necessarily, since additional musicians are often integral to Harris’ ventures into other genres. In fact, the country blues aesthetic rests in part on the notion of solo performance: What makes it so cool is how big, complex and captivating a sound one player can wring from one guitar.

Crackling energy and fresh invention into the old Delta playbook.

Harris showed complete command in that realm. Switching between fretted acoustic guitar and a wooden resonator instrument played with a slide, he dazzled his audience with moves that infused crackling energy and fresh invention into the old Delta playbook. Late in the show, he revealed different facets of his virtuosity with a few instrumentals that explored “prettier” precincts of the musical scale.

As Corey Harris recently told a Portland Press Herald reporter, “I think roots music is a good name for what I do, because I play the whole tree, you know?” Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

As a singer, Harris was equally fluent and rangy, moving easily from deep growl to plaintive wail and creating vocal personas to suit a shifting panoply of characters and points of view.

The singer drew heavily on his latest album, this year’s Fulton Blues, whose overall theme is the destruction of Fulton, a middle-class, historically black neighborhood that fell victim to “urban renewal” planning in the 1970s in Richmond, Va. Selections included the title number and “Lynch Blues,” which was especially compelling.

Blues is about laughing just to keep from crying, right?

But Harris ranged all over his catalog. He looked all the way back to his 1995 debut, Between Midnight and Day, for “Pony Blues” and “61 Highway,” and touched down in the 2000s for the spirituals “Daily Bread” and “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.” There was humor, too (blues is about laughing just to keep from crying, right?), in songs like the rag “That Will Never Happen No More” and the classic double entendre “Diddy Wah Diddy,” which puts the blue in blues.

Coram Library made a nice concert stage. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

For this writer, there were two particular standouts in an overall strong performance: the reggae-flavored “Watching You,” a Harris composition about technology and surveillance that got even edgier with the recent news about National Security Agency activities; and an excellent cover of Skip James’ haunting “Devil Got My Woman.”

The Quad audience, numbering about 100, blended young families — “there’s my opening act,” Harris said as two little girls raced back and forth in front of him — and folks who’d been around for the great rediscovery of the blues in the 1960s and ’70s.

�ֲ���ý staff and faculty were well-represented, among them members of the faculty in anthropology, Harris’ major.

Rain started to fall along with the night a little before 8 o’clock, and after a generous set that numbered nearly two dozen songs, Harris wrapped up the evening with a short and sweet “Pony Blues.”

Held at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays, Concerts on the Quad continue Aug. 1 with Portland artist Samuel James and conclude Aug. 15 with �ֲ���ý favorite Francine Reed.