You can learn about a culture by looking at iconic artwork or inspiring architecture — and also by examining seemingly mundane cultural products like dolls.

Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth makes that point when he teaches the course “Myth, Folklore, and Popular Culture.”

“The first book we read,” he says, “is ,” by Erica Rand, the college’s Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture.

Rand’s book, combined with Barbie’s powerful and familiar image, provides a “good vehicle to get people thinking about gender, class, sexuality, sexual orientation, and race in American culture,” he says.

But Barbie is only half the story.

A few years ago, Leena Nasser ’12 of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, took Danforth’s course and told him about Fulla dolls, a Barbie alternative marketed to children in Islamic countries. Nasser gave Danforth a Fulla doll and he later acquired another.

On a shelf in Loring Danforth’s office, two Fulla dolls, each dressed in a black abaya and head scarf, stand with two blonde Barbie dolls decked out in Western fashions. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Nasser later teamed with Danforth to lead a Short Term to Saudi Arabia, an experience that led to Danforth’s recent book and the landmark �ֲ���ý Museum of Art exhibition Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston.

So that’s why, in Danforth’s office, two Fulla dolls, each dressed in a black abaya and head scarf, stand with two blonde Barbie dolls decked out in Western fashions. There on a shelf, their juxtaposition “raises all the issues about burkini bans and hijab bans and the relationship between what women wear and women’s rights,” he says.

“Anthropologists make small trivial things…speak to larger issues.”

“I try to get people to think about their own culture the way they think about other cultures, and vice versa,” says Danforth, who pulls a dog-eared copy of anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures from the shelf and reads aloud: “Small facts speak to large issues because they are made to.”

The point is, Danforth says, anthropologists “make small trivial things like Barbie dolls or Fulla dolls speak to larger issues like the role of women in Islam or women’s rights in the Middle East.”

A ‘Scientist to Watch,’ Castro uses science to make connections with people — The Scientist

The featured “Scientist to Watch” in the magazine, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Jason Castro says he came to �ֲ���ý to “do the science equivalent of running a mom-and-pop — a small operation, working closely with students, and staying close to the data and the experiments myself.”

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Jason Castro is a “Scientist to Watch,” says The Scientist magazine.

Writer Ben Andrew Henry points out that “in setting up shop at a small college, Castro did not sacrifice scientific ambition,” highlighting Castro’s recent National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant, “a recognition usually awarded to researchers at larger universities.”

“I’m certainly able to do the science I want to do,” Castro says.

Time alone is hard, but perhaps necessary, for a writer — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Speaking with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the eve of a Dec. 5 speaking appearance, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout ’77 talks about her childhood and having “an awful lot of time alone as a child,” which, she believes, is “very important for a writer. I lived in my head and wrote things down.”

Reporter Anya Sostek also describes Strout’s creative process, which involves scraps of a paper and a table. “She writes scenes on scraps of paper,” Sostek reports, most of which end up on the floor. But “when she writes enough scenes ‘that have some life, where there’s a heartbeat to them,’ she starts to arrange them on the table like puzzle pieces.”

Eventually, says Strout, at “a period of time when I feel overwhelmed,” those scraps become a book.

He’s a “commanding, virile” hip-hop Othello, a “noble heart corrupted” — The New York Times

Othello: The Remix, with Postell Pringle ’98 in the title roll and Greg Qaiyum ’98 its co-creator, “conforms broadly to the original” but is “continually infused with impish humor,” notes a glowing review by The New York Times’ Charles Isherwood.

The production got rave reviews during its Chicago run in 2013, when it also played at the Cook County jail, .

In Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of Othello: The Remix, Postell Pringle ’98 (left, as Othello) and GQ (Iago) face off as Iago’s plot unfolds. (Photograph by Michael Brosilow)

The adaptation “conforms broadly to the original,” notes the Times review, but is “continually infused with impish humor; it’s as much a spoof of Othello as it is a serious attempt to translate the play into a contemporary musical idiom.”

Othello here “is a musical eminence at the top of his fame and his game (think Jay Z),” writes reviewer Charles Isherwood. “Mr. Pringle is a commanding, virile presence. His transformation, under Iago’s manipulation, into a monster of sexual insecurity doesn’t carry the dramatic force it does in the original, but we do see clearly noble heart corrupted.”

The production is by the Q Brothers, whose creative directors are GQ (Greg Qaiyum ’98) and JQ (his brother, Jeffrey). Pringle is the director of choreography.

In a recent interview with , Pringle says that the most challenging part of the role is “probably getting raw and honest with the depths of this character’s feelings,” not to mention “the roller coaster ride which he has portraying love and betrayal and hate and confusion.”

That’s a “huge range of emotions in an 80-minute span of time.”

�ֲ���ý joins national bid to defend undocumented students — Lewiston Sun Journal

A Lewiston Sun Journal story on Nov. 23 reported President Spencer’s joining with other college presidents to sign a letter to President-elect Donald Trump urging the continuation and expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“We stand ready to defend the rights of any and all of our students.”

that �ֲ���ý “has maintained an unwavering commitment to recruiting students regardless of gender, race, religion, economic background or family circumstance” since the college’s 1855 founding.

“By adding our voice to this important issue,” she says, “we continue to honor this mission and we stand ready to defend the rights of any and all of our students to pursue their educational goals.”

In a Nov. 30 statement to the �ֲ���ý community, Spencer discusses the college’s DACA policy in the context of “a set of actions we have taken to speak out against any present or potential encroachment on the rights of individuals in our community or values central to the �ֲ���ý mission.”

A World’s Fair that hoped to show the superiority of a Caucasian way of life — The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

Buffalo’s hosting of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition “seemed like a good idea at the time,” writes Wall Street Journal reviewer Howard Schneider. “Alas, it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to: The fair was afflicted by complications, including the worst complication of all — the murder of a president,” William McKinley.

That and more is the substance of Professor of History Margaret Creighton’s new book, The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair.

Schneider calls the book a “deft, thorough account of how the exposition and its home city became the victims of wretched luck” and how the fair “was a microcosm of some momentous facets of the United States, good and bad” of the time, including how the country hoped to “demonstrate the superiority of Caucasian, specifically American Caucasian, attributes and culture.”

An exhibit that transcends differences and offers new perspectives — Vogue Arabia

Vogue Arabia talks to Dan Mills, director of the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art, and Loring Danforth, Dana Professor of Anthropology, co-curators of Phantom Punch, the museum exhibition featuring contemporary Saudi Arabian artists.

“The exhibition aims to promote cross-cultural communication, understanding, and appreciation,” said Danforth. “It is through projects like this that we are able to transcend the real differences that separate us; draw on the equally real shared values that unite us and allow us to move toward a world with less hatred, conflict, and violence.”

In America, “very little is known about contemporary Saudi art and artists,” Mills said. “With this exhibition, we have a rare opportunity to gain critical new perspectives on Saudi society and culture from a group of perceptive young artists.”

“Tagged and Documented” (2013) by Huda Bedoun appears in Phantom Punch.

A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1978, Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth has published Crossing the Kingdom: Portraits of Saudi Arabia, based on the Short Term he led to that country in 2012. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Five years ago, a �ֲ���ý student made Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth an offer he couldn’t refuse: Would he be interested in leading a Short Term course to Saudi Arabia?

“I was stunned,” recalls Danforth.

Few people get to visit Saudi Arabia, let alone study there. For one, the country does not issue tourist visas, the Lonely Planet calling it “one of the most difficult places on Earth to visit.”

Crossing the Kingdom: Portraits of Saudi Arabia challenges “destructive Orientalist stereotypes of Saudi Arabia,” says Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department routinely warns visitors of the “ongoing security threat due to the continued presence of terrorist groups.”

Against that backdrop, the �ֲ���ý trip to Saudi Arabia that Danforth and his 16 students took in the spring of 2012 enjoyed amazing access facilitated by the student who made the offer to Danforth, Leena Nasser ’12, a politics major from Dhahran, whose father works for a multinational corporation in Saudi Arabia.

The �ֲ���ý group got to visit with academic and religious leaders; journalists, artists, and human rights activists; and top-level executives with the national oil company, Saudi Aramco.

A few weeks after the trip, the school year was over, and Danforth was poised to embark on a sabbatical-year research project in Greece, a country whose culture and history had yielded four scholarly books over Danforth’s career.

But as he tried to start his intended project — studying a transborder national park in northern Greece — he felt a professional calling to “prove worthy” of the “priceless gift” of the experience in Saudi Arabia.

So he wrote a book, Crossing the Kingdom: Portraits of Saudi Arabia (University of California Press, 2016), a collection of essays on Saudi topics with chapter titles such as “Roads of Arabia: Archaeology in Service to the Kingdom,” “Driving While Female: Protesting the Ban on Women Driving,” and “Saudi Modern: Art on the Edge.”

(In fact, Danforth is using his experience with Saudi modern art to co-curate, with director Dan Mills, the , opening at the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art in October.)

Here’s what Danforth said about a book whose major goal is to challenge “destructive Orientalist stereotypes of Saudi Arabia by offering alternative images of its people, their society, and their culture.”

Who should read this book?

Everybody who is interested in Islam. Everybody who is interested in the Near East. Everybody who is interested in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula.

As you put off the Greek project to write this book, who was your sounding board?

Nobody. We had just gotten back from Saudi Arabia. There was graduation, and I’d moved over to Frye Street, where my office would be for my sabbatical. I’m thinking, “Okay, now I can start working” on the Greek project. But the Saudi stuff was just so fresh and interesting.

I didn’t fully understand it. I couldn’t process it. And I felt it was so valuable and interesting that I couldn’t let it go. So I figured, “Okay I’ll try to write a New Yorker-style article. I started one and finished it. Then wrote another. Then I thought, “Maybe I have a book.”

This is not a traditional academic monograph. When I spoke to a publisher about it, I said, “It’s a good thing I didn’t need this book to get tenure.” And he said, “If you’d needed this book to get tenure you wouldn’t have written it.” Which is unfortunately true, in a way.

There’s a line in your introduction that says, “As an anthropologist, I felt an obligation to prove worthy of this opportunity.” Why the qualifier “as an anthropologist?”

The experience was so quintessentially anthropological: where you go to another culture and you’re talking to people and learning about their culture.

One of the reviewers said, basically, “You think you can visit Saudi Arabia for a month and write a book?” But that’s what a writer like Jane Kramer of The New Yorker does. She once visited Greece for a week, wrote an article for The New Yorker, and it was very good. She got it.

The issue is not how much time you spend in a country. It’s the quality of what you have to say.

What was it like being a teacher, a �ֲ���ý representative, and a researcher all in a single trip?

I was most aware of juggling all those roles when we walked into an government office, say the Ministry of Education, and it was my job to hand out some �ֲ���ý gear and say, “Here we are from �ֲ���ý, and it’s a pleasure to be here.”

The students were watching me, and I was modeling diplomacy. But I wanted to give them the opportunity to ask questions. And I had questions myself.

I am a better teacher because I am a scholar. But the reverse is not always true.

It was just an unbelievable experience, shifting from spending an hour talking with students in the evening about what we learned, then going back to my room and scribbling notes myself.

I would try to get them to take notes at the level at which I did. They’d ask, “Do we have to write all the time?” And I’d say, “Yes, you have to write all the time.”

“For 40 years I’ve been totally committed to the balance of teaching and scholarship that exists at �ֲ���ý,” says Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth. Still, he says, there’s a tension between the two. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

We say that teaching and research are in balance at �ֲ���ý. But in terms of your experience in Saudi Arabia, were they integrated?

For 40 years I’ve been totally committed to the balance of teaching and scholarship that exists at �ֲ���ý. But often at an individual level, hour by hour and week by week, there’s a tension between the two.

I am a better teacher because I am a scholar. But the reverse is not always true. I can’t take �ֲ���ý students to Greece — my research is just not set up to have students next to me as I’m trying to establish rapport with an elderly Greek woman.

But the Saudi Arabia trip was a total synthesis of the two, where I was there with 16 students teaching a course, and that experience was also giving me a chance to do fieldwork.

You said your skills as an ethnographer and writer allow you to share new insights in the Saudi culture. What are the skills?

Part of doing fieldwork — interviewing people and observing things — is just raw commitment. Everything that happens and everything people say, you just write it down as carefully and as fully and as accurately as you can.

Another really important part of it is an eye for detail. In a hotel, I saw a laundry slip that had the most amazing list of the kinds of clothing worn by the people who stayed there — from 1950s American styles to South Asian clothes to Arab clothes, and I just said to myself, “The whole world is in this list.”

It’s the ability to notice things that are revealing and interesting.

You quote anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who said that good interpretive anthropology means making “small facts speak to large issues.” Isn’t there a chance that a broad judgment extrapolated from small facts can be quite wrong?

Yes. An Orientalist could take a concrete fact, that 15 of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, and go off and say it’s an evil country. Being concrete doesn’t necessarily lead to avoiding negative generalizations.

During the 2012 Short Term to Saudi Arabia, anthropology major Devin Tatro ’14 talks with Saudi men during an outing to a desert farm in the Eastern Province. At the gathering, the �ֲ���ý women got permission not to wear their abayas. (Photograph by Ana Bisaillon ’12)

Whatever issue you are trying to speak to, you can find examples that support it and you can find examples that don’t support it. Either way, you need the ability to maintain that the complexity of the world throughout your interpretation.

Geertz uses the phrase “thick description” to describe this kind of interpretive anthropology. For example, you might ask, “What’s the point of Hamlet?” Well, it has lots of points, and to make sense of it as a whole means I have to show you the complexity, depth, and meaning of the text.

That’s true whether it’s the text of Hamlet or a Greek ritual. The situation at hand is always more complex than people think. And often that’s what good anthropology ends up arguing.

How did your group park their Western perspectives when looking at Saudi Arabia?

Well, our group wasn’t all Western. We had students from Lithuania, Nepal, China, as well as Saudi Arabia itself.

We were in a hotel and some Chinese businessmen arrived. I said to the Chinese student, “Why don’t you talk to them?” She said, “In China, you can’t just go up and start talking to people.” I said, “We’re not in China. Go talk to them.”

But it’s totally accurate that we have assumptions that come from our own cultural background, and we have to bracket those, put those aside, and then decide whether they’re relevant.

We had an encounter with a Saudi woman who argued that homosexuality is evil. Sodom and Gomorrah being buried in lava showed that God punished homosexuality.

My feeling is that if you aren’t going to talk to people that you disagree with, then you might just as well stay home.

Our students — one with two mothers and another whose uncle is gay and had just adopted a child with his partner — were just shaking listening to this stuff. In that situation, do you say, “Oh, homophobia. Gee, how interesting”? Or do you say, “I disagree with that”?

The students expressed their disagreement politely and respectfully. One was in tears afterwards, fearing she’d insulted the woman. I said, “No, you spoke up and expressed your opinion.”

My feeling is that if you aren’t going to talk to people that you disagree with, then you might just as well stay home. But it’s a challenge to navigate this path, when to be relativistic and when to say, “This is not how I would want my country run.”

You describe how you feel when you experience a new culture, calling it almost like a secular conversion experience. Is it what the Greek philosophers might’ve called enthusiasmos?

Enthusiasmos: “God in you.” Like spirit possession. Yes. It’s a motivator. You have this overwhelmingly powerful experience — what are you going to do with it? You can’t just forget about it or let it pass or ignore it. You want to do something worthwhile with it or share it.

In a note to your students at the end of the course, you said the experience in Saudi Arabia might prove to be “ineffable” — inexpressible.

I told them that they do not have to be able to share the experience. A transcendent, ineffable experience can enrich your life. I told them to hold on to it as long as they can.

During the 2012 Short Term to Saudi Arabia, a group of Saudi boys cavort for the camera during a desert outing to the Eastern Province. (Photograph by Gintare Balseviciute ’13)

It’s really hard to share such an experience with somebody who wasn’t there. People are going to say, “How was Saudi Arabia?” And you’re going to want to talk for an hour, and they’re going to say, “So what happened at the faculty meeting yesterday?”

But from a teaching perspective, you do want your students to be able to communicate what they experienced, right?

Yes, and there are good ways to do it. Theses, presentations, and talking to your friends are all ways to try to keep it alive. You just have to work hard to find people who have a genuine interest.

�ֲ���ý does a good job at giving students a serious chance to communicate their abroad experiences, whether formally through thesis and coursework or informally through continued get-togethers between faculty and students. Until the students on the trip all graduated, we had dinner once a month, if only so they could say, “Wow, remember when we did that?”

We talk about purposeful work at �ֲ���ý. An anthropological experience like this can inspire you to commit yourself long-term to helping people understand Islam or helping people understand the Near East or working for peace in the Near East. And several students on the trip have done so.

How does the book reflect what it was like watching your students experience Saudi Arabia?

That was a struggle because I didn’t want it to be a book about “Our Trip to Saudi Arabia,” or “this is what it’s like to travel with a group of students to Saudi Arabia.” I had no desire to write that kind of book.

But the last chapter, “Who Can Go to Mecca?” has a section about a dilemma that arose during the trip.

We had met Dr. Sami Angawi, an inspiring religious leader. I think of him as a Muslim Quaker or a Muslim Unitarian Universalist, a concept I didn’t think could exist, but I was wrong. He told me that he’d be happy to arrange for me to visit Mecca. I said that I wasn’t a Muslim. He said, “That’s between you and God. If you’d like to go to Mecca, I can arrange it.” I said, “Thank you but I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

But some of the students saw him the next day. Afterward they told me that they were going to go to Mecca.

I said, “But you’re not Muslim.” They said, “That doesn’t matter.” I said, “Oh, yes, it does,” and they said that Dr. Angawi was going to arrange it.

It turned out that they were planning to go to the Islamic Education Foundation in Jeddah and sign a statement that would make it possible for them to go to Mecca. I asked about the statement, which, it turned out, was the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger.”

I had individual meetings with two of the three and said, “Are you really going to convert to Islam?”

So I said, “You’re going to convert to Islam?” No, they told me. “We’re just going to say that and then go to Mecca. I said, “Well, you are going to convert to Islam. Do you really want to convert to Islam?”

I asked our hosts, and I asked people at �ֲ���ý: “What should I do?” I was responsible for their safety. I didn’t feel I could just say to them, “You can’t convert to Islam.” But I wanted them to know that was what they were doing. So I had individual meetings with two of the three and said, “Are you really going to convert to Islam?” The details are in the book, but it was really uncomfortable and painful and awkward, and they were angry at me.

Ultimately, I didn’t say, “You can’t go.” I said, “If you do this you’re converting to Islam, at least as I understand it.” And I said that if they went to Mecca and missed the plane — this was the last day of the trip — they were on their own. In the end, for a combination of reasons, they didn’t go.

To me that was really interesting. I was taking a harder line than Dr. Angawi’s more inclusive approach. I was defending the Saudi government’s position that only Muslims can go to Mecca, which is a position I don’t agree with individually.

When you challenged the students, were you challenging them as their teacher, as a researcher, as the leader of a �ֲ���ý contingent in country?

Not as a researcher, no. It was as a teacher in the broadest sense, and as a �ֲ���ý official in a narrower sense. I didn’t want an article in The New York Times about some �ֲ���ý students arrested for going to Mecca.

What I was more focused on, and what I was taking really seriously, was what the right thing to do was morally. And I had a firm belief that from my perspective it was morally wrong for them to go to Mecca.

As a teacher, are you teaching morals?

I was teaching the issues that came out of that dilemma, which were directly related to the question of what it means to convert.

As a teacher and �ֲ���ý official, I decided that it was not my position to forbid them from converting to Islam. But I wanted them to know that in my opinion they were really converting to Islam. They needed to think seriously about it, and if they wanted to read and study the Qur’an for a couple years, then convert, and then go to Mecca, that made perfect sense.

But if they want to go to Mecca now because they think they might maybe think about becoming a Muslim — it just struck me as irresponsible.

�ֲ���ý College has named three Dana Professors as two members of the anthropology faculty and one member of the religion faculty.

Established in 1966 with a matching grant from the Charles A. Dana Foundation of New York City, Dana Professorships recognize exceptional teacher-scholars at �ֲ���ý. The Dana Professors named during summer 2004 are Loring Danforth and Steven Kemper, professors of anthropology, and John Strong, professor of religion.

The additions bring to seven the number of Dana Professors at �ֲ���ý.

Danforth, of Lewiston, came to �ֲ���ý in 1978. He earned his doctorate and master’s degree at Princeton University and his bachelor’s degree at Amherst College.

Danforth has conducted research on the Greek Civil War and on ethnic Macedonian populations. He is the author of The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton University Press, 1995) and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement (Princeton University Press, 1989), both selected for the CHOICE list of outstanding academic books.

Kemper, also of Lewiston, started at �ֲ���ý in 1973. He earned his doctorate and master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his bachelor’s at Dartmouth College.

Kemper has made a dozen research trips to Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia. He is the author of The Presence of the Past (Cornell University Press, 1991), an exploration of the contradictions involved in textualizing the history of Sri Lanka, and of Buying and Believing: Sri Lankan Advertising and Consumers in a Transnational World (University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Strong, of Auburn, started at �ֲ���ý in 1978 and chairs the religion department. He received his doctorate at the University of Chicago, his master’s degree at the Hartford Seminary Foundation and his bachelor’s at Oberlin College.

Strong’s several books include The Legend and Cult of Upagupta: Sanskrit Buddhism in North India and Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 1991), The Buddha: A Short Biography (Oneworld Publications, 2001) and the forthcoming Relics of the Buddha (Princeton University Press).

Since the early 1960s �ֲ���ý has received a number of grants from the Dana Foundation. Through these awards, the Foundation has recognized and honored excellence among �ֲ���ý students and faculty.

In 1966 the foundation awarded �ֲ���ý a grant to establish an endowed professorship fund that would recognize faculty members for exemplary teaching, the value of their research and their service to �ֲ���ý. Between three and seven Dana professors from across the disciplines hold the honor at any one time. The other Dana Professors are: Martin Andrucki, of the theater and rhetoric department; George Ruff, physics; Thomas Wenzel, chemistry; and Richard Williamson, French.

In 1965 �ֲ���ý received support from the Foundation to establish the Dana Scholars Program, which recognizes 10 men and 10 women from each first-year class for academic excellence and promise, leadership potential and service.

The Dana Foundation awarded funds to �ֲ���ý in 1963 to support the construction of Dana Chemistry Hall. It also supported the construction of Ladd Library in 1971 and renovations of Memorial Commons in 1966 and 1976. In 1984 the foundation provided funds to established the Dana Research Apprenticeship Program, which supports student research.

The symposium, which begins in Pettengill Hall at 9 a.m., is designed to share �ֲ���ý scholarship with alumni, students and their parents, along with the faculty at large. The 10 presentations involve research soon to be published, projects still in development, and results of sabbaticals. Questions and discussion after each talk are encouraged. Among the presenters are:

Margaret Imber, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies, who uses the legal defense of a Roman citizen (accused of seducing a widow with magic) to illustrate how provincial Romans constructed their cultural identity;

Loring M. Danforth, professor of anthropology, who makes the game of soccer a frame for examining ways in which the ethnic and cultural narratives of Australian society serve the country’s political and economic interests;

Erica Rand, associate professor of art. Rand, author of the alternative social history Barbie’s Queer Accessories (Duke University Press, 1995), scrutinizes Ellis Island for the traces of immigrants whose sexual and cultural identities fell outside the mainstream.

Designed to inform the �ֲ���ý and Lewiston-Auburn communities about the unfolding events in Europe, Browne and Danforth will make brief presentations about their areas of expertise, followed by questions from the audience.

Danforth received critical acclaim for his recent book The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transitional World (Princeton University Press, 1997). Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict– set in the broader context of Balkan history and the more narrow context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia– in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition and the role of the state in building a nation.

Browne, an expert in Balkan language, literature and culture as well as Russian popular culture, has traveled frequently to Yugoslavia and Croatia, and communicates regularly with friends and colleagues in Serbia. He is critical of U.S. And NATO policies leading to and following the Paris peace talks.

In The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, just published by Princeton University Press, Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition and the role of the state in building a nation.

The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia. The book concludes with an analysis of the construction of identity on an individual level among immigrants from northern Greece who have settled in Australia, where multiculturalism is an official policy.

Harvard anthropologist Michael Herzfeld calls the book “the clearest exposition yet of the extraordinary complexities that have led observers to equate Macedonia with ‘confusion’… it is the most dispassionate available commentary on what has become a highly politicized situation. The use of data from Australia is a stroke of genius.”

A cultural anthropologist, Danforth is also the author of The Death Rituals of Rural Greece and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, both published by Princeton University Press.

Danforth joined the �ֲ���ý faculty in 1985. He has received number of prestigious grants and fellowships including a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Danforth graduated from Amherst College and received master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University.