American Samoa Quick Response Grant
In November 2009, Seth Quintus, graduate student in anthropology, will be a part of an archaeological project performing a coastal survey of Tutuila Island, American Samoa. On September 29, 2009 an earthquake-generated tsunami struck the Samoan archipelago, destroying both coastal areas and inland villages on several islands The survey team will be assessing tsunami damage to Tutuila’s existing archaeological sites and recording new sites unearthed by the waters for study in the future.
The project is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant program through the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Science. The multi-institution survey team consists of Principal Investigator Dr. David Addison (American Samoa Community College, Samoan Studies Institute), Quintus (NDSU), Chris Filimoehala (graduate student, University of Hawaii, Mānoa), and Tom Sapienza (graduate student, University of California, Berkeley).
Assisted by a small team of community members and students from the Samoan Studies Institute’s community and outreach program, each team member will survey a specific section of the island. Quintus will likely survey the east side of Tutuila Island, initially surveyed and studied for settlement patterns by Dr. Jeffrey Clark, Professor of Anthropology at NDSU, in the 1980s-90s.
Cultural heritage is important to Samoans in communities both on the islands and in the Samoan diaspora. This project will enhance Samoan communities’ awareness of and pride in Samoa’s rich archaeological heritage as well as generate attention to existing and future site preservation work and local interest in archaeology.
Whitsel travels abroad to assist Childhood Education Program
Christopher Whitsel traveled to Kazakhstan to provide research design assistance and training for evaluators of the Getting Ready for School initiative of the Open Society Foundation.
The program is a nine-month, home-based curriculum aimed to help parents prepare their young children, who have not attended formal pre-school, to arrive at school with the necessary skills and enthusiasm for learning. It especially targest families who cannot afford to send their children to pre-school or who live in rural areas without access to pre-schools.
Whitsel traveled to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in October of 2009 to participate in the initial training of the local data collectors. He will continue to guide the evaluation process throughout the year and return to Tajikistan to assist in the second round of evaluations in the coming summer.
Hazard Mitigation Planning presented by Yoon
Dong Keun (D.K.) Yoon, presented a paper at the 50th anniversary conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning on Oct. 1 in Crystal City, VA. The paper was titled "Examining Factors That Contribute to Hazard Mitigation Plan Preparedness."
Yoon examined the adaption rate of the multi-hazard mitigation plan in the U.S. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 requires state, local and tribal governments to have an approved local hazard mitigation plan in place to be eligible for participation in the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program project funds. "Even with this requirement in place, many local governments in the U.S. have yet to adopt a Federal Emergency Management Agency-approved multi-hazard mitigation plan," he said.
The paper revealed that only 44.3 perent of local governments in the U.S. were served by local FEMA-approved multi-hazard mitigation plans as of July 2009.
Sather-Wagstaff publishes book chapter and Journal Article
Joy Sather-Wagstaff, assistant professor of anthropology, is the author of a chapter for Intangible Heritage Embodied, a book edited by Helaine Silverman and D. F. Ruggles and published by Springer. This book both explores and critiques UNESCO’s 2003 convention for protecting intangible heritage. The authors argue for an understanding of intangible heritage as that which is practiced and culturally transmitted through the performing body.
Sather-Wagstaff’s chapter is titled “Folk Epigraphy as Intangible Heritage at the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City and Beyond.” In this chapter she analyzes commemorative graffiti and other message-leaving forms as traditionally transient and temporary embodied memory acts that are now made more durable for use in museums and memorial landscapes through photography, art, digital archiving, and architecture.
Sather-Wagstaff also had a journal article titled "Picturing Experience: A Tourist-centred Perspective on Commemorative Historical Sites" appear recently in Tourist Studies: An International Journal. This appeared in a special issue of the journal focusing on the use of ethnographic methods for tourist and tourism studies. The article discusses the value of ethnographic methods for studying tourist photography in order to understand tourists’ experiences from their own visual and emotional perspectives.
Sather-Wagstaff is currently engaged in a collaborative research project at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with Dr. Rebekah Sobel, Program Evaluator for the museum. Sather-Wagstaff and Sobel are assessing museum visitors' visit and post-visit experiences regarding a new interactive exhibit in the museum and online: http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/take_action/. The installation, From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide Today, asks visitors to use the context of the Holocaust and three case studies in Darfur, Rwanda, and Bosnia to take action against hate and genocide through a focus on the recent genocide, ongoing conflicts, and conflict resolution.
