Happy Mother's Day: Academia and Maternity Leave

I'm about half-way through my second pregnancy right now.  I gave birth to my almost-4-year-old daughter while in grad school, right after I accepted a fellowship to complete my dissertation.  It was a fairly traumatic delivery, and it was tough completing my degree with a nursing infant, but I did it thanks to the flexibility and funding that the fellowship provided.  This time is different, though.  Now I am employed as a tenure-track assistant professor, and negotiating a maternity leave at my university has been eye-opening.

I'd naively assumed that I had all the information this time.  After all, I knew that my university offers no paid leave, and I had asked HR about FMLA early last fall.  The FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) policy, however, is the only one my university lists under information for parental leave; there are no policies at the university level going deeper or beyond this, including no policies for stopping one's tenure clock.  So how does a faculty member due to give birth in early October deal with FMLA, which gives employees of my public university up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave?  Teaching a full load of classes is not a great option; I'd have up to 7 weeks with my students (provided I don't deliver early) and then have to find someone(s) willing to take over my three courses for little or no pay.  Taking a course reduction, though, means taking a reduction in pay, as our salaries are mainly tied to being able to complete our teaching duties, regardless of the fact that we also have research and service requirements.  For other university employees, FMLA likely isn't as big a deal -- if you're an admin assistant, for example, you could work until you're due, and then a temp fills in while you're on leave.  For faculty giving birth in the middle of the semester, being able to take FMLA requires a great deal of flexibility from your chair, dean, and the administration, as they have to OK a series of "alternative work assignments" to teaching.  At my institution, in order for the university to keep subsidizing your health insurance benefits, you have to work full-time -- which means even if a faculty member is willing to work half-time because alternative assignments can't be found, it may not be in the faculty's best financial interests, as insurance premiums skyrocket when the university is not subsidizing them.

I am very glad I don't have to deal with the issues concerning FMLA and health insurance premiums, as my whole family is on my husband's insurance plan, which has much better coverage and is fully subsidized by his employer.  I also worked out a compromise for my maternity leave with the help of my chair and the dean: my chair found me an alternative work assignment for this summer and the fall, and I am working a reduced course load (two instead of three classes) in the spring because of my concerns with returning to work full-time with a nursing 3-month-old (that I can't have on campus, as our daycare prioritizes students and won't take infants until 6 months).  This compromise ends up with my working 60% time, so I get 60% of my annual salary.  And it's literally the best solution I could come up with.

Map of paid maternity leave around the world.
(Credit: ChildrensChances.org)

Women in academia are starting to have conversations about maternity leave and work-life balance around the U.S.  (And I specifically mention this country, as we are the only industrialized nation to provide no guaranteed paid leave for working mothers.  I suspect most women in other industrialized countries don't have these conversations.)  In a related vein, American funding organizations are asking how to retain women faculty and teachers in STEM fields in particular.  My university has a several-year-long grant from the NSF to study issues related to female STEM faculty at my institution and to implement changes.  A new program from Elsevier offers funding for organizations willing to find solutions to work-life balance problems for female faculty, as attrition at the assistant professor level for female faculty is high.  Programs to help with childcare could make our lives better (it would be great if I could have my infant on campus with me for better bonding and breastfeeding, for example).  Programs to form parent groups could help with emotional support.  What we need in order to retain female faculty, though, is paid parental leave.  What we need are clear policies at the university level that are fair and equitable for all working parents. What we need is the realization that faculty with PhDs have so many more skills than standing in front of a classroom and talking and that we can be paid for these skills.

I'd like to survey universities around the country, via their HR websites, to see what parental leave policies they have on the books.  (Maybe this has already been done?)  Who provides paid leave?  Who provides alternative work assignments?  What is the retention rate of female faculty there?  Are faculty who are parents happy, successful, and supported?

Until then, here are some tips and suggestions about academic maternity leave gleaned from my months' worth of information-gathering at my university and elsewhere:

• Know your rights under FMLA.  This government policy covers employees at companies with 50 or more employees.  At the very worst, you likely have up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave available, with the right to be reinstated to your position at full pay without any change to your original terms of employment.  From what I understand, though, employers cannot require you to take more than 6 weeks of unpaid leave; they are required to find you alternate duties if you can't perform your normal ones due to pregnancy or post-partum/nursing issues.  In reality, though, it can be difficult to convince universities that you have skills other than teaching that you can be paid for.

• Find out if you have disability coverage or insurance.  Many women in the U.S. take short-term disability (6 to 8 weeks) to cover maternity leave.  Most plans will pay you 2/3 of your salary for the period of disability, and many employers specifically do allow maternity leave as a covered disability (which is a whole other conversation, of course).  At my university, disability coverage is not automatically provided and is a separate insurance plan for which I would have to pay full premiums. This was not made clear to me during benefits orientation or an early meeting with HR. Once I found out about this option, I wasn't eligible, as I was already pregnant.

• Contact your faculty union representative.  That is, if you have a union.  Here in Florida, we have the UFF.  I'd naively assumed I was automatically a member of the union, as I was in the last state I worked that had a faculty union (NY), but here enrollment is not mandatory and requires dues of 1% of your salary per year.  The union may not be able to do much, but they may be able to offer solutions and advocate on your behalf to your dean.  You may also be able to contact the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) for help.  We have only one chapter in the entirety of Florida, though, so I didn't look into this further.  The American Association of University Women (AAUW) may have suggestions as well, but again, since we don't have a chapter anywhere nearby, I didn't pursue this.

• Take sick and/or vacation leave.  If you have paid sick and/or vacation leave, you can likely take this during a maternity leave, generally in concert with FMLA.  I accrue sick leave at a rate of about 2 weeks per year, which means to earn a full semester's paid maternity leave, I'd have to be here 7-8 years first.  We have a sick leave pool, where people can deposit unused leave and others can take that leave, but I am not eligible for that because I haven't been here a year yet.  So check into the rules and regulations for taking leave.

• Identify alternative work assignments.  For me, this was the most difficult task, since I am new to the university and confused about navigating all the policies (or lack thereof) in front of me.  I talked to my department chair, but I also talked to two other department chairs (both of whom are parents), emailed several women at my university about their experiences, and talked to friends who are faculty at other institutions for suggestions.  These days, online or blended/hybrid courses are a reality on most campuses, as are MOOCs, so perhaps teaching a full load could work for some female faculty.  If you've been at a university for a while, there may be administrative tasks you could take on: help with getting information in line for an upcoming department or university review (e.g., SACS accreditation).  But for new, un-tenured faculty, your best bet may be to ask your department chair what can be done: revising and updating labs for a popular class; taking on extra advising of students; creating and hosting a mini-conference; working on and submitting a large grant proposal; redesigning and updating the department's public-facing marketing (e.g., website, brochure, newsletter).  For what it's worth, I will be doing this last option for my alternative assignment.

• Consider stopping your tenure clock.  Many universities have policies for tenure clock stoppage, for reasons such as parental leave or illness of yourself or a family member.  If you are eligible to stop your tenure clock for a semester or a year, consider doing it.  But do ask if you will still be able to go up normally if you stop it, or will that count as "early" (and does your university allow for early tenure)?  If your university doesn't have a policy, as mine doesn't, there are still likely ways to stop the clock, provided your chair and dean agree and put it in writing.  I will be navigating the clock stoppage issue once I get my maternity leave plan in writing.

• Look into childcare options on or near campus, particularly if you're returning to work while your infant is still nursing.  If there are insufficient childcare options on campus, as on mine, bring these concerns to the administration.  Retaining female faculty is a priority of many campuses today, but solutions such as better access to childcare and on-campus parent organizations don't often cross the minds of administrators.  If you have flexibility in your schedule and duties, bring your infant to work with you during the week -- the world will not end if your infant is nursing in a faculty meeting, and it may even open many people's eyes to the challenges of work-life balance with an infant.

• Find out if your university has a parent (support) group.  At my grad institution, there were parent groups for the entire university and also for the grad students.  The grad student one was supported by a dollar or two of our student fees each semester.  (Then again, my grad institution offered 6 weeks of paid maternity leave to graduate TAs, so it's fairly progressive, particularly for a public uni in the South.)  There's no parent group at my university now, so I'm starting one.  Being able to talk to other faculty parents about the challenges they face, about the school system, neighborhoods, family-friendly activities, etc., really helps new faculty settle in to the area and the university.  I'm hoping to meet a lot of great people through this organization that I might not otherwise see, as parents of young children in particular tend not to go to faculty happy hour at 6pm on Friday evenings, for example.  A 10am bagel-and-OJ "brunch" on a Saturday at the gym, where my kids can run around while I chat with my colleagues?  That's much easier for me to do.

Finally, please please please start talking about these issues on your campus.  I've gotten advice--well-meaning, I'm sure--to keep my head down since I'm new and un-tenured.  Many women feel the need to stay under the radar and not make waves while they're pregnant, for fear of losing their job or health insurance. But that is no way to effect change.  If you are in a position to speak up or make changes at your university, even if it's just to open up a conversation with your fellow faculty members, do it!

So this Mother's Day, check into your university's parental leave laws, and start agitating for reform.  And feel free to add your personal experiences in the comments below!

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Is Blogging Really the Future of Public Anthropology?

In a new short article out in the British Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Martijn de Koning asks what challenges anthropologists face in using blogs as a method of anthropological outreach.  He begins by highlighting some of the motivations for anthropologists to blog: "[M]any anthropologists have suggested that for them the primary reasons for blogging are self-realization, creativity and networking, sharing research experiences and outcomes, and commenting on current affairs" (de Koning 2013:394).

As blogs have been around since the late 1990s, it seems a little strange that academic anthropologists are just now getting around to interrogating the utility of blogs and asking reflexive questions about our employment of the medium. de Koning quotes my 9 February 2012 blog post, "Blogs as Anthropological Outreach," to illustrate why some of us value blogging, although he only excerpts the first of these two paragraphs:

I blog because I find it rewarding - there's excitement in knowing that people who probably wouldn't touch my journal articles are reading about my work and about other developments in bioarchaeology; there's joy when I get emails from up-and-coming researchers, as young as middle schoolers, who want advice on how to make bioarchaeology a career; and there's the interaction with my readers that doesn't come across in the unidirectional, static medium of a publication.

Blogging is an exercise in writing for a different public, an exercise in taking all that jargon you learned in your coursework, distilling it, injecting your own ideas, and making it interesting. Writing a blog has helped me refine my research and my prose, and I think that my public lectures and my successful grant proposals in particular have greatly benefited from the practice. I always wish I had more time to blog. There's just so much cool stuff out there to talk about, and so little time to write...

Logo for PbO

Strangely, towards the end of the article, de Koning concludes that, "we can tentatively say that anthropology blogs appear to reach out mostly to fellow academics" (2013:396).  Considering the brevity of the article and the lack of any sort of concrete assessment of the range of anthropology blogs (see Anthropology Report for a good ecology of the anthro blogosphere), I was surprised by de Koning's conclusion.  After all, he cites my blog, one of whose prominent, recurring features is a critique of the forensic anthropology on the popular FOX TV show Bones each week.  Those posts are aimed at the general public, and I can say with certainty from my analytics, comments, and emails that non-academics are the main consumers of that information. Further, my posts have been picked up by a variety of internet sources such as The Daily Beast, The Browser: Writing Worth Reading, and CounterPunch.  My most popular blog post of all time, "Lead Poisoning in Rome - The Skeletal Evidence" is based on my own research but is written for the public; to date, it has garnered over 28,000 views but the article it's based on (Montgomery et al. 2010) has just one citation according to Google Scholar.  This is quantifiable public outreach.

Logo for AnthInPractice

de Koning also cites Krystal d'Costa's Anthropology in Practice, which is similarly aimed at a non-academic audience in spite of its location at Scientific American, and Krystal's writing has been showcased by such pop culture websites as BoingBoing.  Other blogs by anthropologists enjoy broad readership as well: bioanthropologist Barbara J. King writes at NPR blogs; archaeologist Rosemary Joyce writes at Psychology Today; the American Anthropological Association has a high-profile platform at The Huffington Post, to which dozens of anthropologists have contributed posts.  While many of these sites are directed at an educated audience, that audience is not composed entirely of academics.  Anthropologists are talking to the public.  And all of these anthropologists can tell you that the public is listening and responding in comments, tweets, Facebook shares, and email forwards.  Those stats are also quantifiable public outreach.

Flyer for T. Harrenstein's Foursquare
anthro outreach project in Pensacola FL

I will agree with de Koning, however, that the majority of anthropology blogs are likely focused on talking to academics in the language of academia, although I have not surveyed the blogosphere to test this hypothesis.  If true, it is unfortunate, since a whole world of audiences exists if we are only willing to learn how to write for and engage them in our discussions.  We definitely, in de Koning's words, need to "realize the full potential for public anthropology by blogging," (2013:397), and it was to this end that I required each of the graduate students in my Presenting Anthropology seminar this semester to create and maintain a social media presence.  What I found interesting from reading the students' reports this past weekend was that the majority of them felt most comfortable with Tumblr, a short-format blogging platform, and were wary of the often lengthy, academic-style posts that show up on such sites as Savage Minds.  My students by and large reported more engagement, in quantity and quality, through their Tumblr posts than through more traditional blog posts, even when those posts were the same content.  So one of the questions we need to reflect on as anthropologists interested in engaging the public is: Who is our audience, and how can we best reach them?  Is blogging the key?  If so, what platform, what format, what language do we use?  Or should other social media avenues be explored?  Rhetorical question, of course; the answer is a resounding YES!  Web 2.0 is founded on dynamism, and if we want to talk to the public, we need to be similarly flexible in our approach to reaching out.  For example, my grad student Tristan Harrenstein devised a Foursquare outreach program over the course of the Presenting Anthropology seminar, and we're excited to see what happens now that it's been deployed by the Florida Public Archaeology Network.

Finally, de Koning notes that it's somewhat ironic that anthropology blogs largely focus on a Western audience and topics related to Western ideologies, when we're the primary field that prides itself on a cross-cultural and often non-Western focus.  I endorse his call to create "a more global and plural anthropological community" (2013:397).  We need more anthropologists writing in a variety of languages about a variety of cultures and topics, specifically engaging the public in our attempts to explain the fascinating biocultural nature of humans around the world.

Until that happens, though, I think it is important to take stock of anthropologists' attempts at outreach, as people like Jeremy Sabloff (1998, 2011) have been advocating for over a decade, but to more specifically focus on the breadth of outreach we are already doing.  Although I maintain that blogging is important, and I continue to enjoy doing it, engaging in some much-needed self-reflection within the discipline on the methods of outreach that are currently ongoing and that can be deployed in the future would result in a much more thorough state-of-the-discipline article.

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M. de Koning (2013). Hello World! Challenges for blogging as anthropological outreach. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19 (2), 394-397. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.12040.

J. Montgomery, J. Evans, S. Chenery, V. Pashley, K. Killgrove (2010). 'Gleaming, white, and deadly': using lead to track human exposure and geographic origins in the Roman period in Britain. Journal of Roman Archaeology, S78.

J. Sabloff (1998). Distinguished Lecture in Archeology: Communication and the Future of American Archaeology. American Anthropologist, 100 (4), 869-875. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1998.100.4.869.

J. Sabloff (2011). Where have you gone, Margaret Mead? Anthropology and public intellectuals. American Anthropologist, 113 (3), 408-416.

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Roman Bioarchaeology Carnival XXVIII

New Finds

Battered body from the bog
(credit: Washington Post)

• 1 April.  A Danish team from Aarhus University found the remains of 40 men buried in the Teutoberg Forest during Roman campaigns in the early first century A.D.  While these remains come from a bog, they are not bog bodies (which are shells of leather skin with few or no bones) but rather well-preserved skeletons.
• 9 April.  "Archaeologists Find 10,000 Objects from Roman London"... and not one of them is a human skeleton, unfortunately.  But still a neat find (including phallic good luck charms)!
• 14 April.  So this is La Tene period and not Roman, but 14 burials in Iron Age Gaul point to possible warriors.
• 17 April.  According to LiveScience, "Roman-Era 'Cosmetics' May Have Treated Eye Chlamydia."  Wendy Morrison at Oxford University thinks that some of the so-called toiletry kits found in Roman Britain may instead be related to treatment of eye conditions like chlamydia.  Yes, you can get chlamydia in your eye. 
• 30 April.  Workmen digging to lay a water pipe came across at least four individuals who likely date back to the Roman period in Stickford, England.  Two were buried on their backs, but two -- an adult and child -- were "spooning," which isn't a common burial form for this time and place.  I haven't seen any follow-ups to this story yet, but the bones are being analyzed now.

Old Finds in the News

Skeletons from Herculaneum (credit)

• 30 March.  The bodies from Herculaneum are in the news this month.  An article in Heritage Daily summarizes some of the articles and books that deal with the human skeletal remains in "Bones of the Victims at Roman Herculaneum."  There was some additional news coverage of Erica Rowan's dissertation work on food remains from the sewers at Herculaneum in this BBC news video.
• 14 January.  Smithsonian Magazine has a piece on how "Romans Did All Sorts of Weird Things in the Public Baths--Like Getting Their Teeth Cleaned."  Frankly, cleaning one's teeth in a bath is not weird... it's what we do every day.
• 25 April.  The Museum of London has launched their Romans Revealed project to teach the public about immigrants and other lesser-known populations in Roman Britain.  There's a fairly long history now of finding Africans in particular in England, which I've covered previously here and here, and a great book called Roman Diasporas that you can check out for more info.
• 25 April.  A new Roman cookbook has come out, which inspired The Independent to publish a summary of historical info on Roman cooking as "Dinner at the Pompeii Takeaway." No osteological or palaeobotanical info, of course.  There are, at least, two Roman-inspired recipes at the end of the article.

Articles

• 26 April. The IJPP has an article by the team of Wheeler, Williams, Dupras, and Beauchesne on child abuse in Roman-era Egypt: "Shattered lives and broken childhoods: Evidence of physical child abuse in ancient Egypt."
• 28 April.  An article out in IJOA by Andre and colleagues deals with "Cremated human remains deposited in two phases: Evidence from the necropolis of the Tuileries site (Lyon, France: 2nd century AD)." 

Ongoing Projects

• Project Noah is an attempt to crowd-source information about the natural world.  They have a second on osteology -- people can upload pictures of animal bones they find lying around and ask for help with identification or identify the bones themselves.  It's a neat repository of photos of contemporary wildlife and domesticated animals.  Since I get several emails each year from people wanting to know what species the bone they found belongs to, this site is very useful to me.

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Bones - Season 8, Episode 24 (Review)

The Secret in the Siege

Episode Summary

Pelant and his nasty, mangled face is back!  And he's hiding out in some sort of Batman-evil-supervillain computer lair, watching the Jeffersonian and FBI gang on various surveillance cameras around the city.  Meanwhile, chez Booth & Brennan (which is always "the B&B" in my notes), Brennan doesn't want to buy Booth jerky, and Booth whines about not being married when a gift comes from his honeymooning mother.  He then gets a call about a dead body, and they head out to investigate.

A nature trail that's been closed for two months has turned up a partially scavenged body that's been dead for only about five days based on blowfly larvae.  Based on the gonial angle, dental wear, and shape of the palate, Brennan assesses the deceased as a Caucasian male in his mid-50s.  The bullet wound to the base of the occipital likely killed him, and yet there are additional gunshot wounds.  Booth suspects a hit man or some other trained killer who lured the unsuspecting man to the picnic area.  Sweets begins to suspect Pelant, and then realizes that Pelant is using Sweets' old papers from grad school as a how-to guide.

At the Jeffersonian, Brennan notices several remodelled gunshot wounds to the man's body, dating to about 8 to 10 years ago.  Overall, he seems to have been shot 12 times with a USP 9mm.  Angela's facial reconstruction gets a hit: Alan Friedlander, a retired FBI agent who was Booth's partner years ago.  Further analysis of Friedlander's body reveals puncture wounds on the tibia and humerus.  Brennan suggests these date to about 10 years ago as well (based on Harris lines, which aren't what she thinks they are -- more below).  There is no record of Friedlander's having been shot or bitten in the FBI's file on him, though.

Booth gets a call that agent Jeff Stone has been shot dead in public (in broad daylight in a nice part of D.C), with a gunshot wound to the base of the occipital and multiple shots to the rest of the body.  A witness, who is clearly the killer, leads them to suspect a man with a dagger tattoo, and Pelant calls Booth to gloat.  The Jeffersonian team finds similar injuries to Stone's body, also made with a 9mm USP.  Further, remodeled injuries to the right tibia are puncture wounds from a dog around 10 years ago (again with the incorrect use of the term Harris lines), but there are no records of these injuries in Stone's FBI files.

Cut to Booth at the FBI, talking about a massacre at a compound called Crystal Creek (which I suppose is like Waco or Jonestown).  Agents were attacked by guard dogs, and some were killed by being shot in the back -- likely by the cult members, but there was some disagreement that it could have been friendly fire.  Booth was also involved with the Crystal Creek incident.  Since Sweets thinks that Pelant is working through a surrogate, rather than killing people himself, he enlists the help of Angela and her google-fu to find Zane Reynolds, the child of one of the cult members whose parents were killed but who was unharmed in the incident, as he has a dagger tattoo. Booth waylays Reynolds and manages to prevent him from offing himself; at the FBI, he says he didn't kill those agents but wishes he had. Following all this drama, Brennan realizes she wants to marry Booth and proposes and gives him a big bag of jerky.  But Pelant witnesses the proposal and gets upset because he is no longer center stage.

Brennan and Saroyan look over the remains of Friedlander and Stone again.  Brennan realizes that both were shot 11 times; it seemed like Friedlander was shot 12 times, but the copper-jacketed bullet separated in his body and created two wounds instead of one.  Sweets then thinks that perhaps the surrogate is the child of an agent who died at Crystal Creek.  Sure enough, Harris Samuels was shot 11 times, including once to the back of the head, and his daughter Anna is an expert shot with complex grief disorder.  She also happens to be the "witness" to the Stone murder.  Anna, meanwhile, has been getting video messages from Pelant, who has virtually disguised himself as Samuels, and she has been carrying out instructions to kill various people.  She is instructed to call Booth and arrange a meeting.

Booth shows up to meet with Anna, but she doesn't show.  Cell phone coverage in the area is out, so Booth can't reach anyone.  Brennan gets the information on Anna over to the FBI, who immediately recognize her as the fake witness to the shooting.  Booth finds a pay phone and calls to get this information.  The FBI meanwhile is searching Anna's apartment and gets Angela access to her computer.  Angela decodes some mysterious message and realizes that Booth is not the target; Sweets is.  Pelant has orchestrated a massive traffic jam so that Anna can kill him.  Fortunately, Angela has car-recognition software too, so she finds Sweets' car instantly.  Booth heads over there, as does Brennan, and he gets there in the nick of time: he wounds Anna, preventing her from killing Sweets.

Brennan and Booth are happy as newly affianced people, but Pelant calls Booth back.  He threatens to kill five innocent people if Booth doesn't break off the engagement.  Booth complies, upsetting Brennan.  Season 8 cliffhanger, dun dun dunnnnn!

Comments

• Forensic
• Hoo boy.  Well, as usual, Brennan's identification of Friedlander relied on really variable skeletal indicators of sex (gonial angle), age (dental wear), and ancestry (palate shape).  I mean, generally I argue that the writers are simply trying to mix things up, but I just complained about the issues with dental wear and palate shape in the last two episodes...
• As usual, Friedlander's ID was never confirmed with dental records, fingerprints, DNA, etc.
• But the weirdest thing of all was Brennan's reference -- not once, but twice -- to using Harris lines to figure out when an injury happened.  Now, Harris lines are radiopaque lines that indicate growth arrest.  Or, in layman's terms, on xray you can sometimes tell if a person was malnourished or sick while a child, since the growth of the bone stops for a while (similar to enamel hypoplasias on teeth).  So using Harris lines to figure out the chronology of an injury is possible... but only if the person is young and injuries happened when the bones were still growing.  Both FBI agents were in their 50s, which means Harris lines can't tell Brennan when they were bitten by dogs.  Brennan also diagnoses Harris lines on Stone's body from a cursory glance at the tibia, which is impossible.
• Plot
• Generally, the Pelant plot lines don't make a whole lot of sense (but are dramatic and interesting), but this was definitely the worst of all of them.  I gather that Pelant convinced Anna to kill the FBI agents by telling her (in the guise of her dead father) that there was a conspiracy and the FBI actually killed her dad.  So it would make sense that he'd send her after Booth, but Pelant actually wanted Sweets.  Why did he want Sweets dead?  (Because he understood him too well?)  How did he convince Anna to kill Sweets, who was clearly not part of the Crystal Creek task force?  If he didn't decide until after the B&B proposal that he wanted to target Sweets, what was he planning on doing before then?  Alright, head hurts.
• Angela's microfiche-looking google thingymabob is pretty impressive.  It takes a few search terms from Sweets and finds the tattooed dude who didn't kill anyone.
• Pelant can knock out cell service for a giant section of metro D.C.?  Angela can find Sweets' car on grainy security video in a few seconds' time?  This is pretty spiffy technology.
• Dialogue
• "When I thought about living with Booth for the rest of my life, my phenylethylamine and grealine(?) levels were elevated..." - Brennan
• "I thought you'd want some weird tribal wedding and I'd have to pay for you with giraffes." - Booth
• "The archaic Catholic wedding ritual is important to you. Even as an atheist, I see the beauty in it. Besides, I speak Latin. Tu fueres asciationibus, Christine?"  First, Catholicism isn't exactly archaic; I mean, the entire religion is historical.  And second, I also know Latin, and Deschanel's pronunciation was horrific.  Just butchery.  I honestly cannot figure out what she's trying to say.  Regardless, sounds like classical Latin rather than ecclesiastical.  I'll save judgment on the grammar until I can figure out what the hell she was trying to pronounce.

Ratings

Forensic Mystery - C+.  Victims ID'ed pretty quickly, as were their injuries (nothing too complicated).

Forensic Solution - F.  Seriously, that's not what Harris lines are.  This is a giant, glaring error (I mean, a quick check of wikipedia would have told the writers that), hence the grade.  (Yes, it's finals week.)

Drama - C-.  Boo.  I was so looking forward to a Pelant season finale.  And that was a giant let-down.  I guess I was worried about Sweets for all of about a minute, but that was it.  And the B&B marriage drama was a snooze, honestly.

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At any rate, thanks for joining me for the eighth season of Bones!  Hope you've enjoyed these reviews.  Every year, I wonder aloud if I should continue to do these in the coming season, and every year I whine that it takes too much time and just makes me cranky about the show.  Then again, I'd be watching this show anyway and yelling at the TV anyway, so I might as well write it all down...

So what do you think will happen in season 9?  A resolution to the Pelant drama?

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Presenting Anthropology - Weeks 13&14 (Avant-Garde Projects)

Last week in class, we attempted to define what precisely avant-garde is, and we got into the mood by watching some old Project Runway clips from an avant-garde challenge.  The most discussion-worthy topics included Amber Case's idea of cyborgs and cyborg anthropology -- are we already cyborgs due to our reliance on technology?  Do we suffer from split personality issues because of the various statuses and personae we maintain and project?  From there, we talked about the potentials of and the drawbacks to technology -- are we constructing ourselves for us, for others? Are others helping to construct who we are through feedback and other channels?  And we talked a bit about the field of anthropology in general in light of Dawdy's "clockpunk" anthropology -- should we collapse the historic/prehistoric, us/them, and indigenous/industrialized dichotomies?  Should we collapse the Boasian four fields of anthropology?  If we did, would we seem less scatterbrained than we often do to the public ("Oh, I'm an anthropologist.  I study all of humanity, across time and space, and everything we've thought or have done or have said.  Sure, that's a field of study.")?  Mostly, we raised a lot of questions we couldn't hope to answer and looked at some projects on the web that we felt were particularly avant-garde.

This week's projects, then, ran the gamut, and I had no idea what to expect going in to class (which was kinda fun).  Projects included: mixed drinks inspired by a student's thesis; an episode of Drunk Archaeology (on analogy with Drunk History); a genealogy of all the anthropologists in the UWF anthro department; a sensory anthropology exercise; brochure for an anthropological travel agency; high school archaeo class curriculum; human stratigraphy (performance art on campus!); a collectible pin series integrating with a FourSquare social media project and FPAN; a department t-shirt; anthropology flyer bombing around the Florida Gulf Coast; slideshow of "real" archaeology; and a prototype sculpture of an anthropology monument (to go on the Mall in D.C., of course).  All of our scores this week were quite high (we rate each project based on aesthetics, quality of the topic, and ability to communicate anthropology), but the winners are below.

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* Second Runner-Up: Tristan Harrenstein's idea to create a collectible, commemorative set of pins integrated with his FourSquare project, with the blessing of the Florida Public Archaeology Network.  The idea is to give out one of five pins to people who participate in FPAN events.  Each pin displays a representation of a local monument or historic site (Arcadia Mill, Fort Pickens, Pensacola Lighthouse, Old Christ Church, and the T.T. Wentworth Museum), and each pin will be available for a particular amount of time.  Participants who collect all five pins over the course of a few months' time may then be eligible for an additional prize, such as an FPAN lanyard.  We all thought this was a neat and different way to present our local archaeological resources to the public, as well as to get the public involved on a regular basis and engaged in history.

* First Runner-Up: Becca Booker decided to create four mixed drinks inspired by her thesis topic, which revolves around a partially submerged archaeological site in the Escambia River.  Her drinks, then, include the Escambia River (which is very muddy), the Floating Bunkhouse, the Cypress Swamp Logging, and the Alligator Gar.  Becca brought in giant nalgene bottles full of these drinks and kicked off the seminar by passing out drinks and encouraging everyone to try more than one. (What a way to cap the semester!)  Only a couple people attempted all four; I unfortunately couldn't try any since I'm pregnant, which made the project hard to grade, but my taster-by-proxy Nelma proclaimed the Escambia River the best, followed by the Floating Bunkhouse, and others really liked the citrusy Cypress Swamp Logging.  For my part, I learned that alligator gar is a type of fish---a really freaking terrifying type of fish that needs to be highlighted by Ze Frank or WTF Evolution.  Here's Becca's drink list, in case you want to make your own:

* And the Winners of the Avant-Garde Challenge... Linda Hoang and Stella Simpsiridis created a "sensory anthropology" activity to counteract the over-reliance we tend to have as anthropologists on visual stimuli.  Their project is actually based on the sensory stimulation exercises used by the Alzheimer's Society of Manitoba, using as many of the five senses as possible to trigger thoughts, emotions, memories, and ideas, and they explained to us that not all cultures divide the senses in the way that we in the U.S. do -- ESP, altered states of consciousness, and other sensory experiences may be more a part of other cultures' understandings of sense than they are in our own.  So Linda and Stella got Nelma and Zach to volunteer -- they were blindfolded and handed a number of different objects: pottery, bone, woven blanket.  They were encouraged to touch the objects, smell them, and even taste them, then talk about what the objects meant to them.  Ground coffee, dirt, and bug spray were passed to the volunteers as well.  And they were treated to an audio compilation of sounds, both natural and cultural.  It was a neat exercise, and Nelma and Zach were excellent participants, often spinning tales about the memories that the object, scent, or sound triggered for them.  Below is the flyer/info sheet Linda and Stella made for their project (click to embiggen):

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That actually wraps up this semester's Presenting Anthropology (ANG6002) course here at the University of West Florida!  It was interesting and helpful as the instructor to blog about this each week, and I am glad that I got to highlight some of the students' awesome projects to #ShareAnthro with a wider audience.  Hopefully once the semester ends, I'll have a chance to reflect on the course as a whole in a separate blog post, so be on the look-out for that.  And if you ever end up using any of these ideas, please come back and drop me a line to tell me how it's going for you!  This is a seminar I hope to run again in the future, so any input from students, instructors, and the public at large would be appreciated.

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Bones - Season 8, Episode 23 (Review)

The Pathos in the Pathogens

Episode Summary

The Jeffersonian takes on a case at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  A body was found mingled with veterinary waste.  An infection such as necrotizing fasciitis was first suspected, but the changes to the remains and the state of decomp suggest an unknown pathogen that is highly virulent and is replicating quickly.  Dr. Ivan Jacobs of the CDC can't figure out what the disease is, so the remains are brought to the Jeffersonian so they can identify the victim and hopefully lead the CDC and FBI to the source and the cure.

Based on the (small size of the protuberance on the) occipital bone and the shape of the pelvic outlet, Vaziri concludes the victim was female.  Brennan estimates based on mandibular dental wear that she was 25 to 35 years old when she was killed.  The lesions on her long bones and ribs developed within the last 24 hours, and her soft tissue is turning to soup.  Jacobs thinks they are dealing with a single-strain RNA virus, and Saroyan attempts to isolate white blood cells from the heart.  Hodgins studies the larvae on the victim's clothing, which puts her in the Coral Hills, MD, area near time of death.  Still, ID is proving difficult because they can't get fingerprints, her mandible and maxilla were smashed, precluding dental identification, and Angela's facial reconstruction scanner is getting multiple hits in the missing persons database.  Brennan pores through the likely candidates on Angela's screen, and based on the prominent zygomatics, identifies Mia Garrett.

Booth questions Mia's boyfriend, Ben Carr, who reveals Mia was a blogger who focused on stories about big pharma, medical research, and doping in humans and animals.  He is also a blogger, writing about travel. Angela tries to get through Mia's computer files, but her steganographic encryption is cumbersome.  Of course Angela gets around it, and finds that Mia last spoke with Dr. Tessa Burke about mutations of SARS, Lassa, and yellow fever.  Booth questions Burke, but she didn't know Mia was dead and was highly interested in working with her to expose illegal and unethical issues with labs.

The Jeffersonian team is still trying to figure out the pathogen.  Blood results suggest it is not aerosolized, and the bone damage is similar to multiple myeloma, a fast moving type of cancer.  The lack of response to antibiotics further suggests that the disease is viral.  Brennan takes a bone marrow sample, and she, Jacobs, and Vaziri get ready to move the remains.  Vaziri, however, gets stabbed by a small needle embedded in the victim's humerus, potentially exposing him to the disease.  The bone marrow sample, however, tells Brennan, Saroyan, and Jacobs that the virus is similar to chikungunya (or CHIKV), owing to the look of the fibroblasts and the monocyte-derived macrophages.  The strain, however, cannot be positively ID'ed, which means there is no immediate cure for Vaziri, and the team has to figure out how the pathogen was mutated and by whom.

Booth questions Byron Fuller, who worked at a lab making performance-enhancing drugs for horses and who was sleeping with Mia.  Nothing infectious is found at his lab, though.  Then Ben the boyfriend gets questioned again, since he was writing about travel in the Indian rain forest when he found out about Mia's affair with Fuller.  Ben has access to syringes because he's a diabetic, but they end up being a different gauge.  Booth checks into Burke again, as Mia had been zeroing in on Biosafety-Level 4 labs capable of mutating pathogens; Burke worked for SimaTech BioLabs two years ago, but had been fired.  This time, he approaches Burke's former boss, Dr. Leonard Thorne, who accuses Burke of having stolen cultures of CHIKV from the lab.

Meanwhile, Vaziri is not doing well.  His fever spikes, he seizes, and his joints start to deteriorate.  The serum the CDC has for CHIKV doesn't help, but Brennan and Hodgins concoct an herbal folk remedy that gives Vaziri some more time by slowing the progression of the disease, and Saroyan and Jacobs induce hypothermia.  

Brennan re-scans Mia's bones and notes an active pathogen still in her body.  One of the long bones is bowing outward, and the site of injection at the humerus has developed a pocket in the trabecular bone.  Something had been added to the CHIKV.  Saroyan notes the presence of prokaryotes, and Hodgins identifies a strain of botulism toxin, one that's lab grade and therefore strictly monitored by the CDC.  The nearest lab turns out to be SimaTech, but they were only given clearance for it in the last year, meaning Burke could not have mutated the CHIKV or killed Mia.  Burke fingers Thorne, whose unethical practices she tried to shut down two years ago and that got her fired, as he was close to losing a large NIH grant and had been scrutinized by Mia.  Booth arrests Thorne at his office, but Thorne refuses to admit guilt or to provide the antidote, so he hauls him to the Jeffersonian to look at Mia's remains and to see what the virus is doing to Vaziri.  Even after an impassioned plea from Saroyan to save the man she loves, Thorne remains unswayed, so Brennan lies to him, telling him they have isolated the mutated CHIKV and injecting him with a syringe.  All is well, though, as this convinces Thorne to produce the antidote, which saves Vaziri's life.

Comments

• Forensic
• Victim's ID was never confirmed.  I don't buy at all that dental records would have been useless.  It's not like the teeth were missing, damaged, or filed down.  They were present; only her jaw had been damaged.
• Sex estimate based on the robusticity of the skull and the shape of the pelvis are alright, I suppose.  Age estimate based on dental wear was not; this is a poor, imprecise method of aging a skeleton.  Considering they had the pubic symphyses, which give the most accurate age and sex estimates, it's always weird to hear them base their conclusions on other skeletal indicators. (Yes, I know it's for variety's sake. It's just not realistic.)
• Glad to know that Brennan can ID a victim based on a photo more easily than a computer.  Because this doesn't in any way call into question the reliability of Angela's facial recognition software.
• Plot
• Sounds like some of the House writers dropped in to the Bones writing room this week.  Wasn't there a similar plot on House where Foreman contracts an unknown disease from a patient and is near death?  And I'm sure there was an episode in which House brutalizes someone in order to save a life.  That's not particularly in keeping with Brennan's character, though.
• It's sad that investigative blogger is more plausible than investigative journalist.
• Why didn't the CDC initially send more people?  Mackenzie Astin and his weird ear aren't cutting it.
• The part about the "fibroblasts and monocyte-derived macrophages" is straight out of Wikipedia.  Tell me I'm wrong.
• Yes, Saroyan's a doctor, and I guess the Jeffersonian is on lockdown, but... they really need another doctor to treat Vaziri.  Why does Cam always get to flout modern medical ethics and practices?
• Is Brennan really allowed to brutalize someone under arrest and not get penalized at all?  Again, I'd buy this from House, but Brennan's married to the FBI.  Then again, Booth brutalized a suspect a couple episodes ago...
• Uhm, so, CHIKV is pretty nasty, with the joint effects lingering for years, even after the disease has cleared.  Vaziri won't die, but it sounds like he'll have some very nasty, very painful arthritis for the foreseeable future.
• Dialogue
• "You're a lucky man, Agent Booth." -- Dr. Jacobs, being kinda misogynistic and definitely unprofessional.  What the what?

Ratings

Forensic Mystery - C. Victim was ID'ed pretty quickly.  Not too much of a mystery there.

Forensic Solution - D. The sex estimate was good; the age estimate based on dental wear was not. Facial reconstruction was unrealistic.  ID was never confirmed.  Buh.

Drama - B-. A bit of tension with Vaziri.  I didn't think they'd kill him off, but then again, they offed Nigel-Murray, so I wasn't going to put it past the writers.  I do hope Pej Vahdat's career takes off soon, though, so maybe there will be a Vaziri-offing at some point.

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Bones - Season 8, Episode 22 (Review)

The Party in the Pants

Episode Summary

A newbie attempting to work a backhoe at a building demolition site scoops up a decomposing human corpse and accidentally drops it on the forewoman.  She gets it off, but somewhere off-camera, the remaining load falls on the corpse, crushing the skull.  Brennan thinks that the individual was male, based on the crushed skull I guess, and Caucasian based on the parabolic dental arcade.  A uniform that the victim was wearing makes him appear to be a firefighter, but it is quickly revealed that the pants are tear-away and he was wearing a thong -- so he was more likely a stripper.  Flesh tone and ambient temperature put time-of-death at about four days prior.

Back at the Jeffersonian, Wendell notes that based on the epiphyseal union of the sternoclavicle, the victim was in his mid 20s.  This makes sense, Brennan avers, as those are the prime years for a man to strip.  Saroyan concludes, based on the lack of plaster and dust in the posterior pharynx, that the victim was dead before he was put in the building.  Wendell finds a calf implant, which carries a serial number and ID's him as Jack Spindler, an investment broker at Duncorp Investments.  Jack's boss, Seth Erikson, reported him missing, as Jack was one of their biggest earners, bringing in over $5 million in client investments as a rookie.  

Angela gets to work attempting to find where Jack worked as a stripper, hoping to find some colleagues or a place he could have been killed.  Wendell finds another clue in the bones: the left proximal tibia was cut and realigned, indicative of a tibial osteotomy, but it is an old, well-healed injury.  Brennan suggests that Jack had Blount's disease, common in severely overweight children.  Saroyan starts working on the vaginal fluid found in Jack's underwear, and Angela notices some of the cash Jack was carrying had been rolled up, leading Saroyan to think they might get nasal epithelial cells if it had been used to snort cocaine.

Sweets and Booth head to Jack's apartment, where they find evidence that he had been an overweight kid and also a voice message from his girlfriend, Kristi.  Booth questions Kristi at the FBI, but she insists that they always fought.  She does mention that her father invested over $1 million in Jack's company, and we later find out that she lost over $200,000 of that.  She fingers Jack's friend Storm, as Jack kept stealing Storm's stripping clients, about which they got into a fight at the gym.  Booth tracks down Storm at a bachelorette party and brings him back to the FBI for questioning.  Jack's right distal fourth metacarpal is fractured at the neck, suggesting he landed a punch shortly before his death.

Meanwhile, at the Jeffersonian, Wendell finds a v-shaped cut at a near 90-degree angle to the posterior aspect of the third cervical vertebra, which would have caused a severe contusion to the spinal cord.  Trace evidence wedged in the wound includes synthetic fiber and bedbugs.  Epithelial cells are found on the rolled up cash, and they match Cynthia White, a bachelorette who had Jack strip at her party.  The partial DNA evidence from the vaginal fluid matches her as well.  Her fiance, Jason, found out about the affair, but only post-hoc.  He pushed Cynthia, but he never saw Jack.  Angela traces records and emails on Jack's computer and notices he was engaging in a felony: buying up stock cheap, artificially inflating its price, and then selling it to clients before it crashed.  Seth Erikson is looking more guilty, but he has an alibi in Vegas for the night of Jack's death.

Additional fractures that Wendell notes to the cranium and ossicles finally give the team cause of death.  Displaced fractures to the incus and stapes suggest Jack was pistol-whipped with the butt of a gun.  Hodgins also finds evidence (oxidized malachite) in the wound that the victim may have been killed at the seedy Kingford Hotel.  Brennan thinks that Jack was beaten with a fake gun, the kind a stripper such as Storm would carry.  Storm had invested $5,000, all his savings, in Jack's fake stock and was devastated when he lost it all.  While in his hotel room, Storm got angry at Jack.  Meaning to give him a good beating, Storm pistol-whipped him, but Jack fell, knocking his neck on the edge of the bed.  Storm didn't want Jack dead, but he isn't sad that he is.

Oh, also, Booth's long-lost mother comes back, to tell him she's getting remarried to a long-term partner.  Booth is happy to see her at first, then pissed that she started a life without him (and his brother... what's his name? Jared? Isn't he in jail or something?), then forgives her and wishes her well by giving her away at her wedding.  Brennan, predictably, catches the bouquet.

Comments

• Forensic
• Apparently now Brennan can just look at a crushed skull and tell it's male without reference to any bony landmarks.  Handy!  Caucasian based on dental arcade alone is sketchy (as all humans have a parabolic arcade in comparison to, say, australopithecines).  I do buy the age-at-death, though, which was a nice vague range ("mid-20s") and also appropriately estimated based on epiphyseal closure of the medial clavicle.
• Kind of pointless to throw in the stuff about the tibial osteotomy and childhood obesity.  Not really relevant to anything in the plot.
• Saroyan sure can work magic with epithelial cells.  And Hodgins has that magic machine that identifies all sorts of bizarre particulates.
• Is it just me, or was the neck injury never fully explained?  I assumed in the summary that Jack fell while he was being beaten by Storm and hit his head and neck on the bed.
• I still find it annoying that every single fracture in the prop bones looks the same -- all jagged and strangely discolored -- even on the teeny tiny incus and stapes.
• Plot
• Inconsistency: In the first scene, the body is whole when it drops on the forewoman.  And then after the intro music, suddenly the head has been crushed.
• Booth's mother has a longstanding injury to her left greater trochanter and femoral head, caused by being pushed down a flight of stairs by Booth's father.
• Why does the 20-something victim have a land line?  Seriously, who under the age of 30 has one of those anymore?  (How I Met Your Mother hilariously mocked this TV plot contrivance in a recent episode...)
• Most boring Bones-themed drinking game ever: Take a drink every time the show mentions Parker, Jared, or Russ.
• Dialogue
• "Based on your robust frame, muscular build, and symmetrical features, you could make a good income as an exotic dancer." -- Brennan to Wendell (actually, isn't Wendell a bit too old?)
• "You have an alluring personality and a wonderful physique." -- Brennan to Booth
• "I did [strip]. For my paper. I wouldn't be much of a scientist if I didn't." -- Brennan, getting really into anthropological participant-observation. 
• "The Jesus myth is all about forgiveness, isn't it? ...  Water to wine, raising the dead, walking on water... these defy the basic laws of physics. But forgiveness... that's its value. That's why the myth has endured." -- Brennan going all anthropological on religion.  (Still galls me, though, that she named her daughter after Jesus, yet this hypocrisy never comes up...)

Ratings

Forensic Mystery - C.  Eh.  Calf implant ID'ed the victim quickly. Not a lot of mystery, except perhaps in cause-of-death, and that was annoying because the team should thoroughly document all injuries at once, not look for them as a plot device at the end.

Forensic Solution - B.  The way they ID'ed him, though, was entirely reasonable, if boring.

Drama - D+.  If there had been some lead-up to the return of Booth's mother, I might have been interested in it.  There was a bunch of drama surrounding the reveal of Max as Brennan's father a few seasons ago.  But I honestly don't remember the story of Booth's mom abandoning him and his brother, so I wasn't invested in this storyline that took up a good chunk of the show tonight.

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Presenting Anthropology - Weeks 13&14 (Readings)

Avant-Garde Challenge

& Best Practices

My inspiration for this course was actually Project Runway.  I don't particularly care for reality shows, since they largely highlight interpersonal relationships I couldn't care less about, but for me, the draw of Project Runway is that the contestants are actually very talented.  On a weekly basis, I get to see people who are really good at their job employ their skills and engage in a creative process, creating things in a matter of hours that I could never accomplish.  I was hoping that some of this same energy and creativity could be found within the graduate students here at UWF, and so far I have not been disappointed.

Augmented reality Loris at the London Zoo

The best PR challenge, though, is always the avant-garde one, where contestants come up with an outfit that is so outlandish and bizarre that it's actually compelling and chic.  Sometimes they use strange materials, sometimes they use unnatural shapes, and sometimes their designs are complete and utter crap.  But the point is always that they tried to do something totally innovative.  

So, just as every season of Project Runway needs a high-fashion or avant-garde challenge, this class does as well. Over the course of the semester, we have explored traditional media with an attempt to use those media in non-traditional ways. In these two weeks, we will explore the more outlandish and outré ways that academics and scholars are presenting information. We will discuss which audience(s) these methods are reaching, and we will brainstorm ways that we can present anthropology that are innovative and different while still conveying important information.

• Assignment 1: Find at least one example of what you would consider avant-garde presentation style and bring to class.
• Assignment 2: Alone or in a group, create something awesome that has never or rarely been seen before in anthropology - ideas include Dance Your PhD, augmented reality, 3D printing or scanning or modeling, writing a Choose Your Own Adventure story, creating a hands-on lab activity, etc. Anything goes... well, just please don't turn in a pasta mosaic of Boas doing a Kwakiutl dance.

Reading

• Case, A. 2011. We are all cyborgs now. (Video and critique on The Society Pages.)
• Dawdy, S.L. 2010. Clockpunk anthropology and the ruins of modernity. Current Anthropology 51(6):761-793.
• Hay, I. & M. Israel. 2001. 'Newsmaking geography': communicating geography through the media. Applied Geography 21(2):107-125.
• Marcus, G.E. and F.R. Myers. 1995. The traffic in art and culture: an introduction. In: The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, Marcus & Myers, eds., Ch. 1, pp. 1-54.

Links

• Augmented reality in a printed book of Paris
• 3D print of your own skeleton
• Digitised Diseases
• Social media as epidemiology tool (NY Times)
• Dance Your PhD
• Academic performance art: Nobel laureate physicist hangs out on street corners, answering questions
• Ubiquitous Anthropology and other augmented reality articles by S. Iaconesi

Be sure to follow our conversation live on Twitter on Mondays at 1pm central time by following the hashtag #shareanthro!

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