portfolio > anthropology
My undergraduate years were spent exploring the field of Anthropology. I spent my freshman year of college learning about the !Kung, my sophomore year exploring the theory of Orientalism, my junior year in France examining French-Arab identity, and my senior year measuring Nubian mummy skulls. These years equipped me with the skills to make insightful discoveries, and pay attention to critical details. Below are examples of some of my anthropology work:
understanding ethnography
primate wrist morphology
I focused my anthropological track on Biological Anthropology. I had wonderful professors at CU, including Dennis Van Gerven and Bert Covert who showed me that learning about ancient human bones and monkeys in Viet Nam are more than what they seem. I took a graduate course in Primate Skeletal Morphology. Looking at models of old jaw bones and skull fragments, I learned about how ancient primates moved, ate, and behaved. In this project, I compared the human wrist to that of a chimpanzee to speculate on ancient hominid locomotor patterns.
| Primate Wrist Morphology |
multivariate statistics in cranial morphology
As I stated earlier, my senior year of college was primarily spent measuring Nubian mummy skulls. I chose to do an honors thesis in biological anthropology because I knew I would never get a chance to do something like that again. Working with my advisers (Dennis Van Gerven, Bert Covert, and Jonathan O'Brien) I looked at two Nubian populations that have been separated by time period, and region, who have been typified into racial classifications. These racial classifications were based on cultural artifacts found in the region in the early 1900s. Where there was evidence of cultural advancement, the population was deemed white, and where there was a seeming lull in cultural advancement, the population was deemed black. These advancements and lulls associated with race were "proven" through skull measurements and univariate statistical analyses. I sought to demonstrate that these early studies were flawed, and that populations of different cultural "advancements" were not of different racial classifications, but were exposed to different environments that impacted the overall size and shape of their skull.
| Zarla's Honors Thesis |
| Zarla Thesis Defense Presentation |
independent study project in Toulouse, France
I spent a semester in Toulouse, France working on an independent study project on French-Arab identity among young people in France. At the time, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork including participant observation and interviews. However, a fateful broken leg (broke it while playing frisbee), changed the scope of my project, and my paper was heavily based on document analysis. One of the biggest tragedies of my life was losing my USB stick, which had the final version of this project (written entirely in French--broken, just like my leg). Hence, no resources cited, and some missing text in this version.