Honors Program

Every year, a cohort of anthropology majors participate in our Honors Program. Students applying to the Honors Program must meet the minimum College requirements of a 3.0 grade point average and a 3.3 grade point average in the major. Participating in the Honors Program involves completing independent research and writing an honors thesis rooted in one of anthropology's subfields, under the guidance of a faculty advisor or advisors.

The independent research that leads to an honors thesis can be supported by the department's Claire Garber Goodman Fund. Typically, a student takes an Independent Study course (ANTH 85) to prepare their research proposal and secure relevant approvals from Dartmouth's Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects in a term leading up to conducting the research; they then proceeds with an Independent Research course (ANTH 87) after completing their research and as they prepare their Honors Proposal – a document that is distinct from their research proposal and that is typically reviewed by the faculty at the end of Fall term or during the first faculty meeting of Winter term.

Admission to the program is by vote of the Department faculty, which may appoint one or more secondary advisors. If their Honors proposal is approved, the student then registers for Anthropology Honors (ANTH 88), either in the winter term of their senior year, taking an "ongoing" into Spring term, for completion in Spring, or just in Spring term, depending on their writing trajectory and D-plan. Students admitted to the Honors program should be aware that ANTH 88 must be taken in addition to the ten courses ordinarily required in the standard major or eleven courses in the case of a modified major, it can only be taken once, and it does not count as your Senior Seminar/Culminating Experience. It is expected that the student's honors thesis will be submitted to the primary advisor at least four weeks prior to graduation. Those students completing the program with a grade of A- or higher in their honors course will receive honors recognition in the major. High honors may be awarded by faculty vote for truly exceptional work.

In addition to Honors, students of anthropology at Dartmouth can also complete an independent research project, eligible for funding through the Goodman Fund, that leads to a Capstone Project. These Capstone Projects also emerge from independent, faculty-mentored research, usually through an ANTH 85 followed by an ANTH 87, but they allow for more flexibility in scope and format than a traditional thesis and generally take fewer terms to complete. As examples, students who have pursued Capstone Projects have produced websites, OpEds, short films or other multi-modal projects, creative works that are drawn from their fieldwork findings, or more conventional research papers that are not as substantial as a thesis but that still represent significant original work. As with the Honors program, working closely with a faculty mentor (or a small committee of mentors) is crucial to the successful completion of a Capstone Project.

Uyen Dang
"Being With: Place, Memory, Silence in Young Saigon"
S. Craig

Michael Green
"Half a Heart but Full of Life: Lived Experience of Families Battling Severe Congenital Heart Disease"
E. Carpenter-Song

Mary Joy
"Do Monkeys and Chimpanzees Climb the Same Way? A Kinematic Analysis of the Upper Limb During Vertical Climbing in a Wild Monkey (Cercocebus atys) and Ape (Pan troglodytes)"
J. DeSilva

Cecilia Morin
"The Meandering Roads of Care: Narratives of Mental Health Providers in Central Maine in the COVID-19 Milieu"
E. Carpenter-Song, C. Kivland

Sydney Nguyen
"Dancing for Us: An Investigation on Bird Dancing and its Effect on Conceptualizations of Kumeyaay Identity and Gender"
J. Powell, C. Kivland

• Kalei Akau: “E ‘Onipa’a Kākou: Hawaiian Identities and Political Pathways to Sovereignty” (Watanabe)
• Crystal A. Clements: “Portraits of Postpartum Depression: Interpretations, Surveillance and the Lived-Experiences of Postpartum Depression for African-American Mothers in Washington D.C.” (Carpenter-Song and Kivland)
• Julia Cohen: “Negotiating Intimacies: A Study of Gendered Labor and Cross-Cultural Care in New York City” (Craig and Kivland)
• Kennedy Jensen:  “Running a Blurry Line: Lived Experiences of Disordered Eating among Female Distance Runners" (Carpenter-Song)
• Sumita M. Strander: “Lost in Translation: The ‘Good Enough’ and Sevā in Dementia Care for Indian Elders” (Carpenter-Song)

• No theses during this period

• Emily Albrecht "Mapping Memories, Creating History: The Tangier American Legation (Eickelman)
• Sarah Bessen "The Effect of the Mediterranean Diet on Inflammation Associated with Gastroparesis (Dominy)
• Andrés Mejía-Ramón "The Paleohydrology of the Teotihuacan Valley: A Multi-Method Approach in the Prospection of Subsurface Hydraulic Features in Teotihuacan, Mexico (Nichols)
• Adelaida Tamayo "An Ethnography of Arte Sin Fronteras" (Watanabe)

• Aaron Ellis: "What is Craft? Identity Within the Craft Beer Revolution" (Watanabe)
• Lindsey Lam: "Just Child's Play? Children's Games and Play in Huaycan, Peru" (Watanabe)
• Danielle Moore: "Black Beyond Borders: The Roles of Race and Socio-Economic Status in Dartmouth Off-Campus Programs" (Ogden)
• Colin Quinn: "An Analysis of Obsidian Exchange and Production at Chiquilistagua, Nicaragua" (Nichols)
• Aylin Woodward: "New Methods to Infer Medial Longitudinal Column Morphology in the Hominin Foot" (Dominy)

• Karolina Krelinova: "Challenging the Mythical Nation: Liberal Youth Activism in Belgrade, Serbia" (Kan)
• Adam Kraus: "Incorporation and Exclusion: The Changing Healthscapes of the Rural Highland Indigenous in Peru’s Sacred Valley of the Incas" (Craig, Covey)
• Archarna Ramanujam: "Race, Gender and Markedness: Women’s Identity Construction at Dartmouth College" (Gulbas)
• Christine Ryu: "Maintaining Cosmic Order: Mexica Offerings from Maize to Humans" (Nichols)
• Victoria Trump Redd: "Why are los cholos choleando a los cholos Cultural Health and the Emerging Middle Class in Carabayllo, Peru" (Watanabe)

• Alexandra Aird: "Selling Salem's Witches: An Ethnography of a New England Tourist Town" (Kan)
• Collin Burks: "Fear, Isolation, and Resistance; The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on the Everyday Lives of Latino Migrants in Alamance County, North Carolina" (Gutiérrez Nájera)
• Sarah Cashdollar: "Sex Babies and Identity: Hispanic Teen Pregnancy as Identity Negotiation in Doña Ana County, New Mexico" (Gulbas, Eickelman)
• Michelle Evans: "Indications of Sociality in the Evolutionary History of Pongo: A Possible Explanation of High Facial Mobility in a Solitary Primate" (Dobson)
• Sarah-Marie Hopf: "Representation and Translation of Human-Centered Design: From San Francisco to Myanmar, Nepal, and Cambodia" (Craig)
• Vaidehi Mujumdar: "Impacts of Social Identity & Multilingualism on Health and Illness: Khar and Nallasopara Communities in Mumbai" (Craig)
• Georgia Travers: "Lenses of Truth: Iranian Mystical Poetry as Description and Creation of a Nation" (Watanabe)
• Jacqueline Waugh: "Women are Our Leaders: The Role of Language, Persuasion, and Narratives in Iran" (Eickelman)

• Manisha Apte: "Authoritative Knowledge and Prenatal Care in Rural Southern Gujarat, India" (Craig)
• Arielle Cannon: "Ancient Histories, New Identities: The (Re)Construction of Afro-­Venezuelan Identity Through Education" (Watanabe)
• Jennifer Koester: "Voluntourism: Mediating Interactions with the 'Other'" (Igoe)
• Stefanie Lazow: "Communicative Complexity in the Gelada Facial Display Repertoire" (Dobson)
• Sanja Miklin: "Cujo in the Family: Owning an Aggressive Dog in the Contemporary United States" (Watanabe)
• Alexandra Rahmann: "Beauty, Fertility and Anxiety: Societal Roles of the Yemenite Jewish Women as Reflected in the Traditional Bride's Costume and Jewelry" (Kan)

• Emily Baxter: "Catherine's Daughters and Prophetic Women: An Ethnographic Study of the Lives of Women Religious" (Igoe)
• Liana Chase: "Coping, Healing, and Resilience: A Case Study of Bhutanese Refugees Living in Vermont" (Craig)
• Aisling Galligan: "Patterns of Dental Variation in Eocene Primates from Southwestern Wyoming" (Muldoon)
• Elizabeth Howland: "For the Love of a Landscape" (Igoe)
• Connie Hu: "The Embeddedness of 'Microfinance': An Ethnographic Study of a Government Bank in Southwest China" (Craig)
• Cameron Nutt: "Growing Up with HIV in Urban Tanzania: An Ethnographic Study of Children's Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy" (Carpenter-Song)

• Rachael Kandath: "Anatomy of the Facial Musculature in Two Diurnal Anthropoid Primates: Exploring the Relationship Between Facial Mobility and the Muscles of Facial Expression" (Muldoon)
• Sarah Klassen: "El Antigual: A Test of Surface Collection Methods" (Nichols)
• Michelle Reyf: "Gender Regimes and Reading Resistance: Female Suicide Attackers Between Iraq and a Hard Place" (Watanabe)
• Claire Wagner: "Into the Street: Children’s agency, adaptation and survival in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania" (Craig and Kim)
• Natalie Young: "Maintaining Boundaries, Maintaining Inequality: The “Tulane Bubble” Experience of New Orleans" (Gutiérrez Nájera)

• Kyle Finnegan: "Mediating Contradictory Ideals: The Cultural Dialogue of Male Body Image in Fiji" (Kan)
• Dylan Kane: "Biloxi in the Wake of Katrina: The Search for Effective Disaster Relief" (Igoe)
• Kathleen Moriarty: "The Impact of a Women's Cooperative on the Indigenous Cabécar community of Costa Rica" (Watanabe)
• Ryan Murphy: "The Social Significance of Neolithic Court Tombs on Slievemore, Ireland" (Nichols)
• Robin Uhle: "The Lantern Festival: Illuminating the Question of Japanese Religion" (Watanabe/Ball)

• Sheila Dunning: "Kenyan Urban Youth Views on HIV and AIDS" (Endicott)
• Emi Ito: "Analysis of Oral Health in Portugal During the Transition to Agriculture" (Dobson/Nichols)
• Adam Levine: "The Present of the Past: An Ethnography of Antiquities Collectors" (Nichols/Welsch)
• Molly Fales: "Politics of Preservation in the New West: Land Ideology and Conservation Easements in Colorado" (Ranco)
• Megan Paradise: "Quality in Sustenance: The Interaction between Global and Local" (Craig)
• AlexAnna Salmon: "Igyararmiunguunga: qallemciq nunaka man'i kuicaraami-llu (I belong to Igiugig: the story of my home on the Kvichak River)" (Endicott)
• Zaneta Thayer: "Quantitative Variation in the Human Chin: Testing Adaptive Hypothesis" (Dobson/Muldoon)

• Jacob Aguiar: "Quartzite Deposits and Folsom Lithics from Gunnison Basin, Colorado: Provenancing Tool Remains at the Mountaineer Site" (Nichols)
• Jake Appelbaum: "Transforming Culture in a Modern World: Local Agency and Change in Tokelau" (Welsch)
• Kathleen Boyne: "Cultural Factors Influencing High Childhood Obesity Rates in Chicago" (Watanabe)
• Karen Jorge: "The Experience of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Rural Vermont and New Hampshire" (Watanabe)

• Jesse Blom: "Urban Brujeria in Venezuela: A Religious Marketplace of Opportunity and Competition" (Watanabe)
• Aya Caldwell: "Unidas Para Vivir Mejor (UPAVIM): A Case Study in Deconstructing the Complexities of Development in the Squatter Settlements of Guatemala City" (Watanabe)
• Eric Goodman: "From Bodies to Beliefs: A Question in Medical Anthropology Using Ancient Egyptian Mummies" (Welsch/Korey)
• Alexandra Spielhagen: "Reclaiming č'ixw'cәn: Contesting Burial Rights in the Pacific Northwest" (Ranco/Nichols)
• Akay Tuncak: "Struggling to Find Their Identities: Dress and Female Interactions in the Identity Struggle of Turkish University Women" (Kan)
• Christopher Wilt: "The Race-IQ Controversy: A Critical History" (Korey/Welsch)
• Marnie Wolfe: "Coping With Cultural Loss: The Resurgent Spirituality of Native Hawaiians" (Welsch/ Korey)

• Kelsey Rush: "Narrative Writing Therapy: A Physician's Tool for Understanding the Adolescent Illness Experience" (Alverson/Detzer/Welsch)
• Jennifer Lanzer: "Campfires and Chronic Disease: Shaping the Experience of Chronic Illness" (Welsch)
• Ayumi Rogers: "Clothing and Identity in Contemporary Japan: What Young Japanese Women are Expressing by Dressing the Way They Do" (Watanabe/Cullinane)
• Joseph Hanlon: "Creating a Marshallese Modernity: Generational Identities and Shifting Cultural Perspectives" (Welsch)
• Molly Malone: "Ngai Tahu Maori and Jade: Sustainable Resource Management in a Small New Zealand Community" (Alverson)
• Joanne Kim: "Recovery and Reintegration in Peer-Run Mental Health Organizations" (Welsch)
• Clementine James: "The Decline of the Chesapeake Watermen: A Localized Problem or a Larger Trend?" (Kan)
• Eric Kravitz: "The Ocean is Getting Narrower: An In- Depth Study of the Cultural Fusion Occurring as American and Italian Cultural Values Interact Around the Sport of Basketball within the Italian Basketball Community" (Alverson)
• M.Chloe Mulderig: "Redefining 'Tradition' as a Dynamic Force: Challenges Facing the Tourist Industry in the Medina of Fès, Morocco" (Eickelman/Welsch)

• Andrew Hamilton: "An Island with an Island: Attempts by the European Union at Integrating an Irish Border Community" (Welsch)
• Lauren Hendrickson: "Ancient Isolated Human Remains from Northern Black Mesa, Arizona" (Nichols)
• Cat Mcmanus: "From Prospective to Recruit to Student-Athlete: Female Student-Athlete's Choice of Dartmouth College and their Post-Recruitment Relationship with Coaches" (Welsch)
• David Eckels: Giant Steps: "Jazz and La Lucha in Contemporary Culture" (Alverson/Watanabe)
• Christina Palmer: "The Future of Street Children: Transitioning Off the Streets in San José, Costa Rica" (Gutierrez/Kan/Nichols)
• Benjamin Mustin: "The Paradox of "Indigenous Development:" Reconciling Cultures of Modernization in Bolivia" (Watanabe)
• William Raynolds: "The Role of a Specialized Pastoral Economy in Early Political Developments in Yemen" (Abdi)

• Lucas Schoen: "Charting Their Own Course: Changing Attitudes Toward Elder Respect and Individuality Among Elite University Students in Bejing" (Welsch)
• Marina K. S. Ma: "Examining Prehispanic Ceramic Exchange in the Basin of Mexico: A Chemical Source Analysis from Azcapotzalco" (Nichols)
• Adam Wilson: "Intentional Community as Cultural Critique and Creation" (Watanabe)
• Richard Callahan: "Modeling the Exchange of AIDs Prevention and Treatment Strategies in Hong Kong" (Levine/Welsch)
• Jocelyn Bernatchez: "The Modern Human Origins Debate: The Archaeological Evidence From South Africa" (Korey/Nichols)
• D.Chong Hanssen: "Three Lulau: Hawaiian Feasting, Culture and "Culture"" (Watanabe)
• Elise Berman: "Why Try to Change Others? Missionizing as an Act of Indentity Formation" (Welsch)

• Laura Garzon: "A Global Village" (Watanabe)
• Tim Moriarty: "Cultural Paradoxes in Modern Saudi Society and the Appeals of "New Terrorism" (Watanabe)
• James Parker: "Homeless Youth in Hollywood" (Endicott)
• Allison Schumitsch: "Learning to See: Objects in Greek National Identity" (Eickelman)
• Shannon Stoval: "Rethinking Occupational Stress Markers: A Case Study from Bronze Age Tell Abraq, United Arab Emirates" (Korey/Nichols)
• Lauren Weldon: "An examination of the Pennsylvania legislator's role"

• Elizabeth Carpenter: "A Culture of Caregiving: Traditionalism, Change, and Vision in Home Health Care" (Alverson/Welsch)
• Megan Harrison: "Healthcare Decisions Among Semelai Women of Malaysia" (Endicott)
• Jeffrey Kahn: "Pilgrimage and Vodou: Rituals of Renegotiation and Reaffirmation in Northern Haiti" (Watanabe)
• Rohit Ricky Joshi: "The Effects of Modernization on Young Men in Jaluit, Marshall Islands" (Endicott)

• Kathryn Wendell: "The Beggars Who Sit on Benches of Gold: Local Response to South America's Largest Gold Mine" (Kray)
• Jaimie Paul: "The Anthropologist's Lens: Fifty Years of Medical Anthropology in Latin America" (Welsch/Kray)
• Moly Lacy: "The Astronomical Orientation of the Ceremonial Center at Tula of the Toltecs" (Nichols)
• Rachel Fleming: "The Future of "Tradition:" The Influence of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann on Traditional Music and Irish National Identity" (Endicott)

• Rajat Soni: "Images of Sacrifice: Aztec State Ideology and the Household" (Nichols)
• Rachel Derkits: "The Sinait Mortuary Rite: Death and the Ilocano Way of Life" (Endicott)

• Kristin Sullivan: "Daily Life in the City of the Gods: Household Funerary Analysis of Two Site at Teotihuacan" (Nichols)
• Sarah Boynton: "The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine: Forming a New American Medical Culture" (Welsch)
• Courtney Jacobs: "The Rise and Fall of the Hunting Hypothesis: Empirical Evidence and Social Contingencies" (Korey)
• Elizabeth Huamán: "Walking on Stones and Dirt: Wanka Storytelling in Changos Bajo" (Watanabe)

• Georgina Garcia: "Divorce in the Philippines: Will it Ever Become Legal?" (Watanabe)
• Jennifer Main: "Managing Medical Uncertainty: The Structure and Culture of a Surgical Residency Team" (Alverson)
• Ty Tengan: "The Architecture of Canoes and Nations: A Case Study of Hawaiian Cultural Nationalism" (Watanabe)
• Colin Grey: "The Jonestown Narrative" (Alverson and Eickelman)

• Mieka Ritsema: "The American Value of Independence Among Eldery Residents of Assisted Living" (Alverson)
• Ronald Covey: "Modeling Religious Evolution: The Development of Ritual Architecture Among the Formative Maya" (Goldstein)
• Marilyn Morano: "The Equation of Gender in Zinacantan" (Watanabe)

• Elisabeth Smith: "Illness Narrative Among Multiple Sclerosis Patients: The Cultural, Social, and Semiotic Phenomena of Diagnosis, Adaptation, and the Doctor Patient Relationship" (Alverson)
• Sean Mažeika Sullivan: "An ethnic odyssey : portrait of Lithuanian-American identity" (Endicott)

• Richard Fried: "The Wari Occupation at Cerro Mejia: Wari Expansion in Moquegua" (Endicott)

• Susan Chimonas: "Patterns in Potsherds: The Occupational Settlement at Prehispanic Xaitocan, Mexico" (Nichols)
• Severin Fowles: "Moving On: Pit Structure Abandonment on Northern Black Mesa" (Nichols)
• Douglas Johnston: "Responses to Illness Among Tibetan Refugees in India: A Study in Medical Pluralism" (Endicott)
• Gustav Peebles: "Religion and the Emerging State: An Investigation in the Makahiki Festival of Ancient Hawaii" (Watanabe)
• Lynn Rainville: "Hanover Deathscapes: Attitudes Toward Death and Community as Reflected in Cemeteries and Gravestones: An Archaeological Investigation of Mortuary Variability" (Nichols)
• Darren Ranco: "Penobscot Indian Ethnic Identity: Community and Family Values" (Watanabe)
• Stephanie Rupp: "Missionary Education in Northern Tanzania: Changes in the Lives of Chagga, Warush, and Maasai Women, 1893-1936" (Alverson)

• J. Parker Davis: "An Analysis of Selected Symbols Used within the Hopi Snake Dance Ritual and Snake Clan Myth" (Kan)
• Sonja Olsen: "Molecular Evolution and Phylogenic Reconstruction of Hominoids" (Korey)
• Kayla Ship: "From Ancient Israel to the Beta Israel: The Link Between Ancestry, Ethnic Identity, and Group Identity" (Endicott)

• Manjari Wijenaike: "The Cultural Foundations of Nationalism in Post- Colonial South and Southeast Asia" (Eickelman)

• Susan Moussa: "Non- Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus" (Korey)
• Frederick Henry: "Anthropology Without Mirrors: Discourse and the Rhetoric of Culture" (Alverson)

• Lucian Sulica: "The Place of Otumba in the Aztec Empire: A Provincial City- State in the Teotihuacan Valley" (Nichols)
• Stuart Kaplan: "Dental Development and Hominid Evolution" (Korey)
• Jonathan Burnham: "Pangnirtung: Working Forward from Dependency" (Alverson)

• Margaret Taylor: "Understanding Paleolithic Rock Art: The Franco- Cantabrian Aristic Tradition as a Response to Social, Economic, and Ecological Changes in Upper Paleolithic Europe" (Nichols)

• Stuart Chandler: "How Many Hakka Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb? A Study of Chinese Humor in Taiwan" (Endicott)

• Huan Chang: "The Integration of Traditional Chinese Healing and Western Scientific Medicine in Two Contemporary Chinese Societies" (Endicott)

• Susan Reed (McMillan)
• B.G. Sykes: "An Inventory and Assessment of Anthropological, Archaeological, and Historical Significance of Shipwrecks off Cape Cod Within the 1750-1780 Time Period" (McMillan)
• Danielle Schanz: "Miracle Making: A Critical Appraisal of Robin Horton's Essays" (Alverson)

• Stephen Blackmer: "The foundations of adaptation : tradition, community and Agricultural change in Peru and Bolivia"
• Cynthia Gimbers: "The Persistence of the Chatino Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico" (Gregory)
• Ann Laquer