Archive for American South

Episode 20 American Mosques with Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes

Anthropologist on the Street
Anthropologist on the Street
Episode 20 American Mosques with Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes
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Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes (photo courtesy of Dr. Fewkes)

As an anthropologist of religion, it’s hard for Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes to pin down her research focus to just one element of life. Rather, her expertise in anthropology allows her to see how religion is lived and practiced, how material goods transform us as much as we transform them, and how spaces reflect our lives while helping to craft them.

Tying these elements together, Dr. Fewkes latest project is a focus on the sometimes surprising, always interesting history and architecture of mosques in America.

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Episode 3 Digging for Truth on a Cherokee Plantation – with Dr. Lance Greene

Anthropologist on the Street
Anthropologist on the Street
Episode 3 Digging for Truth on a Cherokee Plantation - with Dr. Lance Greene
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Dr. Lance Greene (photo courtesy of Lance Greene)

Looking at a complex moment in American history, when Cherokee were being forced off their land by President Andrew Jackson, Dr. Lance Greene’s research brings to life a nineteenth century plantation in North Carolina, where Cherokees, whites, and enslaved Africans lived and worked together. Dr. Greene pieces together life on a Cherokee/Euro-American plantation through archaeological digs and historical documents, providing insight into both how Cherokee were changing to attempt to fit in to European-American culture and the ways they were resisting it. Dr. Greene walks us through what archaeology on a plantation site can reveal, and how the process of writing fictional stories of everyday life actually helps him fill in the gaps in his research.
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