Recent News


Dewey Receives UW Faculty Community Engagement Award

Alum Susan (Runkle) Dewey, currently Chair of  Women And Gender Studies at the University of Wyoming has been awarded a newly launched Faculty Engagement Award. Her most recent book
Women of the Street: How the Criminal Justice-Social Services Alliance Fails Women in Prostitution  published by NYU press in 2017.

Anthony “Kwame” Harrison named Gloria D Smith Professor 

Anthony “Kwame” Harrison, an associate professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, has been named the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands and Executive Vice President and Provost Thanassis Rikakis. 

The Gloria D. Smith Professorship in Black Studies was established in 1997 by then Virginia Tech President Paul Torgersen with funds from the Athletic Association. The professorship, named in honor of the late Gloria D. Smith, a counselor and advocate of minority students on campus before her retirement, is awarded for a period of two years to an outstanding faculty member who contributes significantly to the growth and development of minority students, student athletes, and scholarly pursuits. The honoree also oversees the Gloria D. Smith Speaker Series and makes at least one university-wide presentation during his or her tenure.

Harrison has held the title of Gloria Smith professor since 2014.

https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2017/01/clahs-kwame.html


Award Given

Taapsi Ramchandani will be receiving the 1st place student award by the National Association of Practice Anthropology at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) conference on November 18, 2016. Her article titled Narrative of Development:An Anthropological Investigation into Narratives as a Source of Enquiry in Development Planning can be found in Berghahn Journals. 

Sex Workers and Criminalization in North America and China, Ethical and Legal Issues in Exclusionary Regimes

Newest book by Anthropology Alum

Susan Dewey received her PhD in Anthropology from SU in 2004. This is her sixth book, three single-authored and three co-authored. She teaches in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Wyoming and has shifted her focus from South Asia to women on the fringes of U.S. society.


  • Congratulations to Alanna Warner and Lauren Hosek!  They were just awarded the Biological Anthropology Section student prize for their paper, “Enamel, Stone, and Gold: Probing Composite Mouths and Personhood in Nineteenth Century New York City,” presented Saturday December 6, 2014 at the AAA meetings in Washington, D.C.   The awards committee noted: “Your paper was excellent, and I wanted to especially commend you both for putting in the time to organize an outstanding panel,” The Bones and the Worms: Bioarchaeology as Microhistory.
  • Kwame Otu (Ph.D. candidate, cultural anthropology) received a grant from Wenner Gren to complete his Dissertation Fieldwork.
  • Employment and University Awards 
  • 2003-Present Proposal Defenses
  • 2002-Present Dissertation Defenses