Summer Stipend Cohort Meetings
And just like that, Summer is a wrap and Fall is well underway! But before the first leaves fall, let鈥檚 take a look back at what happened during ASOR鈥檚 inaugural Summer Stipend program cohort meetings, hosted by Marta Ostovich (ASOR) and Sydney Pickens (ASOR/AITC). The monthly cohort meetings were designed to encourage student connections and promote professional development. Participants from Lebanon to California joined us over the course of the summer to participate in these lively, informative conversations via Zoom:听
- Community, Mentorship, and Social Capital.听Our first cohort meeting centered around cultivating intentional relationships, both professional and personal. We asked, who are you currently in a community with? We encouraged participants to evaluate their present communities, identify need gaps, and develop a criteria for building relationships that help push them into purpose. We prioritized community over network to encourage genuine, human to human connections that foster more sustainable relationships. This is particularly relevant for the fields of Anthropology and Archaeology, where the work is first and foremost situated within the human experience.
- Self Advocacy.听Our second gathering featured a discussion on finding, making space for, and using your voice in academia. The conversation focused on two phenomena particularly prominent among women and people of color: imposter syndrome and code switching. Imposter syndrome causes people to question their abilities, instilling a fear that they will be exposed as a fraud. Code switching is a strategic shift between language and/or vernacular to communicate more effectively with a given audience. However, the switch is often unidirectional and perpetuates a culture of assimilation to dominant power structures. We explored how these phenomena are fueled and perpetuated by systemic bias, and discussed how more inclusive practices and supportive academic environments can reduce their prevalence. Throughout the conversation, facilitators and participants exchanged tips and tricks for showing up in academia (and elsewhere) both authentically and confidently.
- Academia Reimagined/Alternative Futures.听Our third meeting featured a panel of speakers who shared their experiences and advice on the academic world: Sarah Kielt Costello (University of Houston-Clear Lake), Jay Crisostomo (University of Michigan), Kate Sheeler (Cathedral High School), and Julia Troche (Missouri State University). Many of the Summer Stipend cohort members are interested in pursuing futures in education and all of our guests work in education, though in a variety of settings. They spoke about the experiences that shaped their careers/career paths: from graduate school to navigating the job market. We discussed what an alternative future in archaeology looks like, how to balance research and professional goals with personal well-being, and how the culture of academia is changing.
- Future Fieldwork.听For this meeting, our cohort group was joined by Debra Foran (Wilfrid Laurier University), Rachel Hallotte (SUNY-Purchase), Morag Kersel (DePaul University), and Tom Roby (Getty Conservation Institute) for a conversation on the ins and outs of archaeological fieldwork. This was an interesting conversation since fieldwork has been on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Summer Stipend program was focused on non-fieldwork research. This pause in fieldwork offers time to reflect and be thoughtful about getting (or staying) involved with projects in the future. Our guest speakers offered perspectives from their own field projects and experiences, and the cohort students shared what they were looking for in fieldwork. Through this exchange, we identified important considerations for deciding what projects to join. Topics ranged from the professional (how to pick your first field project, how to stay involved long-term with a project, skills that you can gain from fieldwork, etc.) to the very practical (level of support, physical/mental effort required, school credit, project infrastructure, cost, living situations, etc.).听
A huge thank you to all of our guest speakers who joined us for these meetings to share their experiences and chat with the cohort!
As part of their Summer Stipends, each cohort member submitted a report on their research and the first report is now available on the 17吃瓜website.听搁别补诲听Shannon Burton鈥檚听report on preparing听photographs for exhibits in a planned Community Heritage Center in El-Kurru, Sudan here. Stay tuned for more reports from our Summer Stipend recipients on their research in News@17吃瓜this fall!
To close out the Summer Stipend program, students are being paired with an 17吃瓜mentor. The goal is to give students a chance to connect with someone in their field who can encourage, support, and guide them along their career paths, and/or provide advice in a specific area (publishing, applying to grad school, etc.). Mentoring is also a major part of ASOR鈥檚 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. If you鈥檙e interested in mentoring students, please take a moment to fill out our听. Thank you to everyone who has already signed up to be a mentor! You鈥檒l be hearing from us with more information about the mentorship program in the upcoming weeks.
This webinar explores how various Bible-related TV documentaries are made, and what goes into making a quality, responsible program about the popular subjects of Jesus and Jerusalem. We will also delve into how some producers sensationalize religion and the holy city (Jerusalem) in an effort to increase ratings, but at the expense of historical accuracy and education. An expert in this area, Dr. Cargill (University of Iowa), has appeared in over 4 dozen documentaries and has consulted on several major documentary series on听CNN,听History, and听National Geographic.
Dr. Robert R. Cargill (PhD 2008 UCLA, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) is Associate Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at the 听and Editor of the new听. He teaches biblical studies, Second Temple Judaism, archaeology, and ancient languages including Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac. His recent books include听Melchizedek, King of Sodom: How Scribes Invented the Biblical Priest-King听(Oxford University Press, 2019) and听The Cities That Built the Bible听(HarperOne, 2016).
Dr. Erin Darby is an associate professor of Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies and the Faculty Director of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships at the听. Erin is an expert in the archaeology of Israelite religion, with a particular focus on figurines and other cultic objects. These are the focus of her monograph,听Interpreting Judean Pillar Figurines: Gender and Empire in Apotropaic Practice听(Mohr Siebeck 2014) and a forthcoming co-edited volume entitled听Iron Age Terracotta Figurines from the Southern Levant in Context听(Brill, fall 2021), as well as several other publications. Her research has been supported by two fellowships from the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (AIAR) in Jerusalem. She has also received funding to support her research at the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI), in Nicosia, Cyprus. Her most recent work has focused on figurines and other ritual objects at shrine sites in the Negev Desert of southern Israel and in southern Jordan. She is also an active field archaeologist and co-director of the 鈥楢yn Gharandal Archaeological Project in the Wadi Arabah of southern Jordan.
Friends of ASOR
Yosef Garfinkel is Yigael Yadin Professor of Archaeology of the Land of Israel at the Institute of Archaeology, . For many years he was a prehistorian, excavating Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites, including Yiftahel, Gesher, Neolithic Ashkelon, Shaar Hagolan and Tel Tsaf. He did extensive research on prehistoric dance, including the publication of articles and a book:听Dance at the Dawn of Agriculture. An article on the evolution of human dance had been published recently by听Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
Pp. 192鈥�199: 鈥淕risly Trophies: Severed Hands and the Egyptian Military Reward System,鈥� by Danielle Candelora
Pp. 200鈥�204: 鈥淭he Bronze Mouse of Maresha,鈥� by Ian Stern
Pp. 216鈥�229: 鈥淓au de Cleopatra: Mendesian Perfume and Tell Timai,鈥� by Robert J. Littman, Jay Silverstein, Dora Goldsmith, Sean Coughlin, and Hamedy Mashaly