Anthropology Weekly Update Sept. 18, 2026
Anthropology Sticker Design Contest
For Anthropology students at all levels: What does anthropology mean to you?
Design a sticker that represents anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and helps promote it to new students. The winning stickers will be distributed at recruitment events and be given to current anthropology students. Sticker designs should fit within a 3 inch diameter circle. In addition to the pride that comes with seeing y our design all over campus, if your sticker design is selected you will receive $50. All sticker designs should be sent to Dr. Daniel Mains: dcmains@ou.edu. The deadline for submitting a design is November 15, 2026. Winning designs will be selected by a committee of faculty and students.
Student Presentation
Linguistic Anthropology Ph.D. student Melanie Frye presented a paper entitled "Understanding the Interaction of the Mvskoke Language with the Environments of Oklahoma and Pum Ekvnv Tate (Our Homeland) at the Ethnohistory conference in Tulsa on October 8, 2026.
Student Movie Night
Students are invited to join OKPAN for a student movie night and free pizza (with RSVP) to celebrate Oklahoma Archaeology Month on Tuesday, October 20th from 6:00 until 8:30 pm in Dale Hall Tower, Room 906. We will be showing The Dig. Be sure to RSVP so we can order enough pizza for everyone, and feel free to bring a friend!
Article
Dr. Camilo Sanz, Assistant Professor, is the first author of "Temporal Rationing: A man with gastric cancer in Colombia," a new article published in The Lancet, coauthored with Santiago Matinez Medina and Scott D. Stonington. Drawing on ethnographc research in Colombia, the article develops the concept of "temporal rationing" to understand how health-care resources can be unequally distributed through time. Following the experience of a patient with gastric cancer, it shows how insurance procedures, clinical protocols, and the biological progression of disease interact, making bureaucratic waiting a consequential form of inequality.
https://www..thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIISO140-6736(26)02052-0/abstract.
We welcome three new tenure track faculty to the Department this fall.
Left: Bri Alexander is a linguistic anthropologist specializing in the Shawnee language, language and land reclemation, intersections of language and kinship, place and territoriality, and health and well-being.
Center: Lilly Parker is a molecular anthropologist specializing in molecular ecology, human and animal interactions, and conservation biology.
Right: Nikhil Pandhi is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist specializing in critical global health studies, critical caste studies, psychological anthropology, gender and sexuality, and the medical humanities.
