MIT Anthropology is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2013 James Howe Prize is Iris Sheu for her paper entitled "Patient Barriers to Mental Health Care for the Cambodian Population in Lowell, MA."

Professor Graham Jones receives the 2013 MIT Edgerton Award for exceptional distinction in teaching and research.

Professor Heather Paxson was interviewed by Boston Globe correspondent Jane Dornbusch for a feature article on her latest book, The Life of Cheese.

Yehuda Goodman, senior lecturer in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting scholar at MIT Anthropology, studies conversion to Judaism among immigrants recently arriving in Israel. Becoming a more integrated citizen in Israeli Jewish society involves a complex process of conversion, carried out in religious courts by Orthodox rabbis who act as official agents of the state. Goodman explores the variable interpretations and constructions of the converted subjects by the courts — especially Russian and Ethiopian immigrants — as well as the discursive negotiations among the participants.

Professor Ian Condry's new book heralds 'creative collaboration' with the masses as the key to anime's worldwide popularity.

Professor Christine Walley's new book recounts the painful aftermath when steel plants suddenly closed in the American heartland.

Professor Heather Paxson's new book, The Life of Cheese, is reviewed in Scientific American.

Professor Heather Paxson was interviewed by journalist Amy Chozick for a New York Times article about the importance of food and meals in family relationships.

Professor Heather Paxson's new book The Life of Cheese, delves into the ethos, methods, of politics of artisanal cheese-making. At a time when the ethics of food is an important issue for many Americans, the work offers a unique glimpse of people who have taken food-making into their own hands.

In an audio slideshow, James Howe, Professor of Anthropology, tells the story of how a Kuna village prepares for and conducts a great communal celebration, an event that can last up to four days, and embodies many of the Kuna's important values, beliefs, and ways of life.

During his more than 40 years working with the Kuna people of Panama, Professor James Howe established a close, collegial relationship with the subjects of his research, people who became agents as well as subjects of their own ethnography. Some years ago, Howe commissioned from a Kuna woman a special tapestry called a mola for the MIT Anthropology Program.

Professor Stefan Helmreich's book Alien Ocean, Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas, has won the 2012 Rachel Carson Book Prize, given by the Society for the Social Study of Science to recognize a book-length work of special social or political relevance in the area of science and technology studies.

MIT Anthropology, along with Women's and Gender Studies, D-Lab, and STS, is sponsoring a day-long workshop at MIT on Gender, Technology & Development on October 26, 2012 in building N51, 3rd floor, from 9:30 AM to 5 PM. The workshop aims to engage cross-disciplinary dialogue among anthropologists, economists, engineers, and students interested in issues relating to gender, international development, and technology design and transfer. Anthropology faculty Heather Paxson and Chris Walley will serve as discussants.

Professor Susan S. Silbey, head of MIT's Anthropology Program, has received the 2012 W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association (ASA) for her "outstanding contribution to the discipline."

As a kid, Heather Paxson wouldn't eat American cheese. "I thought it was not real food and it was an insult," she says of her youthful disdain for the processed stuff. As an elementary school student growing up in southern Illinois, Paxson insisted on cheddar or Swiss for her sandwiches instead.

When Professor Stefan Helmreich set out to examine the world of marine microbiologists, his research took an unexpected twist. Helmreich, who has been recognized for his innovative work in cultural anthropology, had decided to study scientists who chase some of the world's smallest creatures in some of the world's most forbidding places. So he spent long hours interviewing microbial biologists. But during the years of Helmreich's research, the entire field shifted gears.

Associate Professor Christine Walley's and Chris Boebel's Exit 0 Project seeks to recapture the stories of a region traumatized by de-industrialization, and to look towards a future of economic opportunity and environmental justice for Southeast Chicago residents.

Buyandelger's research links contemporary developments in Mongolian nationalism and culture with Buryat family experiences to document the revival of shamanism in the post-Soviet transformation of Mongolia. She takes up questions concerning the role of historical memory in forming political economy and culture, specifically looking at the case of the post-Soviet transformation in Mongolia.

Associate Professor Christine Walley and Chris Boebel are documentary filmmakers and advisors to the Open Documentary Lab @ MIT. They are currently collaborating on Exit Zero, a documentary about one family's experience of deindustrialization in southeast Chicago.

Magicians can make cards appear and people disappear. But the greatest trick any magician pulls off may be acquiring the knowledge needed to perform such acts in the first place. After all, magic tricks are largely secrets; they wouldn't entertain audiences half as much otherwise. Thus magicians closely guard their trade's knowledge. And yet the craft would die if the techniques of magic did not transfer to promising practitioners.