Heather Paxson has received the 2009 Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence from the Association for the Study of Food and Society for "Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States," which was published in Cultural Anthropology 23(1):15-47. She is the very first recipient of this award.

Stefan Helmreich has won MIT's 2009 Levitan Teaching Prize in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

Susan Silbey has been honored with the 2009 Harry J. Kalven Jr. Prize by the Law and Society Association.

Susan Silbey has been awarded the 2008 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Heather Paxson is the 2008 recipient of Levitan Prize in the Humanities, for "Economies of Sentiment, Ecologies of Production: Crafting American Artisanal Cheese" as well as one of 2 recipients of the 2008 Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Cultural Anthropology is a social science that explores how people understand - and act in - the world. But what, exactly, is it that Cultural Anthropologists do? How do they approach their research? In this short film, three members of MIT's Anthropology Department, Stefan Helmreich, Erica James, and Heather Paxson, talk about their current work and the process of doing fieldwork. View the video on Youtube.