Faculty

Biography

I am a Physical Anthropologist and have taught at De Anza for over 25 years, including courses in Physical and Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Biological Anthropology Lab and World Prehistory. Both teaching and anthropology are my passion. I am committed to student success and student equity. I strive to equip students with an anthropological tool kit and inspire them to be lifelong learners and active citizens.

Research interests: Human variation, population and human genetics, human evolution, medical anthropology, epidemiology, Sikh-Americans

Fieldwork: Hill tribes in Northern India, genetic and cultural risk factors in premature coronary artery disease, Barbados slave population

Biography

Mayra Aguilar comes from the social and micro-finance service sectors, where she has focused her career journey on economic justice and education. She started her journey as an AmeriCorps member where she developed workshops about household financial management, the US educational system and wellness. She received her master’s degree from San José State University’s Applied Anthropology program, where she focused her project on entrepreneurship and micro-financing.

After graduating, she worked as a researcher for the Financial Health Network, NYU, and Bankable Frontier on a national and two-year study called "U.S. Financial Diaries." Mayra also conducted research for the University of Washington to understand the financial practices and customers of Opportun (formerly known as Progreso Financiero). Because of the knowledge she gained through her participation in financial research, she joined a US micro-finance organization to manage two asset-building programs for low-income college students and single mothers.

Currently, Mayra manages a program at a nonprofit that is focused on economic empowerment and also teaches at San José State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in International Business with a minor in Asian Studies from SJSU.

Biography

With degrees in Anthropology and Education, my emphasis includes Instructional Technology and Cross-Cultural Language and Development. Over the years I've taught classes in: Anthropology, Humanities, American Indian Studies, and Intercultural Studies. My anthropology focus includes work in cultural and archaeological contexts, NAGPRA legislation, cultural conservancy, prehistoric art, osteological labwork, and faunal analysis. I divide my time between academic interests and professional research. In recent years I've been involved in two research studies: an ongoing survey of 19th century mines in the western U.S. and a focus on oral tradition and kinship structures in multi-generational Pacific Northwest families.

Biography

Having completed a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, I have continued my research in the field of immigrant studies, and I have also taught general courses in Anthropology for many years now.

 

My initial interest was in the interpretation of indigenous testimonies by British colonizers such as Lord Cornwallis in the aftermath of the Santhal Rebellion of 1855 in Eastern India. Later, my ethnographic research focused on bi-cultural negotiations, and the construction of self and identity by Indian-American white-collar professional working women in the San Francisco Bay Area. I examined the manner in which economic mobility and professional achievement reconstituted gender, race, and class relations, investigating how my informants responded to social misrecognition, ethnic essentialization, and wistful nostalgia for the country of origin, by adopting intentional cultural strategies such as selective recomposition of ethnic culture in the immigrant home, adroit code-switching between private and public personas, and habitual but incomplete cultural assimilation in the country of settlement.

 

I have also researched the music of immigrant communities: Being interested in literature in translation, I have researched the ways and means adopted by Indian-American vocal artists to cross linguistic barriers and present lyrics in a language foreign to their Western audiences. I have published a book based on my research: Desi Dreams: Indian Immigrant Women Build Lives Across Two Worlds.

 

I teach Cultural Anthropology and Linguistic Anthropology at De Anza College, and I try to introduce my students to the anthropological lens. The anthropological lens is the ability to focus on diverse cultural beliefs and practices, while also looking for broad similarities at the global level, as seen from a holistic perspective.

Research Interests: Immigrant Studies, Women and Work, Cultural Diversity in the Silicon Valley, Immigrant Music, Literature in Translation, Indigenous Languages, Language Loss

 

 

Biography

Research Interests: Osteology, pathology, forensic anthropology, disease pathophysiology, human evolution, human ecology, health and wellness.

I am a Biological Anthropologist and research analyst specializing in forensics, osteological trauma, pathology, and modern biocultural health contexts. I have worked in a number of archaeological and laboratory settings, including ancient Mayan archaeological sites in the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project and Roman funerary graves in Sanisera, Spain. In past research, I have investigated the role of sociocultural status on biological health. My recent research interests focus on validation studies in modern forensic contexts and sharp force trauma identification in victims of domestic violence. As an educator, my goal is to to harness the relationships students already have with "the human experience" and foster an environment of collaboration and reflection. My courses challenge students to deconstruct what we know about humans as a biological and social organism and reflect on the processes that have shaped our evolution.

Biography

Contact Information

huijulie@deanza.edu

Biography

Interests: American Southwestern archaeology - Ancestral Pueblo Indian rock art as mnemonic devices, Contemporary Pueblo Indian pottery, EthnoAesthetics, California East Bay Native American Ethnohistory.

Present projects: Family history of Missionized Ohlone descendents in the East Bay, consolidating archaeological and rock art records at Chaco Canyon for the National Park Service.

Contact Information

patelshankari@deanza.edu

Biography

Biography

Areas of Focus: Political and Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of Science and Technology, Anthropology of Work, Nationalism and Internationalism, Post-Soviet Borders

As a cultural anthropologist, my goal in teaching is to equip students with tools to understand and navigate the diverse values and assumptions that structure our social worlds. My research is based in Mongolia, on the integration of rural pastoral, industrial, and STEM work through national and international identities and relationships. Since completing my PhD, I have also started working with archaeologists from Australia, Europe, and Mongolia as well as the United States, asking how we might more explicitly integrate and differentiate our methodologies to meet our common goals of understanding humanity

Biography

I completed my PhD in cultural anthropology in 2013 at the University of California - Santa Cruz. My dissertation research examined how social and ecological relations between humans, nonhuman animals, and the shared landscape inflect upon how humans exercise power over one another and other living things. Specifically, I studied the exchange of food, affection, and violence between people and rhesus macaques in urban and temple settings in two Indian cities, Delhi and Shimla. I paid attention to how both the social construct of the "sacred monkey" and people's experiences of living with actual monkeys impelled and complicated wildlife authorities' attempts to manage human-monkey relations.

Research interests: relationship of peoples of African with their domesticated plants and animals.