Department Resources
The Anthropology Department provides facilities for departmental use at Giddings House, and on-campus archaeological laboratory space at the Carriage House. Facilities at Giddings include a library, a computer lab with networked workstations, color scanner, plotter, and laser printer, as well as classrooms, faculty and teaching assistant offices, graduate student workspace, a large, renovated graduate student lounge. At the Carriage House archaeology lab are workspaces, laboratory and field equipment, photography and drafting equipment and temporary collections storage areas.
On the Brown campus, of particular use to anthropologists are Brown University's libraries, Brown's Computing and Information Services, and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Earthlab, in MacMillan Hall, which provides access to GIS hardware, data, and technical support. The Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning supports faculty and student teaching education with a program of seminars and workshops throughout the year.
Off campus, the department is associated with:
The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
With over 110,000 objects, the Haffenreffer Museum provides major opportunities for research on significant archaeological and ethnographic collections, and on global cultures, and for communicating an anthropological perspective to the community at large through exhibitions, a school education program, an annual lecture series, and an occasional publication series. Collections are stored at the Museum's original site in Bristol RI; exhibitions can be seen in a 2000 SF gallery in Manning Hall on Brown’s main campus green as well as in Rockefeller Library; and outreach education programs are run from both Bristol and Giddings House.
The Laboratory of Circumpolar Studies
Located at the Haffenreffer Museum, this departmentally-based Laboratory provides an intellectual center for research interests of faculty, museum staff, and students in Circumpolar Anthropology; in archaeology, ethnohistory, material culture, ecology, folklore, and culture of people of high northern latitudes.
Resources Outside the Department
Outside the Department of Anthropology, but within Brown University are several academic centers and units in which departmental anthropologists, or other anthropologists, or both, take an active role, and which provide strong intellectual support for faculty and student interdisciplinary research interests. Beyond the departmental requirements, students have considerable flexibility in arranging their graduate program, and they may take advantage of resources elsewhere to work in specialized areas pertinent to their anthropological research. The units in which Department of Anthropology faculty play a role include:
The Population Studies and Training Center
The Population Studies and Training Center is one of the most prominent centers for research and doctoral training in demography in the United States. Bringing together a variety of disciplines, it hosts the strongest program in sociocultural anthropology and population studies in the world. The PSTC offers a variety of fellowships to support doctoral students in anthropology and population.
The Joukowsky Institute
The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World is a center focused on the archaeology and art of the ancient Mediterranean, Egypt, and Western Asia. The Institute’s faculty are active in archaeological fieldwork projects, graduate and undergraduate teaching, and public outreach activities, and numbers of faculty and students in the Anthropology Department are actively engaged there.
The Watson Institute for International Studies
The Watson Institute for International Studies supports researchers working on diverse currents of change and on public policy constructed by a variety of local and global interests in response to the tensions and contradictions of this neoliberal historical juncture. The major research areas include Politics, Culture, and Transnationalism; Political Economy and Development; Global Security; and Global Governance and International Law. The three anthropologists with research appointments at the Watson emphasize multi-sited, transregional research and anthropological approaches to contemporary political issues across these issue areas.
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Located in the Watson Institute, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) hosts a series of lectures, events, and films aimed at promoting dialogue around academic, socio-political, economic, and cultural matters related to Latin America. CLACS is designated as one of 18 Title VI Undergraduate National Resource Centers for Latin American Studies by the United States Department of Education.
The John Nicholas brown center for public humanities and cultural heritage
The John Nicholas Brown Center supports the people and organizations that create, explore, preserve, and interpret culture and cultural heritage, and strengthens links between universities, cultural organizations, and communities through programming and an innovative M.A. program in public humanities. The Center invites faculty and student participation in its workshops, exhibitions, and other programs and provides resources to connect with local communities and cultural groups.
The John Carter Brown Library
The John Carter Brown Library has one of the two or three largest collections in the world of early European accounts of North and South America; the most complete collection in the world of Mexican and Peruvian imprints before 1700; the largest collection of books in the U.S. relating to colonial Brazil; the finest collection of sources in the U.S. for the study of early Canada and the Caribbean; and nearly three-fourths of all known imprints in the native languages of North and South America from the colonial period.
The Cogut Center for the Humanities
The Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University supports innovative research with an international perspective among scholars in the humanities and related disciplines. The Center sponsors fellowships and grant programs for faculty and graduate students, as well as a lectureship series in order to promote interdisciplinary collaboration.
The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women
The Pembroke Center was established in 1981 as a research center on gender. The Center currently supports interdisciplinary research that focuses on the intersection of knowledge production and the construction of “differences” – including those central to “race” and ethnicity, nationality, and religion, among others. The Pembroke Center offers small fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students who participate in their annual seminar.
The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
The Center's participating faculty have interests in the analysis of ethnicity, culture change, inter-ethnic relationships and adaptation from a comparative perspective. The Center offers small grants for graduate students. Rhode Island's multi-ethnic history and neighborhoods provide excellent potential for research, which both faculty and students have conducted.
The Committee on Science and Technology Studies
The Committee on Science and Technology Studies at Brown brings together anthropologists, philosophers, historians, art historians, literary theorists, sociologists and practicing scientists who are introduced in analyzing the production of scientific knowledge.
The Division of Biology and Medicine
Anthropologists based in the Departments of Community Health, Medicine, and Psychiatry and Human Behavior and other units in the Program in Biology and School of Medicine conduct research in Medical Anthropology and Alcohol Studies and have special research interests in alcohol and addictions, gerontology, reproduction, sexually transmitted diseases, comparative health systems and transcultrual psychiatry.