As an anthropology major at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Juan Ramirez has learned the value of understanding beliefs that in one culture may be the norm but to another may seem strange. However, through his internship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildlife inspector trainee who patrols the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, he has had to acknowledge when the law is broken by the trade of products made with endangered animals - products that are often based on cultural superstition or practice. “When I started as a criminal justice student, it was black and white,” he says. “The law dictates what's wrong. Then when I got into anthropology, I realized ... Read More
Labor Studies
University Partners with Historic Adobe Museum for NEH Teacher Workshops
Eighty elementary and high school teachers from across the United States spent a week in June at California State University, Dominguez Hills and the nearby Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum (DRAM) learning about the people and cultures that shaped the Los Angeles region in order to enhance their teaching of American history in the classroom. Organized by the history department and the Office of Service Learning, Internships and Civic Engagement (SLICE), in partnership with DRAM, “American History through the Eyes of a California Family, 1780s-1920s” workshops were funded by a “We the People” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Talks and activities were focused on ... Read More
Jerry Moore: Anthropologist Selected to Edit Andean Studies Journal
Dr. Jerry Moore, professor of anthropology, has been selected to serve as editor of Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, beginning in March and will serve for a minimum of two years. The publication, whose name means “antiquity” in the Incan language, is the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed journal on Andean studies, and was established in 1963 by the late John H. Rowe, a leading specialist on Peruvian archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Over the last 47 years, Ñawpa Pacha has been the journal of record for archaeological research in this broad region with a complex and profound prehistory,” says Moore. “I am proud to contribute to that historic ... Read More
Susan Needham: Partnership with CSU Long Beach Continues With Cambodian History Project
For the last two years, students at California State University, Dominguez Hills and CSU Long Beach have been participating in a unique opportunity to gain field work experience through community-based service learning and hands-on research. The institutions, who signed a memo of understanding in 2008, have been creating the Cambodian Community History and Archive Project (CamCHAP). The project is directed by Susan Needham, professor and chair of anthropology at CSU Dominguez Hills, and Karen Quintiliani, assistant professor of anthropology at CSU Long Beach, with support from the Historical Society of Long Beach (HSLB), which has provided space in their offices for the physical archive and ... Read More