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Fall Convocation
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Chapel
Fall Convocation is the official culmination of the Orientation program and the official beginning of the academic year. This year’s speaker will be Lucille Johnson, Professor of Anthropology at Vassar. Lucy received her B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University (in 1966 and 1973). In her Vassar teaching career since 1973, Lucy has taught such courses as “The Frozen North: High Latitude Anthropology” in the fields of archaeology, physical anthropology, and ethnography. Her College Courses include the History of Science and Technology from Earliest Times through Galileo.
Lucy Johnson has received National Geographic Society and National Science Foundation grants for her field work projects in the Alaskan Shumagin Islands. In connection with her grants, Vassar students have accompanied Professor Johnson to the Shumagin Islands to participate in excavations of burial sites on Chernabura Island. Lucy’s work has taken her to such far off places as Egypt, Chile, and Peru and as close as various sites in Idaho and New York State.
Lucy has been Director of the Independent Program and served as Class Advisor in the Office of the Dean of Studies from 1990 to 1993, and has participated in several of Vassar’s multidisciplinary and interdepartmental programs, including the Latin America Studies, Environmental Studies, and Science, Technology and Society programs. Among recent articles are “Aleut Sea-Mammal Hunting: Ethnohistorical and Archeological Evidence” in Exploitation and Cultural Importance of Sea Mammals and “Earthquakes, tsumanis and cultural resistance in the Shumagin Islands,” in Catastrophism, Natural Disasters and Cultural Change. Lucy has written a number of reviews and was the editor of Paleoshorelines and Prehistory, 1991.
Lucy is currently at work on her next book, Dead Fox Cave: Prehistoric Mortuary Practices in the Islands of the Four Mountains, Alaska.