Maureen Scanlan (Anthropology, Class of 2016)

After attending 12 years of Catholic school, where history and religion were romanticized and filtered, my first semester at university demystified many of the social constructs and supposed facts that had been built in to my primary education. After struggling to decide amongst sociology, history, education, or theology, I came to realize that anthropology was the culmination of these subjects and more; anthropology provides me with the necessary tools to explore the historical and cultural significance of any aspect of human life. Within my coursework in the field at the University of Vermont, I have focused on the intersections between religion, colonialism, and capitalism in Latin America and the Caribbean. My recent travels to Cuba cemented my interest in the political economy of islands and the cultural complexities, power dynamics, and forms of resistance that arise from the colonial encounter. Most recently I have explored the anthropology of food and labor, and am currently crafting a final paper on the challenges of hop farming in the northeast due to increasing demand for craft breweries in Vermont.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016 at 9:09 am and is filed under Anthropology Careers, Anthropology Classes, Student Recognition/Awards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.