Today I attended a memorial mass celebrating the life of a friend and colleague, Dr. John Alfred Pierre Dennis, Jr., who died on February 9, 2008 (b. 10/21/48). Dr. D, as he was known to students, was one of those people whose spirit literally seemed to linger in the room after he left – making it a better place than it had been before he entered. There are other articles where you can read about the tragic circumstances of his death (he was murdered in his home by a former mentee), or the triumphs of his professional life (for example, he was one of a relatively small number of African-Americans with a PhD in history from Stanford University), but I wanted to take a moment to share a few personal remembrances.

Although I had known John enough to say hello for several years, which with him meant a hug and a kiss on the cheek every time I saw him, we had our first personal and bonding conversations in the spring of 2006 when we both attended a retreat for faculty on the Russian River in Northern California. We discovered we shared in common a passion for teaching, an affection for European history, and interestingly, taught the only two courses on death at Saint Mary’s College. John taught his as a January Term cross-curricular offering with historical, cross-cultural, philosophical, and spiritual dimensions and called it, “Death and Dying.” Mine was a semester-long course called “The Anthropology of Death,” and was crafted along the lines of many such anthro courses at many institutions – a review of the history of funerary and ritual theories, a little endocannibalism, a little mortuary archaeology, and all of the famous case studies you can probably think of off the tops of your little ethnographic heads.

Believe it or not, a scholarly interest in death is the kind of thing that academics can bond over, and we talked about our efforts to convince students (and sometimes colleagues) that the study of death, far from macabre, was a great way to study life. We agreed that to understand a culture’s response to death was to gain insight into what it valued most about life. I thought of that today as I sat, literally in the last little folding chair in the far, far, back corner of the packed to bursting chapel and listened to ways that Dr. D’s death prompted the College community to celebrate and remember his life. They mentioned his love of music, dance, and the arts; his sense of teaching as a calling from God; his eccentric (yet classy, in my opinion) taste in clothing colors; and above all, his ability to inspire others. John had spent many of his years at Saint Mary’s teaching students in the High Potential Program, which identifies, admits, and then works tirelessly to support students, from disadvantaged and under-prepared backgrounds at the College. One of the speakers at the service described John as the person who stood in the space between the students and their dreams, helping them identify those aspirations, believe in them, and achieve them.

One of the last extensive conversations John and I ever had was after I gave a talk in the Academic Integrity Seminar he was teaching (students attending are those who have been found guilty of a violation of the academic honor code). He came up to me afterwards and clasped my hands and said, “Cindy, you are a wonder.” That’s exactly what he said. Somehow John could say things like that and you would feel the sincerity of his praise penetrating down to your bones and inspiring you. I’m sure I beamed, and in that moment it hardly mattered that at the end of a long day I was certain I was anything but… I can only imagine how that ability to so quickly and easily make meaningful connections benefited his students.

So, Dr. John Dennis, I offer you this blog entry, as my own way of commemorating and honoring what was important to me about your life and death. It scares me that you were killed by one of the people that you tried to help. It pleases me to say you were my friend. It inspires me to continue the work you felt was so important in teaching, mentoring, and promoting appreciation for cultural diversity. It deeply and profoundly saddens me that we will not dance together at next year’s Christmas Party, but in my mind’s eye, you will always be rocking out to “I Will Survive” as we did in December of 2007. With love, Cindy.

As the presidential primaries roll on, I find myself increasingly contemplating the question, is the American electorate ready to elect a phenotypically black president? I want to believe that I am part of a culture that would answer, “Of course I will vote for him, if he has a sound exit strategy for Iraq, good ideas about healthcare, and a fiscal policy that makes sense to me.” Alas, you can’t always get what you want – and increasingly, we can’t seem to even get what we need.

Two stories were in the news today that raised my eyebrows, but lowered my hopes. First of all, I read that Barack Obama’s Kenyan relatives sat on plastic chairs in their village listening to the radio to see how he was doing in the primaries, “surrounded by chickens and barefoot children.” In a political climate where reports are that Fox News has already “mistakenly” pronounced Obama as Osama (Hey, that name sounds oddly familiar for some negative reason I can’t quite put my finger on….) it was noted that Obama’s grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama (Hmmm… that sounds sort of suspicious, too…) sat in her cinderblock house waiting for news. That ought to play well in Peoria. They have emphasized and exoticized details about Obama’s family that draw attention to their foreignness and play on lingering American stereotypes of Africans. (For example, I searched for a description of Mitt Romney’s family’s chairs, or even the status of their shoes, and could find no data.)

And then there’s Tiger Woods. Yahoo Sports and others are reporting that Golf Channel anchor – let’s call her out by name – Kelly Tilghman, made the comment that “golf’s young players should lynch Tiger Woods in an alley.” How horrifying! Is it possible that she is so innocently not-racist that she has no idea why that might be a poor choice of words (to say the least)? Are we to believe that the word lynch just randomly came into her head? Or maybe they will claim that on earlier occasions she has suggested lynch mobs form for other people that annoyed her with their excellence.  I don’t know, say, the Jewish banker down the street with the nice Mercedes, or the Chinese girl in her graduating class who had 1600 on her SAT’s? Besides, isn’t “lynch in an alley” a common sports expression? As in, the Oakland Raiders were doing really well this season until the New England Patriots lynched them in an alley? I think not.

Maybe I should just go back to contemplating “Is America ready to elect a President with a vagina?” Afterall, there’s never anything depressingly misogynistic in American news, right?

That’s right – I changed my unit of analysis from a “part” to an “episode.” Those of you who teach, especially in the world of small, highly interactive classrooms full of undergraduates, will understand that the experience is enough like a sitcom to warrant the analogy.

Today’s episode took place in my senior capstone Anthropological Theory seminar during the final class meeting. We were munching on local delicacies such as shrimp tacos, carnitas tortas, and enchiladas verde, when students asked me to talk more about “that HTS controversy” and the AAA’s. (Although I could tell that this was somewhat of a cheap attempt to get relief from talking about reading they hadn’t quite completed, the food made me weak, and I went along with the diversion.)

What followed was an interesting little discussion about anthropological involvement in World War II, Vietnam and other South East Asian military campaigns, metanarratives, identity, ethics, personal responsibility, and agency/structure as mediated through practice (I can fit that last one into any conversation – just try me).

The tone in the room was getting increasingly agitated and concerned. Students looked genuinely worried. One finally said, “But if the government comes to your door and demands that you use your anthropology to help them, do you HAVE to?!” I was about to reassure her that as far as I knew it had not yet reached the point of forceful conscription, when a peer helpfully responded, “Omigod!!! Didn’t you people SEE Transformers?!!!”

It was time to move on to the next reading anyway, and she had now provided me with the perfect segue (an element of all well-crafted sitcoms): so we discussed Foucault’s vision of power and discourse analysis with a whole new zeal.

Yesterday I walked into the classroom of my Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology class and passed two young women deeply engaged in an animated discussion.  The snippet I overheard was part of a recounted conversation: “…and I was all, ‘Geeze, she’s your professor!!’  I mean seriously, would it kill him to codeswitch?  It’s just stupid…”  Her conversational partner was nodding affirmatively in shared disdain.

Don’t you love it when the anthropology actually takes?!

When understanding culture is your abiding interest and passion, everyday is a good day to be an anthropologist, however yesterday supplied us with some particularly exciting media happenings.

First of all, news broke that during his appearance at Columbia University, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had let it be known that there are no gay people in Iran. This is an exciting development for anthropologists wishing to study one of those ever elusive “purely heterosexual” societies. Now, if anyone knows where we can find a matriarchy (or maybe the missing link?) I’ll be ready to retire. This news also prompted giggling around the country as various sassy pundits (including on the local San Francisco dance music radio station – FM 92.7) suggested helpfully some version of the idea “Well, maybe they just keep their gays in public restrooms — you know, like the Republican Party does over here.”

Last night viewers were treated to an indigenous awareness one-two punch on Comedy Central.  First up was Bolivia’s President Evo Morales on The Daily Show. He spoke (through translation) about how his election proves that people of diverse backgrounds (he is of indigenous Native South American descent, specifically Aymara) can become leaders in today’s world. Stewart replied in a stage whisper that it was not so much so here in the U.S..  Regarding our election process: “it’s rigged” he confided to Evo’s amusement.

Those with the stamina to stay awake were able to watch Stephen Colbert interview K. David Harrison, the author of When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. Ever the perfect ethnocentric foil (really, he puts the Cultural Evolutionists of the 19th century to shame with his flawless application of the concept at every turn), Colbert prefaced his introduction of the guest by proclaiming the good news to English speakers all over the world: “We’re winning!”

If you like your culture commentary with an American media infusion and a dash of ironic truthiness, then yesterday was surely a great day to be anthropologically minded.