Acknowledgements – Special Issue 3.1

A huge, huge thank you to the amazing team that made this special issue possible.


Our Guest Editors

Dr. Laurie Reitsema and Samm Holder, thank you for proposing the idea and direction for this issue last spring, for working with your students in ANTH 4265 Bioarchaeology—a course supported by the Writing Intensive Program—to draft and develop essay collections for submission, for reviewing revised manuscripts, and ultimately for partnering with us to showcase a rich body of student writing and research.


Dr. Laurie Reitsema studies human diet as a link between biology, culture, and environment, focusing on stable isotope analysis of archaeological human skeletal remains. Her bioarchaeological work is informed by ties to human biology and primatology. She chiefly works with European skeletal samples, and also uses stable isotope analysis to study diet and stress among modern humans and non-human primates. In 2018, she was awarded the Charles B. Knapp Early Career Scholar Award by the University of Georgia’s Office of Research. She was also recognized in 2016 as Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Faculty by the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.


Samm Holder is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology and is working toward an Interdisciplinary Certificate in University Teaching. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and certificate in Conceptual Foundations of Medicine from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Central Florida. Samm’s research focuses on how social structures and human biology working together to shape human biology in the past. Her dissertation focuses on how army rationing and soldier supplementation of rations through foraging, purchasing, and stealing food shaped the provisioning of diet and nutrition among Napoleonic soldiers that perished during Russian Campaign retreat of 1812.


Our Guest Anthropology Reviewers

Thank you all for accepting our invitation to join the editorial board this semester to help review submissions and provide thoughtful feedback to students.


Edgar Alarcon uses archaeological skeletal data to investigate individual lifetimes and past communities as lenses through which to examine wider ecological and social contexts. His research is situated on the cusp of Spanish colonization near what would become the rural edge of Mexico City. He plans to further archaeological and bioarchaeological research in Mesoamerica by addressing challenges to the field and the region: accessibility of archaeological information to scholars and the general public, creation of local-level biogeochemical standards, refinement of chronologies, and partnership with stakeholder communities.


KC Jones is a doctoral candidate studying the behavioral ecology of small-scale hunter-gatherer societies in the interior Coastal Plain of Georgia. Her research investigates the settlement histories of hunter-gatherers on the Southeastern landscape as they relate to key resource distributions and increased sedentism throughout the Paleoindian and Archaic periods. Prior to graduate school, she spent several years in cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology.


Christina Lee is a third-year Ph.D. student studying biological anthropology, as well as public health management and policy (MPH program). Her academic interests include physical activity during childhood, Latin American studies, medical anthropology, and the anthropology of sport.


Emily F. Ramsey is a third-year Ph.D. student in Cultural Anthropology and a Graduate Assistant for the Honors Program. Her scholarly interests lie at the nexus of U.S. and global food systems, food sovereignty, agroecology, and the preservation of agricultural identities and traditions. Her dissertation research specifically focuses on the lived experiences, memories, skill, and contributions of Latinx immigrant farmers to the U.S. food landscape. Emily is also pursuing a Certificate in Organic Agricultural Production to support her research and hopes to someday bring these skills back to her family farm in Tennessee.


Katherine Reinberger is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology. Her research interests include the bioarchaeology of Greek colonization and warfare: using human skeletal remains to investigate the construction of military forces and understand how warfare connects culturally and spatially diverse populations in a globalizing world. Her dissertation research focuses on the diet and migration of Greek soldiers in 5th c. BCE Sicily, Italy in relation to changing political and social structures.


April Kristen Smith is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology studying bioarchaeology from an evolutionary and biocultural perspective. Her research focuses on elucidating the effects of early childhood stress on mortality from infectious disease. Specifically, she studies skeletal markers of early childhood stress among 19th-century cholera victims from Central and Southern Italy.


Our Editorial Board

Thank you all for everything you did to help produce our largest issue to date and on a shorter timeline. Your careful review, thoughtful feedback, and comprehensive copy editing have helped improve and enhance each publication. See Editorial Board for board member biographies.


Our Student Writers

Thank you for working through an extensive review and revision process to produce your best work. We are thrilled to share your writing and research here! See Contributor Notes 3.1 for writer biographies.


The Classic Journal is proudly published by the Franklin College Writing Intensive Program. To learn more about WIP, visit us online.