University of Calgary

CIH Fellows 2007-2008

 Annual Fellows

Linda Carreiro

Linda Carreiro received her Master of Fine Arts in Art and Design from the University of Alberta, and she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art.

Professor Carreiro's fellowship project is titled "What Lies Beneath: Gender Inscriptions with Flap-Anatomy." It deals with the representation of women in anatomical models (popular since the Renaissance), how their alluring postures reveal cultural practices within the history of medicine, and the broader societal attitudes they represent in regard to class and gender. In addition to written components, the project also has a studio phase involving small maquettes for the flaps that will contribute toward a comprehensive creative work for a solo exhibition.

Geoffrey McCafferty

Geoffrey McCafferty received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the State University of New York, and he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology.

Dr. McCafferty's fellowship project is "Cholula, The Rome of Anahuac: A multi-disciplinary analysis of America's oldest city."  Cholula (Puebla, Mexico) is one of the major archaeological sites of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica featuring the world's largest pyramid and an unbroken sequence of 3000 years of occupation - making it the oldest city in the Americas.   Cholula was well described by early Spanish explorers who compared it to their own European experience and described it as the "Rome of the Anahuac."  Using a multi-disciplinary strategy (archaeology, ethnohistory, art history, and historical anthropology) the project addresses the question: why was Cholula able to maintain its position as a major urban center when other Mesoamerican cities collapsed and were abandoned.

Margaret J. Osler

Margaret J. Osler holds her Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University, and she is a Professor in the Department of History.

Dr. Osler's fellowship project is titled "Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God and Human Understanding in Early Modern Europe."  It deals with a new way of understanding the Scientific Revolution (the period from Copernicus to Newton) by studying the changes that took place within the disciplines of early modern science (astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology) as early modern thinkers understood them.  It uses the table of contents of early modern textbooks and treatises to show how ideas within the disciplinary categories changed.  The traditional strategy of studying early modern science gives pride of place to developments in mathematics, physics, and astronomy that reflect contemporary interests and values that are read back onto the historical material.  The approach taken with the fellowship project is to provide a historically responsible way of understanding how thinkers in the seventeenth century understood their projects - the problems they faced, and the ways that they chose to address them.


Undergraduate Student Fellows

Tanya Chiykowski

Tanya Chiykowski is a fourth-year student in the Department of Archaeology.

Ms. Chiykowski's research project is titled "Contextualizing Economics in Religious and Social Frameworks: Case Study of Cholula, Mexico." The city of Cholula is a key religious centre in Mexico that currently hosts a large annual festival dedicated to the Virgin of the Remedies that continues a pre-colonial tradition located on top of the Tlachihualtepetl pyramid that attracts over 350,000 participants.  Ethnohistorical sources from the 16th century indicate that the festival practices have a long history dating to prehispanic periods.  The interplay between religion and economics is an historical characteristic of Cholula that has allowed it to function as a prominent Mexican city for such a long period.  Ms. Chiykowski's project deals with how religion and market exchange functioned prior to Spanish contact in Central Mexico.

Shane Sackman

Shane Sackman is a fourth-year student in the Department of Political Science and also in the Department of Psychology.

Mr. Sackman's project is "Legal Positivism, Natural Law and the Possibility of a Third Way."  It addresses the question: to what extent can the law promote both virtue and freedom? by doing an argumentative analysis of the contemporary debate between legal positivism and natural law theory.  The latter position argues that law ought to conform to morality while the former position attempts to divorce morality from law to give citizens of a state freedom to make the law whatever they wish it to be.  Mr. Sackman's project analyses similarities between the two theories to identify a third alternative that accommodates matters of virtue and freedom in a conceptual whole.

Visiting Fellows

Tania Saj

Tania Saj is the R.H. Tomlinson Post-Doctoral Fellow, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow, in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University.

Dr. Saj's research project is titled "The Cost of Being Social: The relationship between disease and social organization among primates."  It deals with how disease, and specifically parasite infection, is a significant cost for sociality among primates in the Kibale National Park in Uganda among red colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus tephrosceles).  The project investigates the consequences of direct and indirect types of competition among female red colobus by measuring female energy balance in terms of food intake and diet quality, and physiological stress in terms of cortisol levels and parasite infections.  The larger frame of reference investigates the potential synergy between food intake/diet quality and parasitism as determinants of stress in this population.