Academics

“Anthropology should make people ask and answer the question: What does it mean to be human?”

Patti Meyer avers that anthropology is a critical subject for college students. They’re about to go out on their own into the world and begin finding their places. Studying humans around the world and throughout history helps to give them a good idea of where they fit in.

She explains, “I think that’s the hook for 18-year-olds who are thinking about dating, mating, and working. ‘How do the choices I make matter in the bigger world?’ I especially like teaching first-year students. They’re saying, ‘My mom and dad raised me in the world this way, but now I’m removed from that, so how am I going to be?’”

The key to answering that question, she says, is to have the students immerse themselves in the discipline—not by simply learning terms and theories, but by experiencing anthropology. She has her students write every week in order to make better connections, independent of a textbook.

“Anthropology is a topic that is better if you can write about it, talk about it, read about it, and think about it. Once students have a little vocabulary, especially at an institution like this, we should be expecting them to make connections and talk about it. When I’m forced to write a paper or prepare a presentation, I actually think about something more fully. That’s just how we are.”

In fact, Meyer believes so strongly that writing is the best way for her to gauge students’ progress in introductory-level anthropology courses, she chose not to give tests.

“I decided with classes this small, why not?”

Meyer has been in Lexington only a few years, but she quickly became involved in the community and spends much of her free time teaching English as a Second Language. Her students occasionally volunteer to help her. She also volunteers at the Kentucky Horse Park, where she works with retired horses—a somewhat nostalgic activity for Meyer, who grew up on a ranch in Nebraska.

Recent presentations:

• Society for the Anthropology of Work, “Unlikely Alliances: Labor Unions, Italian Elders, and South American Immigrants,” San Francisco, November 2012

• Symposium on Latin American and Caribbean Studies, “Maintaining the Health of Workers: the Mixed Messages of the Italian State,” Lexington, Ky., October 2012

• Society for Medical Anthropology, “Italian Institutions, Conflicted Messages about Care and Health,” Baltimore, March 2012

• American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, “The Role of the Catholic Church in the Lives of South American Careworkers in Genoa, Italy, during Times of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment,” Montreal, Canada, November 2011

• Medical Humanities Conference, “Non Denunciare = We Will Not Report,” Kalamazoo, Mich., September 2011

• Seventh International Carework Conference, “The Catholic Church: The Construction, Support, and Surveillance of Laboring Bodies,” Las Vegas, Nev., August 2011

• American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, “Care for the Careworkers: Subject Positions and Health-seeking Strategies of Immigrant Careworkers Laboring in the Homes of Elders in Genoa,” New Orleans, November 2010

• Transforming Care Conference sponsored by the Danish National Centre for Social Research, the University of Hamburg, and the University of Vechta, “Care for the Careworkers: an Ethnographic Study in Genoa,” Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010