3rd Coloquium

On November 19th, 2009, Dr. Fatimah Jackson came to speak on the Importance of Interdisciplinary Approaches in African American Studies (the How and Why). 
A little background info on her:

• She is a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
• She is one of the most important scientists studying the origins of humanity, and was one of the scientists who helped map the human genome.
• She was the coordinator for genetics research for the African Burial Ground Project in New York City.
• She has published over 30 research articles.
• Received her B.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.
• She has studied and used research from geography, molecular and population genetics, ethnography, demography, history, evolutionary biology, bioethics, toxicology, epidemiology, and public health and integrated these data in a biocultural anthropological context.
  

Some of her main points of her presentation:

• Ethnogenetic Layering (EL) needs to be used as a tool to incorporate data from diverse fields in addition to important research issues
• Human hetereogenetic and bicultural variability present a challenge to classical racial stratification models of epidemiology and public health
• New approaches needed in order to comprehensively capture the nuance of human biodiversity  as it relates to health
• Enzymes vay among different groups of people

I do feel like a presentation to this depth should not have been made mandatory to all freshman seeing that it could not hold the attention spann of those not at all interested in the biological differences between diverse groups of people.