Collaborative Anthropology & Community Based Research
I have directed a long-term community-based research project working with elderly residents of a multiethnic neighborhood of Easton, directing a series of student projects and a a semester-long course, A&S 244, Rebuilding Shattered Worlds through Recollection. Students in this course learned oral history and ethnographic research methodologies, conducted interviews with residents of a former multiracial neighborhood, and, working with community members, prepared a book of neighborhood memories. Remembering Fourth and Lehigh is a work of collaborative anthropology, and includes neighborhood-resident sponsored essays as well as works by students based on oral historical research.
We distribute this book free of charge.
Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium
I was honored to be named co-director of this four-year $950,000 grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Building on my connections with members of the local community, co-director Charlotte Nunes and I brought together neighboring academic and cultural institutions to explore and elucidate the personal, historical, and community narratives that have emerged in the past half-century in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. Working with a steering committee composed of representatives of institutions spanning the local community (Cedar Crest College, DeSales University, Lehigh University, Moravian University, and Muhlenberg College, the Lehigh Valley Research Consortium, Allentown Art Museum, Easton Area Public Library, Karl Stirner Arts Trail, and the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society/Sigal Museum), we funded projects that brought the region’s diversity and sense of place to light, considering the role of storymaking in documenting the changes that have taken place over the past five decades.
Peer-reviewed Publications with Students
Rachel Scarpato (class of 2008).
Rachel Scarpato and I conducted archival research and oral history interviews into a neighborhood in downtown Easton, "Syrian Town," demolished in 1960s urban renewal projects. We published our results in 2010:
"The Language of “Blight” and Easton’s “Lebanese Town”: Understanding a Neighborhood’s Loss to Urban Renewal," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 134(2): 127-164.
Anna Eisenstein (class of 2013).
Working with Smith every semester while at Lafayette, Anna Eisenstein assisted me in the research and development of an article exploring the use of ethnonyms to index class status in the following article:
2013 Thoroughly Mixed Yet Thoroughly Ethnic: Indexing Class with Ethnonyms (with Anna Eisenstein). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23(2):E1-22.
While Anna Eisenstein was in graduate school at the University of Virginia (completing a Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology in 2020), we completed a monograph that stemmed from this research:
2016 Rebuilding Shattered Worlds Through Recollection: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (with Anna Eisenstein). Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press.
This monograph explores the centrality of a former neighborhood in the imaginations of its residents, some fifty years after its demolition. It considers the role of place in consolidating individual and memories.
In 2017, I was recognized for these activities with the Excellence in Community Engagement Pedagogy Award, Lafayette College