Conference Agenda

Sorority Voices began as an ethnographic study on sorority life across college campuses. As part of the Voices of the Garden State: Life Histories project at Rowan University, the purpose of this website is to identify the lived experience and culture of sorority life. Conceptualizing this project was guided by theoretical frameworks of feminist theory, liminality (Van Gennep), presentation of self (Goffman), social capital (Bourdieu), social learning theory (Bandura), strain theory (Merton), and symbolic-interactionism. As an outsider to Greek life, I sought to answer the questions non-affiliated students may have but do not know how to approach. Does the reality of Greek life reflect the stereotypes? Are sisterhoods really as tight-knit and provide connections that they appear to on social media? Do hierarchies exist within and among organizations? These questions are not so easily answered. Through months of field observation, interviewing, and evaluating public discourse, the nuanced experience of sorority life are uncovered. This website is meant to be interactive to engage students in meaningful discussions about Greek life on campus, whether they are a member or unaffiliated.

Themes that have emerged throughout my research are: building community, upholding cultural values, finding identity and belonging, and navigating the structure of sororities. My paper will discuss the extensive recruitment process wherein potential new members are selected based on desired qualities of the organizations, such as appearance or enthusiasm. I learned how each sorority has a unique set of cultural values and practices and accordingly has distinct ways of educating and socializing members into these worlds. Participants' stories emphasized how conforming to sorority practices and performing prescribed social roles provided a sense of identity that was paradoxically experienced as authentic. I will also show how the barriers to membership in a sorority limit economic diversity as well as diversity of social types including body size or ability. Each of these topics will be discussed in greater depth with an analysis of their significance to understanding sororities as an institution that shapes individuals. My findings and analysis will be presented on the website sororityvoices.rowandh.org by the time of the conference.

Humans have always searched the earth for stories, and in burial grounds those stories are written in bone. For more than a century, archaeological and forensic anthropology have relied on skeletal morphology to construct the biological profile—estimating sex, age-at-death, stature, and trauma from the pelvis, skull, and long bones. Yet as contemporary scholarship broadens our understanding of gender diversity, especially transgender identities, it becomes necessary to reconsider how confidently we read identity from the skeleton alone. This paper explores how emerging scientific methods—ranging from bone mineral density analysis and muscle attachment assessment to genomic and proteomic testing—reshape the way archaeologists interpret past bodies and imagine the future of excavation practices.

Recent scholarship such as the systematic review by Viana, Selvaggi, and Milani (2025) synthesizes forensic research on identifying transgender and gender-diverse individuals, emphasizing how hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgical interventions may influence skeletal features. These findings complicate earlier assumptions that bone reflects a fixed binary. Studies comparing osteological, genomic, and proteomic approaches (Buonasera et al., 2020) reveal that molecular methods often provide more precise biological sex estimation than morphology alone, particularly in ambiguous cases. At the same time, research using DXA and CT imaging (Fernández Castillo & López Ruiz, 2011; Luo et al., 2023; Bethard et al., 2019) demonstrates that bone mineral density correlates with age and long-term hormonal environments. Such data suggest that endocrine exposure—whether endogenous or medically mediated—can subtly shape skeletal architecture over time.

Metric analyses of long bones and postcranial elements (Menéndez Garmendia et al., 2025; Morandini et al., 2025), alongside geometric morphometric studies of the sacrum and cranium, refine traditional sex estimation techniques. However, investigations into skeletal robusticity and muscle entheses (De La Paz et al., 2025; Smith & Roberts, 2014) remind us that activity patterns and mechanical loading also alter bone form. Fracture analysis and trauma modeling (Ortner & Lynch, 2012; Beier et al., 2024) further demonstrate that bones register lived experience—labor, violence, stress—rather than identity categories alone. Even genetic sexing of subadult remains (2023) shows that biological signals can be accessed where morphology fails, though DNA too reflects chromosomal patterns, not gendered selfhood.

Taken together, this interdisciplinary body of research suggests that skeletons record biological processes, environmental pressures, and embodied histories, but they do not directly encode social identity. Therefore, the future of archaeological burial excavation must adopt probabilistic, multi-method approaches that integrate osteology, imaging technology, molecular science, and contextual burial analysis. Rather than searching deterministically for “trans bodies” in the archaeological record, scholars must recognize both the capabilities and the limitations of skeletal evidence.

By embracing collaboration between anthropology, forensic science, genetics, and bioarchaeology, we move toward a more ethically grounded and scientifically rigorous interpretation of past lives. In doing so, archaeology not only refines its technical methods but also deepens its responsibility: to reconstruct the human past with accuracy, humility, and respect for the complexity of embodied identity across time.

This research project will analyze how different institutional, cultural, and moral frameworks make sense of eating disturbances and practices among Latina women, and what tensions arise when these frameworks collide. When it comes to looking into this institutionally, I would like to look into the public health aspects. Public health professionals have been and continue to use body mass index (BMI) as a measure of a person's body weight and good health (cf. CDC 2024). However, many thoughtful voices raise significant concerns surrounding the relevance of BMI (cf. Humphrey’s 2010). Culturally, this project will examine how Latina women’s eating disturbances, practices, and body perceptions are shaped by specific cultural beliefs and understandings of beauty and health. Sociocultural research highlights that Latina women often face and navigate complex beauty ideals shaped by ethnic identity, socialization, and dominant Westernized body standards (cf. Buchanan et al. 2022).

Additionally, research on body dissatisfaction among Latina women demonstrates that cultural stress and identity play a significant role in shaping body image concerns, emphasizing that eating disturbances and practices cannot be understood outside of a cultural context (cf. Quiñones, Herbozo, and Haedt-Matt 2022). Morally, I will look into how eating practices and body sizes amongst Latina women are often interpreted through frameworks of personal accountability/responsibility and discipline. Academic research on weight stigma among Latina women illustrates how body size tends to be moralized, where larger bodies are interpreted as signs of personal failure rather than as outcomes shaped by broader structural and cultural conditions (cf. Rodríguez Torres 2018). These moral judgments coexist with institutional frameworks that present themselves as neutral and objective, creating a tension in which Latina women are recognized as affected by broader structural forces but are simultaneously being held individually responsible for their bodies and eating practices.

My paper aims to study the process of plate curation within a series of plates as photographed by college students showing off their curated plates. Preferences of college students will be examined to gain an understanding of “plate forms.” Plate forms refers to the unique ways that students organize their meals. By understanding the food insecurity gap between 18-24 year olds not in college compared to the diets of those in college, this paper aims to develop an understanding of the ways college age people develop their cooking skills. The data can be collected using the lens of reported cultural background, food access, and social media influence. Developing a sense of diet during the course of their college careers, this study explores the imaginative curation process for young adults that builds “the perfect plate” and their understanding of weekly menus and food. This curation is demonstrated not only through the preparation and presentation of plates through social media, but through the procurement of resources under the shared conditions at an American university. The paper also aims to study how the cultural understanding of diets and preferences vary by college seniority as students grow accustomed to the resources provided by their university. Understanding the development of taste is a critical aspect of the future diets as it shapes the future palettes and nutritional focus of future generations.

Humans have always survived by working together—sharing food, knowledge, and techniques across generations. In archaeology, this collaboration now extends beyond people to disciplines, especially between anthropology and chemistry. This paper explores how recent advances in biomolecular and isotopic analysis allow archaeologists to reconstruct ancient foodways with remarkable specificity, transforming pottery vessels into molecular archives of cooperation, subsistence, and cultural change. Drawing on compound-specific radiocarbon dating of fatty acids by Casanova et al. (2022), this study highlights how 14C analysis of dairy lipids preserved in ceramic walls provides direct chronological evidence for the emergence of dairying among the first farmers of Central Europe. Rather than estimating from animal bones alone, researchers can now date the milk itself—chemistry anchoring cuisine to time.

Recent methodological innovations outlined by Vykukal et al. (2024) and Irto et al. (2022) demonstrate how improvements in chromatography, mass spectrometry, and lipid extraction techniques refine the identification of fats, oils, and degraded food residues. Experimental archaeology further strengthens interpretation: Miller et al.’s (2020) year-long cooking experiment reveals how visible and absorbed residues accumulate and chemically transform through repeated use, showing that pots record long culinary biographies rather than single meals. Expanding analytical reach, Ordoñez-Araque et al. (2024) demonstrate the feasibility of detecting both fatty acids and starches in minute archaeological fragments, enabling reconstruction of mixed plant and animal diets from even microscopic samples. At the same time, Whelton et al. (2021) urge caution, emphasizing issues of contamination, degradation, and palimpsest effects, reminding scholars that chemical signatures require contextual and methodological rigor.

Case studies ranging from early European dairying to pastoralist pottery, medieval Icelandic vessels, and South Asian dairy residues illustrate how molecular evidence illuminates broader patterns of agricultural transition, mobility, and economic specialization. These findings show that food was never merely sustenance; it structured trade, labor divisions, and social identity. Through lipid biomarkers, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and compound-specific dating, archaeologists can now trace when communities shifted from fishing to dairying, when pastoralists integrated crops into their economies, and how culinary practices reflected adaptation to environmental and social pressures.

Aligned with this year’s conference theme of collaboration, cooperation, and connection, this research demonstrates that understanding ancient diets depends upon interdisciplinary partnership. Chemistry and anthropology together reveal that cooking practices were collective acts shaped by shared knowledge and environmental negotiation. By integrating laboratory science with archaeological theory, we gain a layered understanding of how food connected communities across time. Ultimately, these molecular traces deepen public awareness and preservation efforts by showing that even the smallest potsherd contains a story of cooperation—between humans, landscapes, and now, between scientific disciplines themselves.