Anthony Graesch

Anthony P. Graesch identifies as an anthropologist whose scholarship and analytic sensibilities are shaped by archaeological method and theory. His active research programs address materiality and discard behavior in contemporary societies as well as the ancestral houses and households of First Nations collaborators in western North America. Although seemingly disparate research domains, some common threads link these projects: a focus on discarding as a culturally generative domain of human behavior and, by extension, a prioritization of the analytic significance of discards; a nerdy fascination with site formation processes; a deep concern with the relationship between inferential argument and the methods that generate the data on which an arguments is built; and a celebration of the less-glamorous, less-studied, and oft-dismissed realms of the material record. His publication record exemplifies these analytic dispositions and includes articles written and published with undergraduate students.

At Connecticut College, Professor Graesch offers courses addressing the practice, theory, and ethics of archaeological anthropology. He subscribes to the idea that undergraduates should achieve demonstrable research literacy at the time of graduation, and he regularly mentors students pursuing advanced field- and lab-based experiential research education. His efforts to challenge students to work harder than they thought possible and to reach unanticipated levels of academic achievement garnered him a Helen Mulvey Faculty Award.

Professor Graesch advises students pursuing the Anthropology major and minor as well as students pursuing the social science track of the Environmental Studies major and minor. He also serves as a faculty fellow and advises students applying for and pursuing certificate-bearing curricular programs in the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment as well as in the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology. In true Liberal Arts fashion, many of his students pursue an Anthropology major in combination with a second major in Environmental Studies, Biology, or Art.

Research | Curriculum Vitae | Anthropology Department