“Biological and Cultural Anthropology at Emory University” 1987 Special Issue of “Cultural Anthropology”

Cultural Anthropology 1987 volume 2 #1

“Biological and Cultural Anthropology at Emory University”

https://www.jstor.org/stable/i226857 https://www.jstor.org/stable/i226857

This was a special issue of Cultural Anthropology, a relatively new journal published by the American Anthropological Association.  Our acting chair, Bobby Paul, edited the volume, which included articles by all of the faculty at that time.  The publication was linked to a seminar on Evolution that Bobby offered in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts.  This was the first department-wide activity that promoted a conversation between biological and cultural anthropologists.  Another was the Mellon Foundation-sponsored “Emotions” conference at Callaway Garden in 1993.

Of particular interest may be the preface by philosopher Richard Rorty entitled “On Listening for Edifying Conversations: Resonant Discourses within and between Departments (as well as the introductory essay by Bobby Paul Introduction: Beyond the Debates of the Seventies.) Interest in biological and cultural evolution continued with the work of faculty members Mel Konner, Rob Boyd and Joe Henrich.  After he served as Dean of Emory College, Bobby Paul published a book on dual inheritance theory entitled Mixed Messages: Cultural and Genetic Inheritance in the Constitution of Human Society (2015).