Potash Hill

New faculty member brings activism to anthropology

By Shannon Haaland ’17

Anthropologist Rebekah Park is at home finding solutions through social science. Photo by Elisabeth Joffe“I strongly feel that the experts are everyday people,” said Rebekah Park, who joined Marlboro as professor of anthropology in August. She was referring to her experience working in Washington think tanks, which tended to rely upon “experts.” “I was very concerned that people in Washington were creating policies without having a good understanding of how everyday people thought and approached the same social problem.”

Rebekah didn’t always want to be an anthropologist. When she was in high school, she wanted to do social policy analysis, and she hasn’t strayed far from that goal. As an anthropologist, she is very interested in exploring social problems and conducting social science research to contribute to solutions. Anthropology has always been a great source of curiosity to Rebekah, and while she enjoyed her high school anthropology course, her interest solidified in the applications of human rights research she encountered at universities.

“Anthropologists attempt to understand social problems from the bottom up,” she said, “meaning they look at everyday people in communities as experts, and they are very committed to that perspective. That’s why I became an anthropologist, because I wanted to have the tools to do social research at that level of social analysis.”

After receiving her undergraduate degree in anthropology at Northwestern, Rebekah got her master’s in applied medical anthropology while a Fulbright scholar at the University of Amsterdam. This led to her co-editing the book Doing and Living Medical Anthropology: Personal Reflections as well as writing related articles on heroin addicts and asylum seekers in Amsterdam. After that she received her doctorate in sociocultural anthropology from UCLA, one of the top programs in the country, taking particular interest in post-conflict areas, transitional justice, and human rights, especially in Latin America.

Rebekah observed fundamentally different paradigms of anthropology studies in Amsterdam versus those at American universities. In American anthropology there tends to be a distinction made between theory and practice, while it is the norm for Dutch anthropologists to seamlessly navigate academia and policy or NGO work without mention of a theory/practice divide. This is where Rebekah’s research interests lie, and it is the approach she plans to use with her students.

“Of course there is room for knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but I want students to know that they are in a privileged position to spend time studying something,” she said. “I want them to understand that perhaps they should think about the end meaning, or product. Especially in the climate we are living in now, I think people have to be articulate as to why a liberal arts education is important, and I think that begins with their own projects.”

Rebekah (near center) with former political prisoners in Córdoba, Argentina. Photo courtesy of Rebekah ParkRebekah herself is a case in point, having spent two years in Argentina for her dissertation research, interviewing former political prisoners of the military dictatorship there in the ’70s and 
’80s. The Association of Former Political Prisoners of Córdoba, whose members survived abduction, torture, and illegal imprisonment, invited her to work with them to document their memories of the past and to actively participate in their current political organizing activities. Unlike the desaparecidos (the disappeared persons), the former political prisoners, for reasons unknown to them, were made to reappear in legal prisons and survived. Because they were marginalized for having survived, Rebekah was the first scholar to work with an organized group of former political prisoners. She has just completed her first book based on her research in Argentina, called The Reappeared, to be published by Rutgers University Press as part of the Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights series.

An enthusiast of international opportunities, Rebekah said that travel is one of the most important anthropological experiences someone can have. “The first international experience that changed me was when I was in Korea—I was 13—because it taught me what it felt like to be part of a majority,” Rebekah said. “There are completely different ways of organizing society, and sometimes you forget that when you stay in one place.”

Rebekah’s favorite thing about teaching at Marlboro is the one-on-one advising. “When you teach at a smaller college, you get to have more-personal interactions with students,” she said, emphasizing the atmosphere of Marlboro’s close-knit community.

“I am thoroughly enjoying my interactions with students so far at Marlboro,” she said. “I’m teaching two classes, Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology and Social Suffering, and I really enjoy speaking with all of my students. They’re really smart.” She craves gaining the knowledge of what motivates a student intellectually and being able to add structure to
a student’s independent creativity.

Working with the Marlboro faculty excites Rebekah; she is enthused to try co-teaching a class, as well as designing new classes. She wants to bring popularly debated topics at Marlboro, such as race and gender, into new light with analytical classes, and to teach more advanced tutorials in violence and human rights. Rebekah is also excited to understand and explore the concept of the Marlboro Plan of Concentration.

“That’s why Marlboro is ideal, because there is so much emphasis on figuring out what you want to do specifically on your Plan and the tutorial. I felt as though it spoke to my interests and strengths in teaching,” she said.

Shannon Haaland is a freshman at Marlboro College interning as a writer in the marketing and communications department.