Bilinda Straight
{pubs & grants}{courses}{students}{data}
SCHOLARLY
2019 School for Advanced Research NSF Research Teams Seminar A Bio-Cultural Investigation of Intergenerational Epigenetic Mechanisms.
2017-20 National Science Foundation: Grant #1728743
2014-17 National Science Foundation (with Ivy Pike, dual PI): Grants #1430860 and 1430790
2013 SEE Innovation Highlight
2010 Emerging Scholar Award, Western Michigan University.
2008-11 National Science Foundation (with Ivy Pike, dual PI): Grants #0822915 and 0822951
2004-2008 National Science Foundation (with Jon Holtzman, co-PI): Grant #0413431, 2004-2008
2000-2012 Recipient of numerous scholarly and teaching with technology grants, Western Michigan University
2006-2007 Nominated for Teaching Award, Western Michigan University
1992-1994 Fulbright Award Recipient
CREATIVE WRITING RECOGNITION
2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Award First Runner Up
2014 Faulkner-Wisdom Award Finalist
2013 Faulkner-Wisdom Award Short-listed Finalist
2012 New Letters LIterary Award Finalist
2012 & 2014 Mid-American Review Fineline Competition Semi-Finalist
2012 Faulkner-Wisdom Award Semi-Finalist
Photo Credits:
Top center (Bilinda on elephant) and right (Bilinda and friends trying to catch a cell signal) by Charles Hilton; All other photos by Bilinda Straight
SINGLE AUTHORED BOOKS
2007 Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. November.
EDITED COLLECTIONS
2006 Becoming Dead: The Entangled Agencies of the Dearly Departed. Special Issue (Bilinda Straight, ed.), Anthropology and Humanism 31(2).
2005 Women on the Verge of Home. Bilinda Straight (editor). SUNY (State University of New York) Press.
2002 Conflict at the Center of Ethnography, Special issue (Bilinda Straight, ed.), Anthropology and Humanism 27(1).
POETRY
2022 "The moon is a poem to poems." Poetry East, Vol. 104. 2019 "First Cut." Mid-American Review 39.2: 18-19. 2016 "The Souls of Fishes." Chariton Review Volume 39(2): 76-77. 2016 "The Visible Human Project." Double Dealer - Faulkner Wisdom Society 2016.ARTICLES and BOOK CHAPTERS
2022: Epigenetic mechanisms underlying the association between maternal climate stress and child growth: Characterizing severe drought and its impact on a Kenyan community. Bilinda Straight, Xi Qiao, Duy Ngo, Charles E. Hilton, Charles Owuor Olungah, Amy Naugle, Claudia Lalancette, Belinda L. Needham. Epigenetics 17(13):2421-2433.
2022: Drought, psychosocial stress, and ecogeographical patterning: Tibial growth and body shape in Samburu Kenyan pastoralist children. Bilinda Straight, Charles E. Hilton, Amy Naugle, Charles Owuor Olungah, Duy Ngo, Xi Qiao, Belinda L. Needham. American Journal of Biological Anthropology 178(4):574-592.
2022: What do (Pastoralist) Women Want? Warfare, Cowardice, and Sexuality in Northern Kenya. Bilinda Straight. In Markus Hoehne, Christina Gabbert, and John Eidson, editors, Dynamics of identification and conflict: Anthropological perspectives. Berghahn.
2022: What miracles in the global south contribute to understanding the human condition. Bilinda Straight. In Karen Zwier, David Weddle, and Tim Knepper, editors, Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion.
2022: Afterword. Bilinda Straight. In Aleksander Boskovic and Günther Schlee, editors, African Political Systems Revisited.
2021: Mineral nutrition of Samburu adolescents: A comparative study of pastoralist communities in Kenya. Lora Iannotti, Carolyn Lesorogol, Charles Hilton, Charles Owuor Olungah, Theodore Zava, Belinda L. Needham, Yuhan Cui, Eleanor Brindle, Bilinda Straight. American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
2021: Family socioeconomic status and child telomere length among the Samburu of Kenya. Belinda L. Needham, Bilinda Straight, Charles Hilton, Charles Owuor Olungah, Jue Lin. Social Science & Medicine.
2021: Heavy metal blood concentrations in association with sociocultural characteristics, anthropometry and anemia among Kenyan adolescents. J.Ashley-Martin, Lora Iannotti, Carolyn Lesorogol, Charles Hilton, Charles Owuor Olungah, Theodore Zava, Belinda Needham, Yuhan Cui, Ellie Brindle, Bilinda Straight. International Journal of Environmental Health Research.
2020: Lifetime stress and war exposure timing may predict methylation changes at NR3C1 based on a pilot study in a warrior cohort in a small-scale society in Kenya. Authors: Bilinda Straight, Georgiana Fisher, Belinda Needham, Amy Naugle, Charles Olungah, Puntipa Wanitjirattikal, Cecilia Root, Jen Farman, Todd Barkman, Claudia Lalancette. American Journal of Human Biology.
2020: Killing, Mercy, and Empathic Emotions: The Emotional Lives of East African Warriors. Authors: Bilinda Straight, Amy Naugle, Jen Farman, Cecilia Root, Stephen Lekalgitele, and Charles Owuor Olungah. Chapter 7 In William Kiblinger, editor, Human Conflict from Neanderthals to the Samburu: Structure and Agency in Webs of Violence.
2020: Land Conflict, Murder, and the Rise of 'Timeless Culture' and Girl Blaming. In: Issue on East African youth, Issue editor, Anne-Marie Peatrik. Ateliers d'anthropologie: Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative. Issue #47.
2019: Prosocial Emotion, Adolescence, and Warfare: DNA Methylation Associates with Culturally Salient Violence Variables. Authors: Bilinda Straight, Belinda Needham, Georgiana Onicescu, Todd Barkman, Amy Naugle, Puntipa Wanitjirattikal, Cecilia Root, Jen Farman, Charles Olungah, and Stephen Lekalgitele. Special Issue of Human Nature, Warfare and Violence from an Evolutionary Perspective, Special Issue editors, Richard J. Chacon and Yamilette Chacon. Human Nature 30(2): 192-216.
2019: Unanchored Deaths: Grieving the Unplaceable in Samburu. Anastasios Panagiotopoulous and Diana Espirito Santo, editors. Articulate Necrographies: Comparative Perspectives on the Voices and Silences of the Dead.
2017 Could Group-Organized Violence Be Rooted in Empathy? SAPIENS 16th November2017 Uniquely Human: Cultural Norms and Private Acts of Mercy in the Warzone. American Anthropologist.
2016 'Dust People': Samburu Perspectives on Disaster, Identity, and Resilience. (Straight, lead author; Authors: Bilinda Straight, Paul Lane, and Charles Hilton). Journal of East African Studies. Special Issue, David Anderson and Michael Bollig, editors.
2016 Comparative Nutritional Indicators as Markers for Resilience: A Case Study of the Impacts of Low Intensity Violence Among Three Pastoralist Communities of Northern Kenya. (Straight, second author; Authors: Ivy Pike, Bilinda Straight, Charles Hilton, and Matthias Oesterle). Journal of East African Studies. Special Issue, David Anderson and Michael Bollig, editors.
2015 'It Was Maendeleo That Removed Them': Disturbing Burials and Reciprocal Knowledge Production in a Context of Collaborative Archaeology. (Straight, lead author; Authors: Bilinda Straight, Paul Lane, Charles Hilton, and Musa Letua). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
2015 Suicide in Three East African Communities and the Role of Researcher Outsiders for Positive Transformation: A Case Study. (Straight, lead author; Authors: Bilinda Straight, Ivy Pike, Charles Hilton, and Matthias Oesterle). Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.
2013 Umoja: No Men Allowed, by Elizabeth Tadic (film review essay). American Anthropologist 115(1): 135-137.
2012 How Enemies Are Made: Toward a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts, by Günther Schlee (book review). American Ethnologist 38(4): 827-828.
2010 "Documenting the Consequences of Endemic Warfare in Three Pastoralist Communities of Northern Kenya: A Conceptual Framework." (Straight, 2nd author; Authors: Ivy Pike, Bilinda Straight, Matthias Oesterle, Charles Hilton, and Adamson Lanyasunya). Social Science Medicine 70(1):45-52.
2010 "Death, Grief, and Cross-World Longing." Reviews in Anthropology 39(2): 127-147.
2009 "The Sense of War Songs." In Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi (ed.) Violence: Ethnographic Encounters.
2009 "Sensing Divinity, Death, and Resurrection: Theorizing Experience Through Miracles." In David Howes (ed.) The Sixth Sense Reader. Berg. October 2009.
2009 "Making Sense of Violence in the Badlands of Kenya." Anthropology and Humanism. Special Issue, Ethnographies of Violence, Michael Harkin and Neil Whitehead, eds. Vol. 34(1): 21-30.
2008 "Killing God: Extraordinary Moments in the Colonial Mission Encounter." Current Anthropology. Vol. 49(5): 837-860.
2007 "House, Fire, Gender." Material Religion 3(1): 48-61. [Material Religion was runner-up for Council of Editors of Learned Journals' 'Best New Journal' Award, 2006.].
2006 "Introduction" In Becoming Dead: The Entangled Agencies of the Dearly Departed. Special Issue (Bilinda Straight, ed.), Anthropology and Humanism 31(2): 101-110.
2006 A World-Creating Approach to Belief. Pp. 104-122 In James White (ed.) Talking About ReligionThe University of Notre Dame Press.
2005 In the Belly of History: Memory, Forgetting, and the Hazards of Reproduction Among Samburu in Northern Kenya. Africa 75(1): 83-104.
2005 Introduction. Pp. 1-25 In Bilinda Straight (ed.) Women on the Verge of Home. SUNY.
2005 Migration, Loss, and Identity in an Appalachian Woman’s Life History. Pp. 89-107 In Bilinda Straight (ed.) Women on the Verge of Home. SUNY.
2005 Cutting Time: Beads, Sex, and Songs in the Making of Samburu Memory. Pp. 267-283 In The Qualities of Time: Temporarl Dimensions of Social Form and Human Experience. Wendy James and David Mills (eds.). ASA Monograph Series. Routledge.
2003 Samburu. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (eds.) Encyclopedia of Sex and gender: Men and Women in the World's Cultures. Human Relations Area Files at Yale University, Kluwer/Plenum.
2002 Introduction. In Bilinda Straight (special issue editor), Conflict at the Center of Ethnography, Special issue of Anthropology and Humanism 27(1): 3-9.
2002 "Between Mamas: The Anthropology of a Dispute, or -- The Perils of Having Sons in the Field. In Bilinda Straight (special issue editor) Conflict at the Center of Ethnography, Special issue of Anthropology and Humanism 27(1): 43-59.
2002 "From Samburu Heirloom to New Age Artifact: The Cross-Cultural Consumption of Mporo Marriage Beads. American Anthropologist 104(1): 7-21.
2000 Development Ideologies and Local Knowledge Among Samburu Women in Northern Kenya. In Dorothy Hodgson (ed.) Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture, and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist. Oxford, UK: James Currey.
1997 Gender, Work, and Change Among Samburu Pastoralists of Northern Kenya. Research in Economic Anthropology 18: 65-91.