Page+11+April+2011+Community+Profiles

Catherine Leone. Photo by Cindy Gruett
 * Anthropology Treasure Found Right Here at UW-Manitowoc **

Story by Paul Nessman, UW-Manitowoc Campus News Staff My major is anthropology and I did not have to travel far to gain my first field-work experience; I found a hidden treasure right here on campus in Catherine Leone, who is a Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, and her story reads like a rare anthropological find. She is a delightfully self-deprecating woman, in a humorous sort of way, which makes her sophisticated personality a joy to experience! Professor Leone has been on the faculty staff here at UW-Manitowoc since 1989. Leone did her doctoral work in Anthropology at Washington State University. She then conducted her postdoctoral research at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1998, she was awarded the Arthur Kaplan Award in the UW Colleges. What Leone enjoys most about teaching at UW-Manitowoc is the wide range of topics that she is free to explore through her array of courses. The diversity in topics that Leone teaches ranges from the evolution of Homo sapiens to racial domination in the present day. She enjoys showing students how to make the connections among the ideas and events they study in their own array of courses.

Leone is the eldest daughter in a family of nine, with six brothers and two sisters. Her father, whose parents were Italian immigrants to the United States, was also a medical doctor. He made sure that all of his children would have the opportunity to get a good college education. The only requirement that Dr. Leone had of his children was that they stay out of trouble and that they do their daily chores. In return, they were free to pursue the college educations of their choice. When it came time for Leone to decide on a major, she and her father drafted a letter to the president of The National Geographic Society, asking about good schools that offer anthropology degrees in the United States. Her father was hoping that she might follow in his footsteps to becoming a physician, and was not really expecting to receive a response from the President of National Geographic. Surprisingly, the Leone’s soon received a letter in the mail listing the top 17 schools of anthropology. True to his word, Dr. Leone told his daughter to pick one, and he sent her there. The saddest time of Leone’s life was when her father passed away at the age of 75.

I posed the following question to Leone about her academic background:

** What can you tell me about your field-work as an aspiring anthropologist? **

“My early fieldwork was in archaeology, mostly in western sites (Lovelock, NE; Avon, MT; Mono County, CA; Clarkston and Wenatchee, WA). The Clarkston site was along the Snake River, excavating a site that would be flooded with the completion of the Lower Granite Dam. It was a large field-school operation, where I did some shovel and trowel work, but I was mostly in charge of cataloging the artifacts that were recovered. A few years later, at a site very close to ours, other investigators from WSU discovered an impressive cache of Clovis points unlike any others discovered up to that point. They were huge, and perfect, and seemed to have been designed for show rather than use in hunting, which made the discoverers even more famous (in archaeological circles) than they already were.”

**Clovis point artifacts found in East Wenatchee apple orchard, 1987 ** //Courtesy Washington State Historical Museum//

“I also had the opportunity to work for a summer at a Neanderthal era site in southern Spain (Cariquela cave), near Granada. The site had previously produced lots of Mousterian artifacts, and one thumb bone that was tentatively identified as Neanderthal. We found more artifacts, but no other skeletal materials”.

The Italian village where Leone began her research in 2003-2004


 * What was it like being a woman in a field dominated by men, and what made you decide to become a Professor? **

“Actually, it was rather difficult in the early 1970s for a woman to make a name for herself in archaeology – it was considered more of a man’s field. Women anthropologists of that era were prominent in ethnology (like Laura Nader, Ralph’s sister) and primate studies (inspired by Jane Goodall’s success). Two professors at WSU got me interested in physical anthropology, and studying with one of them, Grover Krantz, I did a morphological study of human crania (skulls)…That became the basis for my master’s thesis. Then I took out some time for major life events, and I returned to graduate school when our children were 2 and 4 years old. This time, my work took a turn toward demography and ethnology. My dissertation and post-doc work have been mainly about women and reproductive choices and the political values that influence those choices. It sounds like sociology (said my anthro advisors) but the methods were anthropological (said my soc advisors). Whatever – it has led me to a fascinating career. Since then, I’ve been able to take up research in Italy that is demographic (about internal migration and family patterns) and ethnographic (based in a small village in Abruzzo).”

A 1971 photo of Catherine Leone writing notes after a day of excavations. Last year, Leone was diagnosed with breast cancer. I asked her the following:

** What was your experience with cancer like and what is your status/prognosis? **

“Short answer is pretty standard: having cancer sucks, but having friends and family, and good health insurance, makes it possible to survive and thrive anyway. I miss my old body (okay, I didn’t get an entirely new one, but surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation have made changes that I’m still getting used to), but I kind of like the new curly hair that came in after chemotherapy was over. My prognosis is good; I’m basically cancer-free, until it comes back! That is, my therapy is complete and seems to have gone swimmingly. Statistically speaking, over 90% of women in my situation (kind of cancer, age, treatments undergone, etc.) should still be alive ten years from now. Not bad, considering that when I was a girl, breast cancer was pretty much a death sentence.”

Professor Leone’s husband, Jeff Brown teaches geology here at UW-Manitowoc. Brown is replacing Professor Catherine Helgeland. Brown and Leone met in 1983 and were married in 1993. When I asked Brown to comment on his wife and her occupation, he said that he was most impressed by the fact that she knew what she wanted to do with her life while she was still in high school and that she fearlessly dove into a field that has historically been dominated by men. I asked Leone the following questions about her husband:

“I met Jeff in Pullman, WA, where I was a graduate student and he was a consulting geologist and instructor of geology (University of Idaho, which is across the state line from WA in Moscow, ID). A mutual friend introduced us, and the rest is (complicated) history. As it goes sometimes, we travelled in the same circles for several years and got be good friends before we somehow fell in love – these things are pretty mysterious…”
 * How did you meet your spouse and what first attracted you to him? **

Professor Leone’s son, James Shoemaker, is a student here at UW-Manitowoc. I asked Leone the following:

“I used to use him and his sister as examples (of how little kids behave, of how students should/shouldn’t behave, of how family interactions play out, of teen-age slang and dating behavior) in my classes. Then they got old enough that I was afraid my stories would get back to them, so I’ve laid off a bit… I will say, though, that having James live with us again in Manitowoc for this academic year has been terrific…It has been great to have him home again as an adult – he’s turned out great! He cooks and does laundry, too… And it’s always helpful for a professor to have the perspective of someone known and trusted and a generation younger.”
 * Would you tell me a little about your son? **

One thing that was overwhelmingly obvious to me as I interviewed Professor Leone about her son, and James about his mother, was the pride, joy and love that seemed to overtake their very being at the mere mention of the other’s name. I spoke with James about his mother and he said, “I could not have imagined having a more perfect mom.”

** Do you have any words of wisdom or advice that you could share with our readers? ** “Oh, dear. I’d advise against procrastination, and I will, as soon as I get around to it…”