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Christopher D. Lynn, Professor of Anthropology
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Education
Ph.D., Anthropology, State University of New York at Albany, 2009
M.A., Anthropology, State University of New York at Albany, 2006
B.A., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York Baccalaureate Program, 2002
M.A., Anthropology, State University of New York at Albany, 2006
B.A., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York Baccalaureate Program, 2002
Public Lectures
I am available for speaking, outreach, and other engagements. I am currently giving the following talks:
Evolution Education from the American South: Creating K-16 Cross-Disciplinary Programs under the Evolution Umbrella
Evolutionary theory is foundational to multiple disciplines but remains culturally controversial. It is an umbrella under which all other disciplines and explanations for life can be nested, yet many educators avoid teaching it because of potential for community backlash. At the University of Alabama, where K-12 education ranks 50th in the nation at teaching evolution, we have started an evolutionary studies minor, certificate, and student-led club to address this cultural impasse. How does this approach what Alabama native Edward O. Wilson terms “consilience” contribute to one’s community, society, and ultimately to humanity? I discuss a program for teaching evolution to elementary school students in disadvantaged schools; the politics, culture, and resources for teaching evolution more generally in the American South; and strategies for engaging undergraduates in evolutionary studies regardless of their science training or interest. This program builds off a platform developed by collaborators in the State University of New York system and which we are expanded internationally. We are currently extending components of this model to Madagascar, Costa Rica, American Samoa, and present it as one that is highly flexible and that can be adapted to any educational or cultural context. This talk draws from the volume I co-edited, Evolution Education in the American South: Culture, Politics, and Resources in and around Alabama, due out March 2017 from Palgrave-Macmillan. |
Tattooing Commitment, Quality, and Football in Southeastern North America
Tattooing appears to be a cultural and psychological pattern of behavior rooted in Darwinian processes. It is the result of an evolved tendency to manipulate human bodies in meaningful ways with distinctive benefits. Tattooing can signal group affiliation or commitment through using the body as a human canvas. Tattooing also provides cues about biological quality because it is an injury to the body, and the healing process on the surface of the skin is visible to everyone and impossible to fake. These factors make tattoos costly honest signals, consistent with evolutionary models in multiple species, including humans. I review the functions of tattooing from an evolutionary perspective, outline historic and prehistoric evidence from the North American Southeast, analyze biological implications, and discuss contemporary functions of tattooing among college football fans as a signal of commitment and quality. This talk is based on a chapter I co-authored in the edited volume Evolution Education in the American South (Palgrave-Macmillan 2017). Transcendental Medication: The Psychology, Culture, and Neural Correlates of Limiting Consciousness
Consciousness is costly. Knowing the conflicting needs, wants, and desires of family and friends comes with high stress. I argue that limited consciousness is more adaptive and more satisfying for most people most of the time. Ignorance is (truly and often) bliss. But, even when knowledge and information ruin that bliss, the mind and brain are equipped with restorative mechanisms that protect against cognitive overload and analysis paralysis. I briefly outline a model of human consciousness that has evolved through natural selection to check the high costs of awareness via a process known as dissociation, or the partitioning of mind. I draw from my biological and cultural studies of Pentecostal tongue-speaking influences on stress, campfire’s role in synthesizing relaxation and cooperation throughout evolutionary history, unconscious uses of self-deception as mating strategy, and tattoos as signals of biological quality to make a case that “higher consciousness” is merely a manifestation of an encultured brain. This talk is based on a book I am currently writing with this same title. |
Bio
Christopher D. Lynn is a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama and Leshner Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He studies cultural impacts on health and has worked in Costa Rica, the U.S., and the Pacific, with a specific focus on the Samoa Islands. His most recent research has focused on tattooing and immune function and fireside relaxation and cognitive evolution. He is author of Transcendental Medication: The Evolution of Mind, Culture, and Healing and editor of Evolution Education in the American South: Culture, Politics, and Resources in and Around Alabama (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) and has published in PLoSOne, Anthropology of Consciousness, Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Psychology, Religion, Brain and Behavior, Anthropology Now, Journal of Cognition and Culture, Ethos, Evolution: Education and Outreach, Practicing Anthropology, Annals of Anthropological Practice, and American Journal of Human Biology.
Focus
My dissertation research was on the relationship between glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”) and biological stress among New York Apostolic Pentecostals. My current research focus on non-conscious cognitive behavior underlying religious, ritual, sexual behavior, and reproductive health. I'm interested in
- the neuroanthropology of dissociation, deafferentation, and trance
- evolution education and outreach
- embodiment, stress, and immune response
- social construction of anthropology as a professional discipline
- anthropology outreach
Social Media
I co-host the Sausage of Science podcast for the Human Biology Association and executive producer and cohost the Inking of Immunity podcast.
