Conference Honoring Tom Patterson
By Eileen Chu, Student Intern of CHASS College Computing

The American Ethnological Association and the Society of the Anthropology of North America 2008 Joint Conference will be held April 3-5, 2008 in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Several special sessions at the conference have been organized to honor scholars, including Dr. Thomas C. Patterson, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Anthropology Department at University of California, Riverside. Two sessions are scheduled to present eleven papers in honor of Patterson. These papers revolve around the subject of the Dr. Patterson’s works, which emphasize issues, such as the historical progress of U.S. anthropology, theories of current cultural and social trends, the link of the past and the present societies, and matters of race, class and gender.

Patterson received his B.A. from University of California, Riverside and his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, both in anthropology. His books, Change and Development in the Twentieth Century, Inventing Western Civilization, Toward a Social History of Archaeology in the US, Archaeology: The Historical Development of Civilizations, Making Alternative Histories, have influenced and inspired many future anthropology students and researchers.