In the summer of 2018, AAA had the honor of welcoming two new interns to Washington, DC.
Evan Olinger graduated from Ball State in the fall of 2018 with a double major in anthropology, focusing on archaeology and history. As a scuba-certified diver, he was a perfect fit for an internship with the Naval History and Heritage Command, Department of the Navy’s Underwater Archaeology Branch. While there, he worked on several projects including documenting information on and creating a web page for the Royal Savage, a British schooner commandeered by Benedict Arnold that sank during the Revolutionary War and was raised by the US Navy in 1934.
Sam Ropa, an anthropology major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, interned at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and assisted with the Summer Folklife Festival. This included working on a cultural exchange program with artist groups in West Bengal where he learned to play the ektara — a one-stringed, lute-like instrument — “poorly.” Post-graduation, he plans to continue doing qualitative research in northern and southern India, where he previously studied the intersections of agriculture, political mobilization, and ecological change.
