The October 17, 2003 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education spotlighted, “Cannibalism: the Good, the Bad, and the Deadly,” one of the Freshman Discovery Seminars offered at UCR, instructed by Dr. Sang-Hee Lee, Assistant Professor in Anthropology. The article, located in the Syllabus area, detailed student interest and fascination with the topic and the reasons for which Professor Lee would teach a course on cannibalism. Seminar courses are geared towards undeclared freshman and Professor Lee hopes that the course will prompt or direct student interest in the field of Anthropology, since the course encourages critical thinking and history of one of the most controversial and sensationalized topics in anthropology.

Professor Lee is a biological anthropologist. As a paleoanthropologist, her primary topic of interest is human evolution. She studies morphological variation in hominid fossils in search of answers to fascinating questions about our evolutionary history. Her areas of interest include the evolution of human sexual dimorphism, changes in brain-size over time, evolution of human longevity, sampling bias in fossil samples, DNA sequence diversity and modern human origin models, and pattern of morphological changes through time. She is currently developing a new method to study intraspecific variation in hominid fossil samples.

Lee commented on the publication recognition, “I am surprised by the interest level overall, and plan to pursue ways to incorporate this into my research agenda. As for teaching, developing this seminar into a full course is in the works now. Stay tuned!"