Robin M Bernstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 76866 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin M Bernstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin M |
| FAMILY NAME | Bernstein |
| SIGNATURE | BERNSTEIN R M |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8805-7527 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 94 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Palaeoanthropology and the study of pre-adult fossil remains
The workshop advanced efforts to understand human evolution, particularly the selective pressures shaping patterns of growth and maturity across a broad range of hominin species
Addressing the growing fossil record of subadult hominins by reaching across disciplines
The field of paleoanthropology lacks a coherent methodology to study ontogeny in extinct hominins. During the past two decades in this field, several factors have served as an impetus to better define this subfield of study within human evolution. First is the increased recovery of immature hominin remains that span multiple genera-Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo
A Novel method for the identification and quantification of weight faltering
OBJECTIVE: We describe a new method for identifying and quantifying the magnitude and rate of short-term weight faltering episodes, and assess how (a) these episodes relate to broader growth outcomes, and (b) different data collection intervals influence the quantification of weight faltering. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We apply this method to longitudinal growth data collected every other day across the first year of life in Gambian infants (n = 124…
The Scripts of Black Dolls
DHEAS patterning across childhood in three sub‐Saharan populations: Associations with age, sex, ethnicity, and cortisol
OBJECTIVES: Hormones have many roles in human ontogeny, including the timing of life history 'switch points' across development. Limited hormonal data exist from non-Western children, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the diversity of life history patterning. This cross-sectional study examines dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) production in relation to age, sex, ethnicity, and cortisol concentrations, as well as average age …
The effect of extreme weather events on hair cortisol and body weight in a wild ring‐tailed lemur population ( Lemur catta ) in southwestern Madagascar
Madagascar is known for its hypervariable climate with periodic droughts and cyclones, but little is known of the impact of such events on lemur physiology. We examined the effects of sequential weather periods, drought, normal, cyclone and post-cyclone, on hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) and body weight in wild ring-tailed lemurs, Lemur catta (n = 185), at the Bezà Mahafaly Special Reserve in southwestern Madagascar. Data were modeled and ana…
Impaired growth in rural Gambian infants exposed to aflatoxin: A prospective cohort study
This study found a small but significant effect of aflatoxin exposure on the growth of Gambian infants. This relationship is not apparently explained by aflatoxin induced changes in the IGF-axis
Participation, representation, and shared experiences of women scholars in biological anthropology
American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) membership surveys from 1996 and 1998 revealed significant gender disparities in academic status. A 2014 follow‐up survey showed that gender equality had improved, particularly with respect to the number of women in tenure‐stream positions. However, although women comprised 70% of AAPA membership at that time, the percentage of women full professors remained low. Here, we continue to conside…
Patterns of milk macronutrients and bioactive molecules across lactation in a western lowland gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla ) and a Sumatran orangutan ( Pongo abelii )
In addition to nutrients, milk contains signaling molecules that influence offspring development. Human milk is similar in nutrient composition to that of apes, but appears to differ in other aspects such as immune function. We examine the longitudinal patterns across lactation of macronutrients, the metabolic hormone adiponectin, the growth factors epidermal growth factor (EGF) and transforming growth factor β2 (TGF-β2), and two receptors for th…
Special Section: Worldwide variation in human growth: 40 years later
I'm Very Happy to Be in the Reality-Based Community: Alison Bechdel'sFun Home, Digital Photography, and George W. Bush
This essay historicizes Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home in the context of the presidency of George W. Bush. Bechdel created Fun Home from 1999 through 2005-dates that corresponded with Bush's campaign, election, and presidency. As Bechdel frequently laments in her serialized comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, the Bush presidency posited truth as unknowable, facts as infinitely flexible, and faith as constitutive of reality. Fun Hom…
Bioactive factors in milk across lactation: Maternal effects and influence on infant growth in rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta )
Among mammals, numerous bioactive factors in milk vary across mothers and influence offspring outcomes. This emerging area of research has primarily investigated such dynamics within rodent biomedical models, domesticated dairy breeds, and among humans in clinical contexts. Less understood are signaling factors in the milk of non-human primates. Here, we report on multiple bioactive components in rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) milk and their ass…
Variation in vervet (Chlorocebus aethiops) hair cortisol concentrations reflects ecological disturbance by humans
Mount Pinatubo, Inflammatory Cytokines, and the Immunological Ecology of Aeta Hunter-Gatherers
Early growth cessation and reproduction are predicted to maximize fitness under conditions of high adult mortality, factors that could explain the pygmy phenotype of many rainforest hunter-gatherers. This life-history hypothesis is elegant but contentious in part because it lacks a clear biological mechanism. One mechanism stems from the field of human immunological ecology and the concept of inflammation “memory” across the life cycle and into s…
Maternal Effects and the Endocrine Regulation of Mandrill Growth
Maternal effects can influence offspring growth and development, and thus fitness. However, the physiological factors mediating these effects in nonhuman primates are not well understood. We investigated the impact of maternal effects on variation in three important components of the endocrine regulation of growth in male and female mandrills ( M andrillus sphinx ), from birth to 9 years of age. Using a mixed longitudinal set ( N = 252) of plasma…
Adrenal androgen production in catarrhine primates and the evolution of adrenarche
Adrenarche is a developmental event involving differentiation of the adrenal gland and production of adrenal androgens, and has been hypothesized to play a role in the extension of the preadolescent phase of human ontogeny. It remains unclear whether any nonhuman primate species shows a similar suite of endocrine, biochemical, and morphological changes as are encompassed by human adrenarche. Here, we report serum concentrations of the adrenal and…
Utopian Movements: Nikki Giovanni and the Convocation Following the Virginia Tech Massacre
A seemingly impossible, utopian moment occurred on April 16, 2007 at the convocation following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, in which student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members. Nikki Giovanni, a luminary of the Black Arts Movement and a professor at Virginia Tech, read her stirring poem, "We Are Virginia Tech," to the capacity audience in Cassell Coliseum. At the poem's conclusion, the full house rose cheering and chanted…
Toward the Integration of Theatre History and Affect Studies: Shame and the Rude Mechs's The Method Gun
As affect studies has become increasingly central to performance studies and many other fields, a question has emerged: How can one historicize affect? This essay forges one answer through analysis of The Method Gun , a 2008 avant-garde theatrical piece created by the Austin-based company the Rude Mechs. The Method Gun simultaneously archives actors' historically specific feelings of shame, and reveals shame as a motor that powers much contempora…
Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights
2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association 2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society…
The big and small of it: How body size evolves
Body size is a biological variable of fundamental importance and plays a central role in analyses of life history, sexual dimorphism, allometry, and natural and sexual selection. Yet, there remains a sizeable gulf in our understanding that lies between what we hypothesize influences change in size, from the point of view of ultimate causation, and what we know about how shifts in body size are regulated from a proximate perspective. I seek here t…
Dances with Things
Proceeding from Robyn Wiegman's call for a transition from questions of “why” to “how” with regard to formations of race, this article proposes a heuristic, the “scriptive thing,” to analyze ways in which racial subjectivation emerges through everyday physical engagement with the material world. The term scriptive thing integrates performance studies and “thing theory” by highlighting the ways in which things prompt, structure, or choreograph beh…
Hormonal correlates of ontogeny in baboons ( Papio hamadryas anubis ) and mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys )
This study investigates the relationship between serum hormone levels and morphometrics during ontogeny in olive baboons ( Papio hamadryas anubis ) and sooty mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys ), to test hypotheses about the endocrine regulation of species size differences. First, we expect that levels of hormones and binding proteins predict size change during ontogeny in both species. Second, a high level of integration among the hormones and binding …
Hormones and body size evolution in papionin primates
This study examines the evolution of size differences among papionin primates by measuring hormones that regulate size growth during ontogeny and influence ultimate adult size (insulin‐like growth factor‐I (IGF‐I), insulin‐like growth factor binding protein‐3 (IGFBP‐3), growth hormone binding protein (GHBP), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), testosterone, estradiol). The analyses assess longstanding ideas about circulating hormone levels an…
Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860- 1920 (review)
Reviewed by: Staging The Jew: The Performance Of An American Ethnicity, 1860–1920 Robin Bernstein Staging The Jew: The Performance Of An American Ethnicity, 1860–1920. By Harley Erdman. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997; pp. 224. Cloth $50.00, paper $19.95. In his lucid and engaging Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860–1920, Harley Erdman traces the changing ways in which both Jews and gentiles p…
Dances with Things
Proceeding from Robyn Wiegman's call for a transition from questions of “why” to “how” with regard to formations of race, this article proposes a heuristic, the “scriptive thing,” to analyze ways in which racial subjectivation emerges through everyday physical engagement with the material world. The term scriptive thing integrates performance studies and “thing theory” by highlighting the ways in which things prompt, structure, or choreograph beh…
Mount Pinatubo, Inflammatory Cytokines, and the Immunological Ecology of Aeta Hunter-Gatherers
Early growth cessation and reproduction are predicted to maximize fitness under conditions of high adult mortality, factors that could explain the pygmy phenotype of many rainforest hunter-gatherers. This life-history hypothesis is elegant but contentious in part because it lacks a clear biological mechanism. One mechanism stems from the field of human immunological ecology and the concept of inflammation “memory” across the life cycle and into s…
Participation, representation, and shared experiences of women scholars in biological anthropology
American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) membership surveys from 1996 and 1998 revealed significant gender disparities in academic status. A 2014 follow‐up survey showed that gender equality had improved, particularly with respect to the number of women in tenure‐stream positions. However, although women comprised 70% of AAPA membership at that time, the percentage of women full professors remained low. Here, we continue to conside…
Adrenal androgen production in catarrhine primates and the evolution of adrenarche
Adrenarche is a developmental event involving differentiation of the adrenal gland and production of adrenal androgens, and has been hypothesized to play a role in the extension of the preadolescent phase of human ontogeny. It remains unclear whether any nonhuman primate species shows a similar suite of endocrine, biochemical, and morphological changes as are encompassed by human adrenarche. Here, we report serum concentrations of the adrenal and…
Hormones and body size evolution in papionin primates
This study examines the evolution of size differences among papionin primates by measuring hormones that regulate size growth during ontogeny and influence ultimate adult size (insulin‐like growth factor‐I (IGF‐I), insulin‐like growth factor binding protein‐3 (IGFBP‐3), growth hormone binding protein (GHBP), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), testosterone, estradiol). The analyses assess longstanding ideas about circulating hormone levels an…
The big and small of it: How body size evolves
Body size is a biological variable of fundamental importance and plays a central role in analyses of life history, sexual dimorphism, allometry, and natural and sexual selection. Yet, there remains a sizeable gulf in our understanding that lies between what we hypothesize influences change in size, from the point of view of ultimate causation, and what we know about how shifts in body size are regulated from a proximate perspective. I seek here t…
Hormonal correlates of ontogeny in baboons ( Papio hamadryas anubis ) and mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys )
This study investigates the relationship between serum hormone levels and morphometrics during ontogeny in olive baboons ( Papio hamadryas anubis ) and sooty mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys ), to test hypotheses about the endocrine regulation of species size differences. First, we expect that levels of hormones and binding proteins predict size change during ontogeny in both species. Second, a high level of integration among the hormones and binding …
Addressing the growing fossil record of subadult hominins by reaching across disciplines
The field of paleoanthropology lacks a coherent methodology to study ontogeny in extinct hominins. During the past two decades in this field, several factors have served as an impetus to better define this subfield of study within human evolution. First is the increased recovery of immature hominin remains that span multiple genera-Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo
Palaeoanthropology and the study of pre-adult fossil remains
The workshop advanced efforts to understand human evolution, particularly the selective pressures shaping patterns of growth and maturity across a broad range of hominin species
I'm Very Happy to Be in the Reality-Based Community: Alison Bechdel'sFun Home, Digital Photography, and George W. Bush
This essay historicizes Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home in the context of the presidency of George W. Bush. Bechdel created Fun Home from 1999 through 2005-dates that corresponded with Bush's campaign, election, and presidency. As Bechdel frequently laments in her serialized comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, the Bush presidency posited truth as unknowable, facts as infinitely flexible, and faith as constitutive of reality. Fun Hom…
Utopian Movements: Nikki Giovanni and the Convocation Following the Virginia Tech Massacre
A seemingly impossible, utopian moment occurred on April 16, 2007 at the convocation following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, in which student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members. Nikki Giovanni, a luminary of the Black Arts Movement and a professor at Virginia Tech, read her stirring poem, "We Are Virginia Tech," to the capacity audience in Cassell Coliseum. At the poem's conclusion, the full house rose cheering and chanted…
Toward the Integration of Theatre History and Affect Studies: Shame and the Rude Mechs's The Method Gun
As affect studies has become increasingly central to performance studies and many other fields, a question has emerged: How can one historicize affect? This essay forges one answer through analysis of The Method Gun , a 2008 avant-garde theatrical piece created by the Austin-based company the Rude Mechs. The Method Gun simultaneously archives actors' historically specific feelings of shame, and reveals shame as a motor that powers much contempora…
Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860- 1920 (review)
Reviewed by: Staging The Jew: The Performance Of An American Ethnicity, 1860–1920 Robin Bernstein Staging The Jew: The Performance Of An American Ethnicity, 1860–1920. By Harley Erdman. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997; pp. 224. Cloth $50.00, paper $19.95. In his lucid and engaging Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860–1920, Harley Erdman traces the changing ways in which both Jews and gentiles p…
Hormones and body size evolution in papionin primates
This study examines the evolution of size differences among papionin primates by measuring hormones that regulate size growth during ontogeny and influence ultimate adult size (insulin‐like growth factor‐I (IGF‐I), insulin‐like growth factor binding protein‐3 (IGFBP‐3), growth hormone binding protein (GHBP), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), testosterone, estradiol). The analyses assess longstanding ideas about circulating hormone levels an…
Hormonal correlates of ontogeny in baboons ( Papio hamadryas anubis ) and mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys )
This study investigates the relationship between serum hormone levels and morphometrics during ontogeny in olive baboons ( Papio hamadryas anubis ) and sooty mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys ), to test hypotheses about the endocrine regulation of species size differences. First, we expect that levels of hormones and binding proteins predict size change during ontogeny in both species. Second, a high level of integration among the hormones and binding …
Dances with Things
Proceeding from Robyn Wiegman's call for a transition from questions of “why” to “how” with regard to formations of race, this article proposes a heuristic, the “scriptive thing,” to analyze ways in which racial subjectivation emerges through everyday physical engagement with the material world. The term scriptive thing integrates performance studies and “thing theory” by highlighting the ways in which things prompt, structure, or choreograph beh…
The big and small of it: How body size evolves
Body size is a biological variable of fundamental importance and plays a central role in analyses of life history, sexual dimorphism, allometry, and natural and sexual selection. Yet, there remains a sizeable gulf in our understanding that lies between what we hypothesize influences change in size, from the point of view of ultimate causation, and what we know about how shifts in body size are regulated from a proximate perspective. I seek here t…
Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights
2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association 2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society…
Maternal Effects and the Endocrine Regulation of Mandrill Growth
Maternal effects can influence offspring growth and development, and thus fitness. However, the physiological factors mediating these effects in nonhuman primates are not well understood. We investigated the impact of maternal effects on variation in three important components of the endocrine regulation of growth in male and female mandrills ( M andrillus sphinx ), from birth to 9 years of age. Using a mixed longitudinal set ( N = 252) of plasma…
Adrenal androgen production in catarrhine primates and the evolution of adrenarche
Adrenarche is a developmental event involving differentiation of the adrenal gland and production of adrenal androgens, and has been hypothesized to play a role in the extension of the preadolescent phase of human ontogeny. It remains unclear whether any nonhuman primate species shows a similar suite of endocrine, biochemical, and morphological changes as are encompassed by human adrenarche. Here, we report serum concentrations of the adrenal and…
Utopian Movements: Nikki Giovanni and the Convocation Following the Virginia Tech Massacre
A seemingly impossible, utopian moment occurred on April 16, 2007 at the convocation following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, in which student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members. Nikki Giovanni, a luminary of the Black Arts Movement and a professor at Virginia Tech, read her stirring poem, "We Are Virginia Tech," to the capacity audience in Cassell Coliseum. At the poem's conclusion, the full house rose cheering and chanted…
Toward the Integration of Theatre History and Affect Studies: Shame and the Rude Mechs's The Method Gun
As affect studies has become increasingly central to performance studies and many other fields, a question has emerged: How can one historicize affect? This essay forges one answer through analysis of The Method Gun , a 2008 avant-garde theatrical piece created by the Austin-based company the Rude Mechs. The Method Gun simultaneously archives actors' historically specific feelings of shame, and reveals shame as a motor that powers much contempora…
Mount Pinatubo, Inflammatory Cytokines, and the Immunological Ecology of Aeta Hunter-Gatherers
Early growth cessation and reproduction are predicted to maximize fitness under conditions of high adult mortality, factors that could explain the pygmy phenotype of many rainforest hunter-gatherers. This life-history hypothesis is elegant but contentious in part because it lacks a clear biological mechanism. One mechanism stems from the field of human immunological ecology and the concept of inflammation “memory” across the life cycle and into s…
Variation in vervet (Chlorocebus aethiops) hair cortisol concentrations reflects ecological disturbance by humans
Bioactive factors in milk across lactation: Maternal effects and influence on infant growth in rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta )
Among mammals, numerous bioactive factors in milk vary across mothers and influence offspring outcomes. This emerging area of research has primarily investigated such dynamics within rodent biomedical models, domesticated dairy breeds, and among humans in clinical contexts. Less understood are signaling factors in the milk of non-human primates. Here, we report on multiple bioactive components in rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) milk and their ass…
Patterns of milk macronutrients and bioactive molecules across lactation in a western lowland gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla ) and a Sumatran orangutan ( Pongo abelii )
In addition to nutrients, milk contains signaling molecules that influence offspring development. Human milk is similar in nutrient composition to that of apes, but appears to differ in other aspects such as immune function. We examine the longitudinal patterns across lactation of macronutrients, the metabolic hormone adiponectin, the growth factors epidermal growth factor (EGF) and transforming growth factor β2 (TGF-β2), and two receptors for th…
Special Section: Worldwide variation in human growth: 40 years later
I'm Very Happy to Be in the Reality-Based Community: Alison Bechdel'sFun Home, Digital Photography, and George W. Bush
This essay historicizes Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home in the context of the presidency of George W. Bush. Bechdel created Fun Home from 1999 through 2005-dates that corresponded with Bush's campaign, election, and presidency. As Bechdel frequently laments in her serialized comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, the Bush presidency posited truth as unknowable, facts as infinitely flexible, and faith as constitutive of reality. Fun Hom…
DHEAS patterning across childhood in three sub‐Saharan populations: Associations with age, sex, ethnicity, and cortisol
OBJECTIVES: Hormones have many roles in human ontogeny, including the timing of life history 'switch points' across development. Limited hormonal data exist from non-Western children, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the diversity of life history patterning. This cross-sectional study examines dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) production in relation to age, sex, ethnicity, and cortisol concentrations, as well as average age …
The effect of extreme weather events on hair cortisol and body weight in a wild ring‐tailed lemur population ( Lemur catta ) in southwestern Madagascar
Madagascar is known for its hypervariable climate with periodic droughts and cyclones, but little is known of the impact of such events on lemur physiology. We examined the effects of sequential weather periods, drought, normal, cyclone and post-cyclone, on hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) and body weight in wild ring-tailed lemurs, Lemur catta (n = 185), at the Bezà Mahafaly Special Reserve in southwestern Madagascar. Data were modeled and ana…
Impaired growth in rural Gambian infants exposed to aflatoxin: A prospective cohort study
This study found a small but significant effect of aflatoxin exposure on the growth of Gambian infants. This relationship is not apparently explained by aflatoxin induced changes in the IGF-axis
Participation, representation, and shared experiences of women scholars in biological anthropology
American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) membership surveys from 1996 and 1998 revealed significant gender disparities in academic status. A 2014 follow‐up survey showed that gender equality had improved, particularly with respect to the number of women in tenure‐stream positions. However, although women comprised 70% of AAPA membership at that time, the percentage of women full professors remained low. Here, we continue to conside…
The Scripts of Black Dolls
A Novel method for the identification and quantification of weight faltering
OBJECTIVE: We describe a new method for identifying and quantifying the magnitude and rate of short-term weight faltering episodes, and assess how (a) these episodes relate to broader growth outcomes, and (b) different data collection intervals influence the quantification of weight faltering. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We apply this method to longitudinal growth data collected every other day across the first year of life in Gambian infants (n = 124…
Addressing the growing fossil record of subadult hominins by reaching across disciplines
The field of paleoanthropology lacks a coherent methodology to study ontogeny in extinct hominins. During the past two decades in this field, several factors have served as an impetus to better define this subfield of study within human evolution. First is the increased recovery of immature hominin remains that span multiple genera-Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo
Palaeoanthropology and the study of pre-adult fossil remains
The workshop advanced efforts to understand human evolution, particularly the selective pressures shaping patterns of growth and maturity across a broad range of hominin species
Biology (12 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Primate Behavior and Ecology (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Endocrinology (6 works) · History (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Child Nutrition and Water Access (5 works) · Hormone (5 works) · Internal Medicine (5 works)