Dr. Scalise Sugiyama is an evolutionary psychologist/anthropologist who specializes in the evolution of symbolic behavior and the emergence of cumulative culture, with an emphasis on storytelling, the visual and temporal arts, play, and nomenclature. Her work investigates the origins of these behaviors—specifically, the selection pressures that led to their emergence, the role they played in ancestral human societies, and the design features of the mind that make them possible. To this end, her work integrates cognitive and developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, hunter-gatherer studies, art prehistory, ethnobiology, ethnolinguistics, folklore, and literary study. She teaches courses on the prehistory of literature (ANTH 163 Origins of Storytelling), art (ANTH 349 Origins of Art), and play (ANTH 225 Evolution of Play), and on the ecological niche to which humans are adapted (ANTH 110 Traditional Ecological Knowledge, ANTH 330 Hunter-Gatherers). She publishes in both scientific and humanities journals, and blogs on her educational website, Talking Stories, where she explores the use of "arts and entertainment" in oral cultures to transmit communal knowledge.
