Geoffrey Burkhart - Professor Emeritus
202-885-1849
Gburkhar@american.edu
My central research interests are in India (and South Asian countries more
generally) and in its global diasporic populations. My early fieldwork in
India focused on caste, domestic organization, descent, marriage, ritual,
and local-level politics in rural areas (particularly in Tamil Nadu). I centered
later research on a South Indian Protestant congregation, with interests in
family histories and in Christians as a minority within the religiously plural
setting of a small urban center. I am now conducting ongoing research among
gay South Asians living in the U.S. and Canada, with emphases on identity,
stereotyping, discrimination and racism, and community activism in North America.
I regularly taugh introductory undergraduate courses, including a course on
the ethnography of India. I introduced a course on the South Asian diaspora,
with upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, which focused both on
local communities and their transnational ties. My graduate-level teaching
centers on interests – in addition to India – in identity, individualism,
minority statuses (low caste identities, sexual orientation, etc.) and social
relations generally.
Kevin Caffrey — Public Anthropologist in Residence
As a scholar committed to using and teaching the anthropological toolkit,
I critically analyze social and cultural phenomena in order to understand
familiar and alien elements of the human world. I am interested in
general issues like politics, religion, violence, and ethnicity as topics
of anthropological inquiry, but my field research in China and Southeast
Asia focused on the marginality, minority, alienation, nationalism, and estrangement
experienced by Muslim peoples living in southwestern China. In a case
of classical anthropological interests meeting the political-economic framework
of a globalizing world, I consider the human/cultural realities that mediate
both. My inquiries are grounded in a historically rich foundation
of ethnographic work that only slowly and carefully gives way to an analytic
perspective where anthropology illuminates the unsaid and unseen on the margins
of China—a frontier that speaks to the whole country as well. In
the course of doing this work, I have tried to understand a Chinese people
on the edges of China’s social and geographic world. In so doing,
I have also given Chinese light to notions and practices of politics, religion,
race, violence, and nationality in order to understand China the empire,
the post-colony, and the post-socialist nation-state set against other embodiments
of legitimacy in today’s global community.
My anthropological work has appeared in the journal China Information (2004), China Review International (2006,2007,2008) and The International Journal of the History of Sport (2007)—for which I am also editing a special volume dedicated to the geopolitical effects of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (forthcoming 2009). My preoccupation with U.S. cultural politics has also driven me into a secondary focus where I write about some of the symptoms of contradiction between counterinsurgency war and our liberal democratic tradition, for which I have written a chapter to be published in John D. Kelly’s (ed.) Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2009). Finally, I am working on a monograph based on my dissertation work in China, which I am calling Descendants of Muhammad: A Chinese Way of Being Muslim.
I can offer courses on culture, the political, religion, extreme motivation, China, anthropological theory, recent Asian development history, and the conditions of human justice.
Richard J. Dent - Associate Professor
202-885-1848
Potomac@american.edu
I am an archaeologist. My geographic focus is the archaeology of North America,
specifically the Middle Atlantic region. Much of my early research concerned
Paleoindian studies with regard to matters of adaptation, paleoecological,
and landscape reconstruction. More recently I have focused on both the prehistory
and history of the Chesapeake Bay area. My most recent large-scale excavations
were on 18th- and early 19th-century sites in Philadelphia. The theoretical
perspective that has guided all these investigations tends to be more pragmatic
than ideological. I believe that archaeology is best served when we approach
the past with a wide spectrum of ideas. Issues of meaning and choice can coexist
with notions of human adaptation and culture history.
From a methodological standpoint I am especially interested in the practice of field archaeology. In that regard I am particularly interested in the application of large- and medium-format photography in excavation settings as well as computer-aided collection and analysis of data. I have a great deal of experience and interest in cultural resources management and issues of cultural heritage. The majority of my current writing focuses on the prehistoric and historic archaeology of the Chesapeake region and the archaeology of Colonial and Federal Philadelphia.
I put a great deal of effort into teaching and offer a wide variety of undergraduate
and graduate courses. The common denominator in all these classes is a desire
to help students gain a personal perspective on what has been accomplished
within any particular area of study and to help them see where new ideas are
emerging. I believe that an environment where old notions can grate against
new ideas is most conducive to learning. I also believe that students need
the space and freedom to explore personal interests and ideas. In my experience,
independent research, exploration, dialogue, and hands-on experience are key
elements toward that end.
Nell Gabiam - Instructor
gabiam@american.edu
Since 2004 I have conducted research on a United Nations sponsored development project taking place in two Palestinian refugee camps in northern Syria. While this UN project promises large-scale socio-economic improvement in the two refugee camps, it is controversial with many refugees who fear that it will cover up the traces of exile and dispossession that have become part of their Palestinian identity, and thus, cover up an important component of their advocacy for the right of return to their homeland. What my study analyses, more specifically, is the way that these Palestinian refugees' understanding of their situation unsettles accepted norms of international development as to what constitutes progress and complicates development discourse's understanding of suffering. My research also addresses the relationship between humanitarianism and politics. I examine the tensions that arose as a result of Palestinian refugees' insistence on inserting their political claims to justice into the development project's narrative and some project team members' view of Palestinian activism as an obstacle for a successful implementation of the project.
I hope to begin a new research project this year on the Chadian Diaspora in the Syria, more specifically descendents of Muslim Chadians pilgrims to holy sites in the Middle East who have been settled in Syria for generations. Broadly, my interests include migration, forced displacement, human rights, development, identity and belonging and the Middle East.
Joan Gero - Professor Emerita
202-885-1845
Jgero@american.edu
I focus my research on gender and power issues in prehistory, especially in
the Andean regions of Argentina and Peru. After directing excavations in New
England, South Carolina and Labrador, I researched the early administrative
center of Queyash Alto in Peru during the 1980s, and my most recent project
(since 1992) is located in the Argentinean Andes centering on Early Formative
household economies. I write about the origins of state level society, feminist
interpretations of prehistory and the socio-politics of doing archaeology;
my publications include the popular book Engendering Archaeology: Women and
Prehistory, edited with Margaret Conkey, and I am currently finishing a book-length
manuscript on the Argentina excavations. I have served on many national archaeological
and anthropological committees, I acted as Academic Secretary of the Fifth
World Archaeological Congress, and I presently serve as senior North American
representative to the World Archaeological Congress and as Head Series Editor
for the One World Archaeology book series.
Cymene Howe - Assistant Professor
202-885-2493
cymene.howe@american.edu
As a cultural anthropologist I am committed to comparing and better understanding
how meanings surrounding sexuality, gender and advocacy are being transformed
in our contemporary era. My field research in Nicaragua and California and
pilot research in Vietnam, considers how advocacy practices intersect with
and are re-shaped through their engagements with globally circulated concepts
of human rights, media interventions and subjectivity. In addition to the
analytically rich perspective that anthropology offers to the study of contemporary
social and cultural issues, it also has the potential to impact public policy,
opinion and advocacy. Through my research, publications and teaching I hope
to enhance both the public appeal and applicability of anthropology to the
pressing political and social issues of our times.
My work appears in a recent report issued by the United Nations, several
anthropology and interdisciplinary journals, and the edited collections, Life
in America (Blackwell 2003), Rethinking Feminisms in Latin America (Cornell
2001), Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America (Rowman & Littlefield
2006) and On the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana (Duke 2008). I am co-editor,
with Gilbert Herdt, of 21st Century Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health,
Education and Rights (Routledge 2007). My forthcoming book is Sexual Sovereignties:
Sex, Gender and Justice in Nicaragua’s New Media Era (Duke 2008).
I offer courses on media, human rights, sexuality, gender, Latin America and
anthropological theory and methods.
Dolores Koenig - Professor
202-885-1832
dkoenig@american.edu
My primary field of interest is international development, its challenges
and its successes. I am especially interested in finding new ways of talking
about development and social change that value the experiences of local people
while still taking into account the international context of global inequalities.
I have two particular interests in this field. First, I work on the economic
anthropology of West Africa, especially French-speaking countries. I have
done a lot of work on long-term patterns of agricultural change in western
Mali, including impacts on family structures and growing class stratification;
I have recently become more interested in the links between rural areas and
cities. Second, I work on development-caused forced resettlement and development.
I have sought to understand the long-term impacts on people required to move
by Mali's Manantali dam and have looked at how development-caused resettlement
affects gender roles and access to economic resources.
I regularly teach classes in theories of class stratification, the anthropology
of development, and the anthropology of Africa. I also teach classes on research
methods and research design. At the undergraduate level, I teach introductory
classes on sociocultural anthropology as well as a course that looks at the
ways in which today's multicultural world came into being as a result of colonial
policies and history.
Bill Leap - Professor
202-885-1831
wlm@american.edu
My research examines the intersections of language, sexuality, gender, and
power. I study how these intersections are negotiated and contested in face-to-face
conversations, in life stories and other personal narratives, in public documents,
and in print and visual media.
One strand of this work explores the relationships between language and homophobia, paying attention to the formation and reception of texts which express "disdain, disgust or hatred for same-sex identified persons, or for persons believed to be same-sex identified."
Another strand of this work focuses on language, geography, and sexual citizenship. My recent studies of urban gay geographies in Washington DC and in late-apartheid Cape Town, South Africa, as well as my ongoing work with gay men's English (and gay men's language use, generally) in these settings, show how languages of sexuality are deeply infused with enduring messages about f racial and economic privilege. Current projects explore how similar messages are expressed in the narratives and images sexual sameness presented in gay sexual cinema
A final strand of this work addresses the marginal positioning given to lesbian, gay, bi and trans-gendered sexualities within anthropology and linguistics. Theoretical and political biases in both fields continue to deny the existence of the sexually transgressive speaking-subject. My studies of language and AIDS, my sponsorship of the annual American University Conference on Lavender Languages and Linguistics (http://www.american.edu/lavenderlanguages), and my efforts to broaden lesbian/gay visibility within the American Anthropological Association and related professional organizations speak out against these biases. So do the courses I teach in our undergrad and graduate programs and my recent publications.
My courses in language and culture studies use language as the entry point for exploring sexual and other cultural politics in late modernity. These courses emphasize the ethnography of communication and the analysis of conversation, narrative and other text, situated within broader fields of culture, power and history. My courses on sexuality, gender and culture draw on feminist theory, lesbian/gay studies, queer theory, and critical race theory to situate questions about sex and gender within an equally broader terrain.
Recent publications respond to arriviste claims about language and desire
(a paper co-authored with Liz Morrish), review recent work with language and
AIDS (a paper in press and co-authored with Samuel Colon), assess the impact
of globalization on gay men's English in the US, examine the politics of gay
space in Cape Town, South Africa, and reflect on the "queer" dimensions
of "gay language." Out in Public, a collection of papers on lgbtq
"public" anthropology that Ellen Lewin and I have assembled, will
appear in print in 2008.
Bryan McNeil – Assistant Professor
mcneil@american.edu
My fieldwork since 2000 is based in southern West Virginia focuses on social and community activism surrounding mountaintop removal coal mining. I incorporate themes of social movements, political and historical ecology, environmental justice, and various forms of practice theory to portray activists as producing new cultural forms rooted in a variety of historical, geographical, and cultural precedents. My book manuscript, currently in press, is tentatively titled Combating Mountaintop Removal: Remaking community, economy, and environment in the wake of corporate capitalism.
My other interests include cultural anthropology of the contemporary United States, including social movements, nature and the environment, power inequalities, and the role of pop culture in socio-cultural discourse. I'm also interested in anthropological writing for non-scholarly audiences, as well as other forms of media such as photography and film.
Sabiyha Prince - Assistant Professor
202-885-1839
sprince956@aol.com
Dr. Sabiyha Prince is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor of
anthropology whose research has centered on urban life in the United States.
Her focus has been on the way(s) race intersects with other aspects of status
and standpoint to shape the experiences of African Americans. Her work looks
more specifically at class, power, identity, and public policy, toward illuminating
how black folks and their relationships are affected by these particular dynamics.
Professor Prince's analytical approach acknowledges gray areas and contradictions
and is oriented around concerns for social justice. It is also rooted in an
anthropological method of data gathering that may combine strategies in an
interdisciplinary fashion but is first and foremost, ethnographic; i.e. dependent
upon first-hand, long-term interaction with and observation of the people
we want to know more about. Her book Constructing Belonging: Race, Class and
Harlem’s Professional Workers (2004) was written after three years of
participant-observing, interviewing, hanging out with and reading about African
Americans in Central and West Harlem in New York City. In another publication,
she wrote about the contemporary legacy of the enslavement of Africans and
African Americans in New York City in “Manhattan Africans” (a
chapter in Afro-Atlantic Dialogues 2006). “Race, Class and the Packaging
of Harlem,” (Identities 2005) discusses the role of policymakers in
facilitating the influx of black professionals into Central and West Harlem
and my most recent article, “Will the Real Black Middle Class Please
Stand Up?” (The Monthly Review July/August 2006) highlights the diversity
of viewpoints and experiences within the black middle class and the implications
of these cultural layers for social justice work and coalition building. Professor
Prince recently appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss the Imus
controversy. She has also been on the Pacifica Radio Network numerous times
and was also a guest on WOL’s The Mark Thompson Show.
Daniel O. Sayers - Assistant Professor
sayers@american.edu
As a historical archaeologist with a background in anthropology, philosophy, and history, my interests are relatively wide-ranging and include: political economy of colonialism, capitalism, and slavery; exile; African and Native American Diasporas; resistance and defiance; marronage and the "Underground Railroad";
alienation; race; gender; labor; archaeology and history in contemporary public
discourses; animal rights theory and archaeology; landscape and artifact pattern
models; and, historical landscape development and dynamics. Over the past 15
years, I have worked across the US (e.g., Arkansas, Michigan, Montana, Utah,
Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina) through cultural resource management
and academic projects. Most recently, I initiated the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape
Study, an ongoing multi-year archaeological study that also has oral traditional
and historiographic aspects. During the first phase of the project that culminated
in my dissertation (2003-2008), I discovered and excavated several sites in
the vast and remote Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia
and North Carolina. I focused on historical components of these sites (1630-1860)
related to Diasporic communities that were comprised of maroons, disenfranchised
Native Americans, and enslaved laborers. Ultimately, I explored the differing
impacts of alienation within swamp communities through a political-economic
landscape perspective, contributed new information and perspectives to contemporary
discourses on swamp history, and provided some of the most detailed archaeological
data available on resistant swamp-dwelling Diasporic exiles in North America.
Prior to this swamp work, I studied the political-economic complexities of
the nineteenth-century transition to agrarian capitalism in Michigan—with
foci on landscape nucleation, alienation, gender, kinship, and labor—through
excavations at the Shepard farmstead (in Battle Creek). Also, I did extensive
historiographic work on the "Underground Railroad" in the nineteenth-century Midwest, focused on Battle Creek and southwest Michigan, and developed a new anthropological perspective that sees the Underground Railroad as one of many historical instantiations of marronage, a global phenomenon. My articles on these major research projects have appeared in several journals and will soon appear in several edited volumes.
I have taught introductory courses in archaeology as well as courses in historical archaeology with foci on labor and resistance. I am currently developing the course "Understanding the Modern Existential Condition through Historical Archaeology" as well as a course called "Archaeological Approaches to Political Economy."
Gretchen E. Schafft - Public Anthropologist in Residence
schafft@american.edu
I am a social anthropologist with a post-doctoral Masters of Health Science
from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene (now the Bloomberg
School). As a founder of the “practicing anthropology” movement,
I have been active in increasing the scope of applied and public anthropology.
I have directed more than a dozen national or regional studies of government
programs and their impact on low-income and/or minority populations in health,
education, and social structure. I have written and offered congressional
testimony on health and education issues.
More recently, I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork and archival research
in eastern Germany and central Europe with a particular focus on the construction
and reconstruction within communities of historical memory of the Third Reich.
In addition to a textbook in the field of health care, I have authored two
books from this later work: KZ Mahn- und Gedenkstätten in Deutschland
and From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich , which has recently
been published in Polish. I have published articles and given talks in Hungary,
Poland, South Africa, Germany, as well as the U.S.. I have taught courses
in applied anthropology, methods, the Holocaust, and genocide at American
and have a deep interest in teaching methodology and student achievement.
Nina Shapiro-Perl — Filmmaker-in-Residence
Nina Shapiro-Perl is an award-winning producer and director who has
worked in television and video production for 25 years. She spent many
of these years documenting the lives of working men and women in cities and
towns across the United States for the 1.9 million-member Service Employees
International Union (SEIU.) From the ground up, she built and directed SEIU's
Video Services Department. After producing scores of short-form documentaries,
she began to experiment with other art forms where union members could tell
their stories of struggle and change in their own words. With support at
SEIU's highest level, she created and directed the Greenhouse Cultural Program,
which developed photography, storytelling, digital storytelling and theatre
projects, some co-produced with Bread & Roses Cultural Project in New
York including Unseenamerica and the Social Justice Calendar.
Trained as a social anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, Nina
wrote her PhD dissertation on women workers in the costume jewelry industry
in Providence, Rhode Island. Leaving academia to work as a public anthropologist,
she started as a writer and producer at Maryland Public Television in 1983
and has since worked as a writer, producer, director and executive producer
of programs for broadcast and non-broadcast audiences. In the fall of 2006,
she left SEIU to produce and direct Through the Eye of the Needle: The
Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz —a documentary that explores
the extraordinary story and art of Holocaust survivor and artist Esther Krinitz.
( www.artandremembrance.org)
The film is now in production. Nina is married to Peter Perl, a veteran
journalist at the Washington Post. They have two grown sons, Daniel and Matthew.
Sue Taylor – Public Anthropologist In Residence
suet@american.edu
202-885-1833
My research has always addressed contemporary issues in the United States.
My initial work in medical anthropology combined a background in nursing and
anthropology focusing on health and gerontology. I developed and directed
the graduate program in Applied Medical Anthropology and served as the Director
of the Minority Aging Program at the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State
University, Detroit, MI. Most recently, my focus has been on urban anthropology,
parks, memorials, and city streetscapes. I just completed an oral history
project for the National Park Service that emphasized perceptions of place,
meaning, memory, and memorialization with the aim of conserving the cultural
heritage of people displaced in the late 1930s to create a recreation area
and during World War II for the expansion of the Marine Corps Base at Quantico,
VA. A study for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund focused on an analysis
of proximity to aid in the site selection for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Center to be located “at or near” the memorial. My task was a
study to define “at or near” in compliance with legislation.
In terms of public policy, I was appointed a state commissioner on the Michigan
Commission for Services to the Aged, conducted public hearings on issues related
to aging, served as a delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Aging,
and held an appointment as a Research Fellow for the Ohio Department of Mental
Health.
I draw on my background as an administrator, policy maker, clinical practitioner,
researcher, and teacher in developing courses geared to experiential learning
and research direction for students. I have an extensive teaching history
including undergraduate and graduate courses in research methods, theory,
gender, medical anthropology, urban anthropology, applied anthropology, and
aging. I am developing a new course on the anthropology of tourism. I continue
to combine research and praxis on issues of public policy for presentation
in the classroom, as well as for professional and community groups. My work
appears in the form of technical reports, chapters in books, and in the Journal
of Cross-Cultural Gerontology.
David Vine - Assistant Professor
202-885-2923
vine@american.edu
Since 2001, I have conducted research about the U.S. military base on the
Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia and the expulsion of its native people during
development of the base. As a result of this work, I am serving as an expert
witness for lawyers in the United States and Great Britain bringing suits
against the U.S. and U.K. governments on behalf of the exiled people, known
as Chagossians. I have recently completed a book manuscript about the history
of the base, the lives of the people, and U.S. foreign policy, entitled, Imperial
Paradise: Expulsion and the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia.
My other research has included work on gentrification and urban development
in Brooklyn, NY; housing strategies for people with serious mental illnesses
and histories of homelessness in New York City; environmental refugees; and
summer league basketball in Washington, DC. My writing has been published
in, among others, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Human Rights Brief,
International Migration, the Brooklyn Rail, and Week End [Mauritius]. Broadly,
my other interests include militarization and military bases, human rights,
forced displacement, indigenous peoples, race/ethnicity, poverty, the Indian
Ocean, and ethnography aimed at non-academic audiences.
Rachel Watkins - Assistant Professor
202-885-1663
watkins@american.edu
My research focuses on the biological and social history of African Americans
living in the 19th and 20th century urban United States. Specifically, I examine
the health consequences of poverty and inequality through skeletal and documentary
data analysis. My work contributes to understanding health more broadly as
a product of social relations affecting the distribution of resources, labor
and power. In addition to a focus on skeletal biology, I draw upon social
theory to situate skeletal remains as historical texts as well as records
of individual and collective lived experience.
I conduct on-going research on the W. Montague Cobb skeletal collection, which
is made up of Washington, DC residents who died in the city between 1930 and
1969. Most individuals were African American and worked as day laborers or
domestics. There is extensive cultural information associated with the collection
that makes it ideal for examining various biocultural interrelationships.
While on research leave this past year, I studied a segment of the collection
that lived in the city poorhouse to examine how race and gender bear upon
the biological and social experiences of poverty and being institutionalized.
Research of this kind is useful for understanding health and disease patterns
in marginal populations over time, as well as their relationship to changing
historical trends and social and economic policies. Therefore, among other
things, I believe that bioanthropological research has an important role to
play in the future development of health policy and health advocacy practices.
My long-term projects include biographical research on W. Montague Cobb and
his contributions to the biocultural synthesis in physical anthropology. A
piece was published in the March 2007 issue of American Anthropologist that
reflects this work.
I teach Roots of Racism, Human Origins, Sex, Gender and Culture as well as
courses on race, biology and culture, social theory and human biology.
Brett Williams - Professor
202-885-1836
bwillia@american.edu
I began my work as an anthropologist working among migrant farm workers in
Illinois, exploring how they coped with terrible poverty and helping them
organize a lettuce boycott and raise money for a halfway house. Since coming
to Washington in 1976, I have written about gentrification, displacement,
and homelessness; urban renewal and public housing; race and poverty; environmental
justice in the Anacostia Watershed; urban nature; illness and inequality;
the culture of and credit and debt. I have published six books, including
one on the African American hero John Henry, Upscaling Downtown, on the pain
and promise of integration in an urban neighborhood and Debt for Sale, which
explores the rise of the super-profitable credit industry, including credit
cards, student loans, pawnshops, and other predatory lenders. Working with
community ethnographers, my students and I have done projects for the National
Park Service, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Smithsonian
Institution’s Festival of American Folklife. In our work we tried to
join theory and practice in promoting better public policy and social justice.
I have taught many courses that explore the city of Washington: as national
shrine, seat of state power, residents' city, center of African American history
and culture, and political colony. I teach courses on racism and poverty,
ritual and taboo, anthropology in the United States, and environmental justice.
In one class, "Student Activism and Social Justice," students join
theory to practice in reading about the causes and consequences of homelessness
while working with other advocates for affordable housing.
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