Office:
334 Burnham Hall
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.
Springfield, MO 65802
(417) 873-7226
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. 2005
Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky
Dissertation title: “A Log In Water Never Becomes A Crocodile”:
Practices Of Return Migration and Intergenerational Gifting In West Africa
Dissertation description:
Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in eastern Guinea during 2003 poses the questions: how are notions of Islamic and Mande identity constructed and maintained across generational and gendered borders during and after episodes of migration? How does marriage in West Africa respond to the presence or absence of household members, war, fluctuations in political economy, and the maintenance of Islamic and Mande conjugal practices across time and space? Research methods (including local residency, use of local languages, and participation in routine daily activities) identified and tracked return migrants and foreign-born returnees to an area that designates personhood according to kinship and gender. Because increasing violence in neighboring nation-states forced a flow of returnees to the place of their father’s birth, research participants were recent returnees from surrounding zones of conflict in Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Their interrupted economic sojourns complicate demographic categorizations, contesting labels like “refugee.” This dissertation traces three major themes dealing with the constructions of gender, generation, and identity: 1) kinship, descent and the family, as Mande peoples reckon descent through the father, the foreign-born children of a man are entitled to claims on the household of the father, even as adults. The resulting transregional polygyny and maintenance of multiple households complicates the power dynamics of married women who reside within the home of origin. Mande cultural strategies and religion are employed in strategic ways to address arising intrahousehold conflicts; 2) transregional migration, marked by a desire on the part of the migrant to avoid categorization by international relief agencies and to return to the home of origin as a “success.” This is someone who can repay kinship obligations to the prior generation by mobilizing symbolic capital accrued and translated from another context, especially conversions to spiritual capital in highly-visible pilgrimages to Mecca or western capital through highly-prized automobiles and autonomous mobility; and 3) unfolding issues of personhood and identity in response to pressures from Mande religious and cultural sources, as well as the tensions of balancing more western practices of the self, especially as these intersect with the material practices of gifting and commodity exchange.
M.A. 1995 Wichita State University, Department of Anthropology, Wichita, KS
B.S. 1991 James Madison University, Anthropology & Geology, Harrisonburg, VA.
RESEARCH AND TEACHING AREAS OF INTEREST:
Household Economics (foci: gifting and the gift, symbolic meanings of commodities and technologies, diamond wedding rings, symbolic capital, allocation of labor and resources, decisions about education and healthcare, non-market logics, small scale economic theory)
Kinship and the Family (foci: intergenerational obligation and construction of the self, second generation migrant issues, birth order, fertility/fecundity, notions of descent, conception, and pregnancy, child-rearing, naming, heterosexual conjugality, management of polygyny and monogamy, transnational families)
Transnational Migration (foci: livelihood migration, measures of success and masculinity, differential gender access, remittances, return migration, effects on non-migrant household members)
Personhood (foci: rites of passage, identity construction by gender, life course, social location, and family dynamics, partibility, contagion, presentation of piety/authenticity)
Dance Studies (foci: American Tribal Style Bellydance, dance as a site of identity construction, the dancing body, costuming, exotic dance, performance of self and gender)
Anthropology of Gender (foci: cultural forms of feminism, “Third World” feminist activism and resistance to definitions of “Woman,” representations of the non-western woman as victim, masculinity studies, the body, fertility, motherhood)
West Africa (foci: Mande-speaking agrarian culture, West African cities, refugee issues, diamond trade, identity politics, rites of passage, challenges to masculinist ideologies)
Construction of Race and Racism (foci: construction of “miscegeny” and “métissage,” biracial marriage and children, African immigration to Ireland and the United States)
Global Pop Culture (foci: bellydance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elvis, cell phone technology, “neo”-paganism, diamonds, “natural” beauty and hair products)
Social Theory (foci: theories of late capitalism, modernity and postmodernity, globalization, transnationalism, mass culture/popular culture, gender, race/ethnicity, space and place)
EMPLOYMENT:
Academic/Teaching
Summer 2005-present
Assistant Professor
Interdisciplinary Studies Center, Drury University, Springfield, MO
Courses taught: Global Awareness, Global Futures, Alpha Seminar, Introduction to Women and Gender Studies, Gender, Globalization and Islam
2005
Adjunct Faculty
Department of Social Sciences, Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky
Courses taught: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
2005
Adjunct Faculty
Women’s Studies Program, Lexington Community College, Lexington, Kentucky
Courses taught: Introduction to Women’s Studies in the Social Sciences
2004 - 2005
Instructor
Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
Courses taught: Cultural Diversity in the Modern World
2004-2005
Teaching Assistant
Women’s Studies Program, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
Courses taught: Introduction to Women’s Studies in the Social Sciences
2001 – 2002
Instructor
SPIRASI Refugee Centre, Phibsboro, Dublin, Ireland
Courses taught: European Computer Driving License – Introduction to Windows
Spring 2001
Adjunct Faculty
Department of Anthropology, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky
Courses taught: Native Peoples of North America
1999 – 2001
Adjunct Faculty
Women’s Studies Program, Lexington Community College, Lexington, Kentucky
Courses taught: Introduction to Women’s Studies in the Social Sciences
1999 – 2001
Instructor
Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
Courses taught: Introduction to Anthropology (4 Field), Human Sexuality in Cross-Cultural
Perspective
1994-1995
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Department of Geology, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas
Labs taught: Introduction to Geology Lab, Mineralogy Lab, Optical Mineralogy Lab,
Petrology Lab
1992-1994
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Department of Anthropology, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas
Courses assisted: Faces of Culture, The American Hero, The American West
1990-1991
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
Department of Geology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Applied and Activist Work
1997 – 1998
Night Shift Crisis Counselor / House Manager
Chester County Domestic Violence Center, West Chester, Pennsylvania
1995-1997
Peace Corps Volunteer: Agricultural Extension
United States Peace Corps, Gougoundala, Region de Kayes, Mali
1992-1995
Night Shift Crisis Counselor / House Manager
YWCA Women’s Crisis Center and Safehouse, Wichita, Kansas
PUBLICATIONS
[in press] Mirror Belts, Hip Scarves and Kohl: Crafting and Consuming an Inclusive Global Style. Western Folklore.
[in press] Gender, Identity and Second Generation Returnees in West Africa: Coming Home to a Place You Never Left. Growing Up Transnational, edited by May Friedman and Silvia Schultermandl.
CONFERENCE PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS:
2006- Pilgrimage, Pious Gifts and the Performance of Spiritual Capital in Upper Guinea. Economics and Morality Plenary Session: Society for Economic Anthropology.
2006- Skull Caps and Ray-Bans: Being a Hadj in Kankan. Invited Session on Economics and Morality: American Anthropological Association Conference, San Jose, California.
2005- Second Generation Returnees in West Africa: Coming Home to a Place You
Never Left. American Anthropological Association Conference, Washington, DC.
2005- Second Generation Returnees to Upper Guinea: Mande Constructions of Identity through Lineage, Birth Order and Gender. Mid-America Association of African Studies 2005 Annual Meeting, Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri.
2005- Spiritual Capital in West Africa: Emerging Hierarchies of Value, Religious Identity, and Perceptions of Male Success. Paper presented at the Global Studies Association Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee.
2004- West African Returnees and Intergenerational Gifting: Spiritual Capital, the Metaphor of the Pork-Filled Netbag, and Becoming a Hadja in Kankan, Guinea. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Conference
San Francisco, California.
2001- Centering While Spinning: Exotic Dancers and the Management of Gender Identity. Paper presented at the Southern Anthropological Association Conference
Nashville, Tennessee.
2001- Africans on the Emerald Isle: Preliminary Notes on the Cultural Construction of Ethnic Identity and Xenophobia in Dublin, Ireland. Paper presented at the Central States Anthropological Conference, Lexington, KY.
2001- Woodstock’s Stock: Big Business, Outdoor Music Festivals, and Sexual Violence. Paper presented at the Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies Conference, Valdosta, Georgia.
2000- West African Immigrants: Transnational Social Locations, Masculinity, and Occupational (Im)Mobility. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Conference, Chicago, Illinois.
2000- Domestic Violence as a Lens for Cross-Cultural Analysis: Problems, Narratives, Ethics. Paper presented at University of Kentucky Graduate Student Women’s Studies, Lexington, Kentucky.
1999- Resettlement and Household Violence: Reflections on Development Projects in Manantali, Mali. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Conference, San Francisco, California
1999- Privileging Gender: A Cautionary Tale from Rural Mali. Paper presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology Conference, Tucson, Arizona.
1998- Effects of Involuntary Resettlement on Women’s Traditional Corps in Southwest Mali. Paper presented at the International Congress of Anthropological & Ethnological Sciences, Williamsburg, Virginia
EDITORIAL REVIEWS:
2006- Review essay on Diaspora in Anthropology News
2005- Reviewed White Queen: May French-Sheldon and the Imperial Origins of American Feminist Identity for African Studies Quarterly.
2005- Reviewed Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939-1958 for African Studies Quarterly.
2004- Reviewed article for Women in Development.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Gifting Mecca: Importing Spiritual Capital to West Africa: For forthcoming volume (Dis)Placing the Center: Pilgrimage in a Mobile World, edited by Simon Coleman, John Eade, and Vida Bajc, for MOBILITIES.
The Emergence of the Right Hand Ring: Bling-Bling for Girls Only.
American Tribal Style Belly Dance: World Fusion, Commodities, and Community.
HONORS:
2005- University of Kentucky Provost’s Outstanding Teaching Award
2005- William Y. Adams Outstanding Teaching Award in Anthropology
RESEARCH GRANTS AND AWARDS:
2004- Beth Wilder Dillingham Dissertation Write-Up Award
2004- University of Kentucky Student Support Award
2002-3- IIE Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
2001- National Science Foundation Workshop Scholarship
2001- University of Kentucky Student Support Award
2000- University of Kentucky Student Support Award
1998-9- University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology Fellowship
1991- Philip J. Cominski Award for Excellence in Geology
ACADEMIC SERVICE:
2005 - 2006
Global Perspectives 21 Council
Interdisciplinary Studies Center, Drury University
Spring 1995
Selected Student Member
Search Committee for faculty position in Anthropology Department, Wichita State University
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS:
American Anthropological Association
Society for Applied Anthropology
Global Studies Association
National Women’s Studies Association
Mid-America Association of African Studies
REFERENCES:
Richard Schur
Associate Professor/Director, Interdisciplinary Studies Center
Drury University, Springfield, MO 65802, (417) 873-6834
rschur@drury.edu
Monica Udvardy
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40560, (859) 257-2710
mudvardy@uky.edu
Peter Little
Professor/Chair, Department of Anthropology
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40560, (859) 257-2710
pdlitt1@uky.edu