Anthropology majors and race and ethnicity studies minors Karim Clarke ’26 and Nia Cannon ’26 presented their capstone research at the Southwestern Anthropological Association annual conference in Claremont, CA on March 27. Karim presented “Between Constraint and Autonomy: The Labor of Black Care and the Practice of Self-Defined Belonging at a Predominantly White Institution” and Nia presented “Beyond Being ‘Diverse’: The Lived Experiences of Black Women at PWIs.” Their presentations were very well received with at least one audience member initially believing they were faculty members themselves. The research emerged out of coursework with both Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed and Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson, as well as the SU Racial History Project, and Dr. Johnson’s current anthropology capstone course.

Anthropology graduate Zacharia Arifi ’24 recently published “Hors Place: Discursive Identities of the Modern Franco Kabyle” in The Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography, Volume 15, No. 1. His article is based on a project he worked on while at SU. Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed oversaw its development in the anthropology capstone, and Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson assisted Zacharia in creating a journal article publication. The article is available here.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson presented “Revising the Early Social History of Belize, 1730-1820” at the Third International Caribbean Studies Forum at the University of Belize, Belmopan, on February 18. The talk can be viewed here.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson organized a double panel for the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans on November 22, along with Dr. Patrick Gallagher of the University of Texas–San Antonio. The sessions were titled “Predatory Politics: The Wily Animal-Human Relationships of Hunting and Fishing” Part 1–Sea and Part 2–Land. Dr. Johnson presented “Tigah Camp: Unruly Multispecies assemblages, Race and Gender in a Belizean Trophy Jaguar Hunting Camp” in Part 2–Land.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed presented her paper “A Healing African Diasporic Deconstruction of Ashkenormativity” at the American Anthropology Association Conference in New Orleans on November 20. The presentation was on the panel she also chaired, titled “Canonical Hauntings of the Body: On Harm and Healing—Knowledge Production and the Politics of Belonging.” Dr. Reed’s paper explores how the dismissal of whiteness by white presenting Ashkenazi Jewish Americans harms Jews of color and erases their experiences within the Jewish Diaspora. Through a critical inversion of the haunting paternalistic relationship between Jewish anthropologists and Blackness, she asks what Jewish Americans can learn from African Diaspora scholarship. She suggests that Jewish identity should be reconceptualized through African Diasporic notions of identity and race as a means to deconstruct Ashkenormativity and to fuel a healing critical recognition of Jewish diversity. Anthropology graduate Zacharia Arifi ’24 presented a paper on this same panel, titled “Bourdieu Awal and Me: Unraveling a Canon of Franco-Kabyle Ethnolography,” where they mediate the history of French ethnography with ethnographic fieldwork to posit how a legacy of disciplinal practice haunts ethnic identification among the French Kabyle. Particularly, they define how its corpus has codified and perpetuated hegemonic knowledge of belonging that supplant the diaspora’s autonomy in self-conceptualization. They consider, then, how its communities negotiate what it means to be Kabyle through living encounters with discursive expression. Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson served as the discussant for this panel. The conference program can be found here.