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.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson and her Summer 2025 SURF students presented their findings at the 13th Race, Ethnicity and Place conference in Albuquerque, NM from November 5–7. Their panel was titled “Race, Gender, Slavery and Freedom in Everyday Life on the British coast of Central America, 1750-1830.” Dr. Johnson and three students presented their papers: anthropology and feminist studies double major Dina Gaxiola ’28 presented “The Case of Jane Trapp: Race, Gender, Slavery and Freedom in Early British Central America,” psychology and sociology double major Sophia Hernandez ’28 presented “From Enslavement to Influence; Gendered Agency, Racial Boundaries, and the Story of Ariadne Broaster,” Dr. Johnson presented “Living across lines of freedom in the early history of Belize: The origins of the Bonner family,” and biology and environmental studies double major Shae Whitney ’28 presented “Maria Middleton – Slave, Criminal, Transported Convict: Understanding Gender, Race and Freedom across the British Colonial World.” The students may have been the only undergraduates presenting papers at this conference. The papers were well received, with one audience member sharing that this was the most interesting panel they had attended.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson participated in the Kulcha 2025 symposium, hosted by the Heritage Education Network Belize, from October 29–31. She presented “Early Belizean Social History: The case of the Crawford family” on October 29. The presentation can be accessed here at 4:54 (4 hours, 54 minutes); the live Q and A starts about 30 minutes later.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson led a workshop on the “Early Social History of the Lower Belize River Valley” for undergraduate students at the University of Belize (UB) from October 17–18. Eight students and two professors from UB spent Friday working with archival documents and information that Dr. Johnson has collected to start to tell the story of a family of color who lived in British Central America starting in the mid 1700s. The president of the university and two deans joined the workshop for Dr. Johnson’s presentation. The following day, Dr. Johnson organized a field trip for the group to Belizean Creole villages in the lower Belize River Valley, where the group learned about history and culture first hand from elders of the communities. Dr. Johnson worked closely with Lecturer in History and Coordinator of the Intercultural Indigenous Language Institute Delmer Tzib and Assistant Professor of English Christopher De Shield to develop the workshop. The activities were all sponsored by funding from the Mellon Foundation’s Grant to SU, “Deepening the Heart of Texas: Public-Engaged Humanities for Social Justice.”