Category Archives: Author interviews

A Desperately-Needed Anthropological Perspective on Refugees: A Conversation with Sophia Balakian about Her Brilliant New Book, “Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship”

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A conversation with Sophia Balakian about her brilliant new book, “Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship.” Sophia concludes our conversation with this timely assertion: “The normalization of dehumanizing rhetoric and violence against immigrant communities, people who are undocumented, and those who support them has to be continually unsettled and undermined using whatever tools we have.”

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Tracing Racial Histories: An Anthropologist Amuk in the Archives (also, Venezuela)

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In this conversation, I catch up with Robert (“Bob”) Vernon, a friend who’s had a few lifetimes’ worth of fascinating and non-linear careers both before and after our time together in grad school at the University of Virginia, back in the ’70s. His latest scholarly venture takes him far from

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What about Work?

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A conversation about a new book that should be required reading for — well, anyone who cares about work in America.

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Birth as Ritual/Ritual as Birth

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Cultural anthropologist, Robbie Davis-Floyd, is a leading anthropologist in the fields of childbirth, midwifery, and obstetrics.   A Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas-Austin, she has studied childbirth practices firsthand in the U.S., Mexico, and elsewhere, and has promoted the work and legitimacy of

Academic Career, Anthropology, Author interviews, Books, Childbirth, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography, Medical anthropology, Medical issues, Mexico, Midwives, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Social Shaping of Bodily Experience, Women's issues Read more

To Be a Man Is Not a One-Day Job: A Conversation with Daniel Jordan Smith

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Daniel Jordan Smith has been conducting research in, and writing about, West Africa since 1995.     His first book, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria, was a compelling work narrating the daily experience of interrelations between morality and economy, seen from the bottom up. It won

Academia, Academic Career, Africa, Africanist scholarship, Anthropology, Author interviews, Books, Cultural Anthropology, Current Issues, Economic anthropology, Ethnography, Gender relations, Igbo, Masculinity, Men's studies, Money, Nigeria, Research methods, West Africa Read more

Irish Writers, Anthropologically Speaking: An Interview with Helena Wulff

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Anthropologist Helena Wulff has been conducting research on youth culture and multiple art worlds (especially in Western Europe) for over thirty years. Wulff’s recent book, Rhythms of Writing: An Anthropology of Irish Literature (Bloomsbury, 2017), brings an anthropologist’s questions to the world of contemporary literature. In a review of her new book for

Academia, Academic Career, Anthropology, Anthropology of literature, Author interviews, Book reviews, Books, Creative thinking, Cultural Anthropology, Current Issues, Diversity, Ethnographic writing, Ethnography, Fiction, Humanistic anthropology, Immigration, Ireland, Irish writers, Language and culture, Public intellectual, Refugees, Research methods, Sweden, Writers and migration, Writing Read more

Doing Development the Right Way: A Conversation with Charles Piot

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Anthropologist Charlie Piot has been conducting research on the political economy and history of rural West Africa for over thirty years. His first book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999), has gained wide attention for re-theorizing a classic, out-of-the-way place as existing within the modern and the global.  

Academia, Academic Career, Africa, Africanist scholarship, Anthropology, Author interviews, Books, Community, Community education, Cultural Anthropology, Current Issues, Cyber café, Duke University, Ethnography, Health care, Health insurance, Inequality, Intercultural communication, Internet, Microfinance, Non-governmental organizations, Research as advocacy, Social activism, Social justice, Study abroad, Togo, Undergraduate education Read more

The Anthropology/Poetry Nexus–An Interview with Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

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Can artists and social scientists inhabit the same universe? Melisa (“Misha”) Cahnmann-Taylor embodies that nexus. Her advanced degrees include an MFA in poetry . . . and a PhD in educational linguistics. She’s published plenty of scholarly work in academic journals and books (about language learning, sustainable or fragile states

Academic Career, Anthropology, Author interviews, Bilingualism, Creative thinking, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnographic poetry, Ethnographic writing, Expats, Humanistic anthropology, Imperfection, Intercultural communication, Judaism, Language and culture, Language Change, Language politics, Linguistic Anthropology, Mexico, Motherhood, Research methods, TESOL, Writing Read more

Everything You Thought You Knew about Orphans in Africa Is Probably Wrong

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Policy makers, development workers, orphanage voluntourists, missionaries, prospective adoptive parents: ignore this book at your peril.   “AIDS orphans” are commonly imagined as the most vulnerable of the world’s most vulnerable populations.  In a provocative new study, anthropologist Kristen Cheney  challenges just about everything we thought we knew about the children

Africa, Africanist scholarship, Anthropology, Author interviews, Childhood, Community, Cultural Anthropology, Current Issues, East Africa, Education, Ethnography, HIV/AIDS, Intercultural communication, Labeling theory, Medical anthropology, Orphanages, Orphans, Politics of representation, Research as advocacy, Research methods, Schooling, Social activism, Social justice, Stigma, Voluntourism Read more

Do All African Immigrants Arrive Sick, Desperate, and Empty-Handed on the Shores of Europe? Ask Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg!

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The lives, status, and image of immigrants may constitute the single-most urgent human issue of our time.  In an arresting and captivating new study of Cameroonian mothers now living in Berlin, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg challenges just about everything we thought we knew about immigrants.  Living as migrants in a nation infamous

Academic Career, Africa, Africanist scholarship, Anthropology, Author interviews, Berlin, Books, Cameroon, Citizenship, Community, Cultural Anthropology, Current Issues, Diversity, Donald Trump, Education, Ethnography, Germany, Immigration, Othering, Parenting, Politics of representation, Racism, Schools, Women Read more
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