Cultural Anthropology
In Capoeira Connections: A Memoir in Motion, Katya Wesolowski — a capoeirista and Duke lecturing fellow of Cultural Anthropology and Dance — explores her personal journey from novice to instructor as well as her research in Brazil, Angola, Europe, and the United States. "My relationship to capoeira is as a researcher, but also just as importantly as a practitioner and now also as an instructor," says Wesolowski. She will teach her next Capoeira: Practice and Culture course (… read more about Katya Wesolowski on Capoeira Connections »
As a Duke undergraduate, Tracie Canada took The Anthropology of Sport with Professor Orin Starn — a course she remembers as formative to her engagement with anthropology and eventually leading to her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia. Today, Assistant Professor Tracie Canada focuses her ethnographic research on the experiences of athletes, and Black college football players, in particular. And in Fall 2022, she got the opportunity to teach the Duke course in which she was once enrolled, tweaking the syllabus to include… read more about Sports and Society Course Applies Anthropological Practice to our Obsession with Athletes »
Celebrate the renewal of spring with a book from a Duke author. This season of new and upcoming books that cover a variety of times, places and subjects from the arts to computer science. The writings include studies of body shaming in the theater, civil defense in Japan, intellectual conformity in higher education and a cautionary look at the future of brain hacking. Many of the books, including new editions of previous titles, can be found on the “Duke Authors” display shelves near the circulation desk in Perkins… read more about Spring Books from Duke Authors from Wittgenstein to Capoeira »
The Duke Graduate School has announced the recipients of its 2023 Dean's Awards, which recognize outstanding efforts by graduate students, faculty, and departments/programs in mentoring, teaching, and creating inclusive spaces for graduate education. The recipients will be recognized at an in-person reception on March 30. More details about each recipient will be posted closer to the event. Read more. read more about Orin Starn receives 2023 Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentoring »
In Capoeira Connections: A Memoir in Motion, Katya Wesolowski—a capoeirista and Duke University lecturing fellow of cultural anthropology and dance—explores her personal journey from novice to instructor as well as her decades of research as an anthropologist in Brazil, Angola, Europe, and the United States. We asked Katya Wesolowski some questions about her new book, which we’re sharing below. Read more. read more about Q&A with Katya Wesolowski, author of Capoeira Connections »
The Cultural Anthropology “Fieldwork Methods” class, a core requirement for the major, shone a spotlight on the ways that Cultural Anthropology holds space for students to explore their intellectual vision. On Wednesday, December 7th, 2022, Professor Katya Wesolowski held a mock American Anthropological Association (AAA) conference as a culminating feature of the course. Each of the students worked on semester-long ethnographic research projects, presented their findings in front of peers and graduate CulAnth students.… read more about Fieldwork Methods, Fall 2023: A Mini-Conference »
The Duke Chronicle's Christina Ferrari interviews Professor Lewis about her class CULANTH102: American Indian Nations Today and her advocacy as a new faculty member at Duke, including her work with the Native American/Indigenous Student Alliance (NAISA). read more about Meet Courtney Lewis, Trinity's first American Indian professor who’s changing the game »
“This book is going to get me in trouble,” Kathryn Mathers says. It’s not because the associate professor of the practice of International Comparative Studies and Cultural Anthropology is looking for it. In fact, she thought long and hard about whether she had a right to tackle the subjects she analyzes in the book in question, “White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation.” Ultimately she decided it was worth the risk, because the book was born from the questions her students kept… read more about Kathryn Mathers’ New Book Debunks Common Myths About Duke Students’ Work in Africa »
IN-PERSON! Edible North Carolina: In conversation with Marcie Cohen Ferris, Andrea Reusing, and Courtney Lewis Epilogue 109 E Franklin Street Suite 100 Chapel Hill, NC December 7 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm FREE – $35.00 Edible North Carolina documents and shares the vibrant voices and places of North Carolina’s contemporary food movement—an exciting intersection of culinary excellence, creative entrepreneurship, changing populations, historic yet evolving foodways, and a commitment to protect and… read more about IN-PERSON! Edible North Carolina: In conversation with Marcie Cohen Ferris, Andrea Reusing, and Courtney Lewis »
Awards enable doctoral candidates to conduct research abroad -By OGA Staff November 28, 2022 The Office of Global Affairs (OGA) is pleased to announce that two Duke graduate students have been awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Award for the 2022-2023 academic year. Joe Hiller, Ph.D. student in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, and Melissa Karp, Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Literature, received… read more about Joe Hiller: One of two recipients of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Award »
Long winter nights make for good reads. Duke publications from the fall and winter include attractions for readers of many interests. For history buffs, there's new history of the American West and a timely assessment of economic sanctions. For politicos, there's a blueprint for protecting democracy and a study of the contributions of migrants to various cultures. Movie fans can read about the history of Asians in theater and cinema and a surprising look at the politics of Marvel movies. Many of the books, including new… read more about Warm Up With Winter Books From Duke Authors »
“I've spent most of my life since I was 13 working very hard to learn other people's languages,” says J. Lorand Matory. He has just come from a midterm exam in his advanced undergraduate Chinese language and culture class, Chinese being the most recent of the numerous languages he has studied. “I find it liberating to think in the terms of others who grew up thousands of miles away and have a totally different cultural history, and to try on their ways of thinking,” he says. “How can you understand other people's point of… read more about J. Lorand Matory’s “The Fetish Revisited” Wins J. I. Staley Prize »
The twentieth-century encounter between Protestant Christianity and the upland peoples in the China-Southeast Asia borderlands has been one of the most significant historical developments in the region, and has reshaped both the communal life of ethnic minorities and their relations to the valley civilization. The vigorous expansion of Christian communities among the peripheral peoples has also been part of the modern transformation of Christianity as its center of gravity shifted away from the global north to the global… read more about Christianity, Modernity, and Ethnicity in the China South-East Asia Borderlands »
A Duke alum, Assistant Professor Tracie Canada joined the Department of Cultural Anthropology this fall. Her research and teaching interests lie in race, sport, kinship and the performing body, and her in-progress book manuscript, “Tackling the Everyday: Race, Family and Nation in Big-Time College Football,” describes and theorizes the lived experiences of Black college football players. We spoke with Canada about her work, returning to Duke, how sports shape everyday lives and her hopes for… read more about Canada Navigates the Worlds of Black College Athletes »
IN 2019, THE video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare rolled out its first single-mode playable woman character. Grab your controller, and you get to grow up as Farah Karim—fighting off attackers with a screwdriver as a young girl, struggling through graphic waterboarding, and then wielding an AK-47 against extremist invaders as a leader of the fictional Urzikstan Liberation Force. Farah’s resilient and brave. More importantly, though, Farah’s a good woman fighting for a good cause: freedom. Read more. read more about Doctoral Student Summer Steenberg on Women and War »
Courtney Lewis wants to teach a class about “alternative economies” even though she doesn’t really like the term. “I don't like the idea of making a juxtaposition against capitalism,” she says. “But… because we live in this particular American society, we’re made to feel like capitalism is our only choice. “Actually, there are ways we can live with a mentality of an economy of abundance, instead of a mentality of an economy of scarcity. So, for example, how do other corporate forms give back to the community? This is… read more about Growing Businesses in Challenging Times: Courtney Lewis Examines Native American Economic Sovereignty »
