Deborah A. Thomas

Last updated

Deborah A. Thomas
Deborah Thomas, February 2019.jpg
Thomas in 2019
Born1966 (age 57–58)
NationalityAmerican
Education Brown University (BA)
New York University (MA, PhD)
Occupation(s)Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography
Organization University of Pennsylvania

Deborah A. Thomas (born 1966) is an American anthropologist and filmmaker. She is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published books and articles on the history, culture, and politics of Jamaica; and on human rights, sexuality, and globalization in the Caribbean arena. She has co-produced and co-directed two experimental films, and has co-curated a multimedia exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2016, she began a four-year term as editor-in-chief of the journal American Anthropologist . [1]

Contents

Before pursuing her career as an anthropologist, Thomas performed as a professional dancer with Urban Bush Women, [2] a New York dance company that used art to promote social equity by illuminating the experiences of disenfranchised people. [3] [4]

Education and career

Thomas received her B.A. in semiotics with honors from Brown University in 1988. She continued her education at New York University, earning a M.A. in 1994 from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and a Ph.D. in 2000 from the Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation, entitled "'Tradition's not an intelligence thing': Jamaican cultural politics and the ascendence of modern blackness," focused on the intersection of identity and politics in Jamaica in the 1990s. It served as the foundation for her first book, Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. [5]

After a short time as adjunct professor at NYU, Thomas was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Americas at Wesleyan University from 2000 to 2002. From there, she secured an appointment at Duke University, where she was an assistant professor, in both the Department of Cultural Anthropology and the Women's Studies Program (now Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies), between 2002 and early 2006. [6] In January 2006, she was promoted to associate professor.

In 2006, Thomas joined the faculty in the department of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania as an associate professor. [6] In 2011, she became the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and between 2009 and 2012 and 2015–2017, she served as chair of the anthropology graduate group. In addition to her appointment in the department of anthropology, Thomas was an affiliate in Penn's Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies program; [7] and secured a secondary appointment in Penn's Graduate School of Education. [8]

Scholarship

Deborah A. Thomas has written three books and has published one edited volume, focusing on Jamaican culture and politics. Her studies of Jamaican life have illuminated what is known as the "rude boy" street subculture in Kingston, whose participants have often drawn inspiration in their fashion and comportment from Hollywood cowboy and gangster films and from jazz and soul musical genres. [9] Her research has also explored the continuing legacies of colonial-era violence, and the impact of trauma on memory, in postcolonial Jamaica, [10] while sometimes also bringing the study of Jamaican music, violence, and politics together. [11]

Deborah A. Thomas has directed and produced several films related to her research. [12] Her first film was Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens (2011). [13] which blended the use of archival sources and oral histories with Rastafari elders to consider how violence and legacies of trauma persist in shaping postcolonial Jamaican politics and popular beliefs, [14] Her second film was Four Days in May (2018), which again blended visual and textual materials, in this case while giving participants in oral histories the opportunities to memorialize loved ones who died during the 2010 State of Emergency in Kingston, Jamaica. [15] [16] [17] She has described this film as a work of "experimental ethnography". [18] In 2018, Thomas began serving as Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania, which promotes the use of multi-media, "extra-textual", and digital scholarship for the diffusion of learning in the humanities and social sciences. [19] [20]

Deborah A. Thomas has also disseminated scholarship through the medium of a museum exhibit, called Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston, which the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology featured from November 18, 2017, to March 31, 2020. [21] [22] The exhibit used audio and video footage featuring first-hand accounts of peoples' experiences during the "Tivoli Incursions," which took place at Tivoli Gardens in Kingston Jamaica in May 2010. Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston combined the qualities of an art installation, memorial, and call to action to shed light on how violence impacted people within this Jamaican community. It grew out of a collaborative oral history project called "Tivoli Stories", [23] which Thomas led in 2012 with colleagues including Deanne M. Bell, Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn, and Varun Baker. [22] [16]

In an article about the work of black British feminist theorist Hazel V. Carby, Thomas expressed a major question that runs through her scholarship, which is, "What histories do we inherit?" [24] In 2024, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [25]

Major publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penn Museum</span> Archaeological museum

Penn Museum, formally known as The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, at the intersection of 33rd and South Streets. Housing over 1.3 million artifacts, the museum features one of the most comprehensive collections of Middle and Near-Eastern art in the world.

Jamaican culture consists of the religion, norms, values, and lifestyle that define the people of Jamaica. The culture is mixed, with an ethnically diverse society, stemming from a history of inhabitants beginning with the original inhabitants of Jamaica. The Spaniards originally brought slavery to Jamaica. Then they were overthrown by the English. Jamaica later gained emancipation on 1 August 1838, and independence from the British on 6 August 1962. Black slaves became the dominant cultural force as they suffered and resisted the harsh conditions of forced labour. After the abolition of slavery, Chinese and Indian migrants were transported to the island as indentured workers, bringing with them ideas from their country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Gutmann</span> American academic and diplomat (born 1949)

Amy Gutmann is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Germany from 2022 to 2024. She was previously the president of the University of Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2022, the longest-serving president in the history of the University of Pennsylvania. She currently serves as the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, School of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthropology of media</span> Scientific study of the creation of mass communications and its workers

Anthropology of media is an area of study within social or cultural anthropology that emphasizes ethnographic studies as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media.

American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), published quarterly by Wiley. The "New Series" began in 1899 under an editorial board that included Franz Boas, Daniel G. Brinton, and John Wesley Powell. The current editor-in-chief is Elizabeth Chin.

Sherry Beth Ortner is an American cultural anthropologist and has been a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA since 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shara McCallum</span> American poet

Shara McCallum is an American poet. She was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. McCallum is the author of four collections of poems, including Madwoman, which won the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the poetry category. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smadar Lavie</span> Israeli anthropologist

Smadar Lavie is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California Davis, and a Mizrahi anthropologist, author, and activist. She specializes in the anthropology of Egypt, Israel and Palestine, emphasizing issues of race, gender and religion. She received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (1989).

Dr. Regina Bendix is a professor of European ethnology at the University of Göttingen, Germany.

Brackette F. Williams is an American anthropologist, and Senior Justice Advocate, Open Society Institute. She is currently an associate professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Arizona.

The 2010 Kingston unrest, dubbed locally the Tivoli Incursion, was an armed conflict between Jamaica's military and police forces in the country's capital Kingston, and the Shower Posse drug cartel. The conflict began on 23 May 2010 as security forces began searching for Christopher "Dudus" Coke, a major drug lord, after the United States requested his extradition, and the leader of the criminal gang that attacked several police stations. The violence, which largely took place over 24–25 May, killed at least 73 civilians and wounded at least 35 others. Four soldiers and police were also killed and more than 500 arrests were made, as Jamaican police and soldiers fought gunmen in the Tivoli Gardens district of Kingston.

Tivoli Gardens is a neighbourhood in Kingston, Jamaica. Developed as a renewal project between 1963 and 1965, the neighbourhood continued to suffer from poverty. By the late twentieth century it had become a center of drug trafficking activity and social unrest. Repeated confrontations took place between law enforcement and gunmen in the neighbourhood in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2008, and 2010.

Katya Gibel Mevorach is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at Grinnell College. Under the name Katya Gibel Azoulay, she is author of an explication and theory of identities, Black, Jewish and Interracial: It's Not the Color of Your Skin but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kristen Ghodsee</span> American ethnographer and professor

Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee is an American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is primarily known for her ethnographic work on post-Communist Bulgaria as well as being a contributor to the field of postsocialist gender studies. She was critical of the role of Western feminist nongovernmental organizations doing work among East European women in the 1990s. She has also examined the shifting gender relations of Muslim minorities after Communist rule, the intersections of Islamic beliefs and practices with the ideological remains of Marxism–Leninism, communist nostalgia, the legacies of Marxist feminism, and the intellectual history of utopianism.

Carolyn Sargent is an American medical anthropologist who is Professor Emerita of Sociocultural Anthropology and of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Sargent was the director of women's studies at Southern Methodist University from 2000-2008. Sargent served as president of the Society for Medical Anthropology for 2008-2010 and 2011-2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce White</span> American archaeologist

Joyce C. White is an American archaeologist, an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and executive director of the new Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. Her research primarily concerns decades-long multidisciplinary archaeological investigations in Thailand and Laos covering the prehistoric human occupation of the middle reaches of the Mekong River Basin. She is considered the world's leading expert on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ban Chiang, Thailand, and directs an archaeological fieldwork program in the Luang Prabang Province of Laos. She has become a strong advocate of cultural heritage preservation and has served as an expert witness in an antiquities trafficking case for the U.S. Department of Justice.

John L. Jackson Jr. is an American anthropologist, filmmaker, author, and university administrator. He is currently the Provost and the Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and was previously Dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice and Special Adviser to the Provost on Diversity at Penn. Jackson earned his BA from Howard University and his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. He served as a junior fellow at the Harvard University Society of Fellows before joining the Cultural Anthropology faculty at Duke University.

Augusta Lynn Bolles is an American anthropologist, professor Emerita of women's studies and affiliate faculty in anthropology, African American studies, American studies, comparative literature and the Latin American studies center at the University of Maryland, and co-chair of The Cottagers' African American Cultural Festival.

Maxine Kamari Clarke is a Canadian-American scholar with family roots in Jamaica. As of 2020, she is a distinguished professor at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. In 2021, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

Lynn Meskell is an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist who currently works as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

References

  1. ↑ "Editorial Board". Archived from the original on March 27, 2020. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  2. ↑ "Urban Bush Women | Annenberg Center". annenbergcenter.org. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  3. ↑ "Mission and Core Values". Urban Bush Women. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  4. ↑ "Deborah Thomas | Initiative on Race, Gender and Globalization". irgg.yale.edu. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  5. ↑ Thomas, Deborah A. (2004). Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN   0-8223-3408-9. OCLC   55511491.
  6. 1 2 "Deborah Thomas | Department of Anthropology". www.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Core Faculty | Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies". www.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  8. ↑ "Faculty Directory | Penn GSE". www.gse.upenn.edu. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  9. ↑ Henriques, Julian (2011). Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. London: Bloomsbury. pp. xxiv. ISBN   9781441149343.
  10. ↑ Yale University, Whitney Humanities Center (February 12, 2019). ""Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Affect, Witnessing, Repair" | Whitney Humanities Center". whc.yale.edu. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  11. ↑ Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Amsterdam) (November 9, 2018). "NALACS | Reggae Vibrations Film: Four Days in May: Kingston 2010". NALACS. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  12. ↑ "Deborah A. Thomas". IMDb. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  13. ↑ "Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens – Available from TWN". www.twn.org. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  14. ↑ Astacio, Patricia Alvarez (September 3, 2013). "Screening Room: Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens". Society for Cultural Anthropology. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  15. ↑ "FOUR DAYS IN MAY". TIVOLI STORIES. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  16. 1 2 Thomas, Deborah A. (January 2, 2020). "Making Four Days in May". Interventions. 22 (1): 93–105. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659157. ISSN   1369-801X. S2CID   204350553.
  17. ↑ Downtown State College (September 19, 2018). "Four Days in May Screening and Q&A session with Deborah Thomas, Penn State University". Downtown State College Improvement District. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  18. ↑ Penn State News (September 4, 2018). "Sawyer Seminar Series to host free screening of 'Four Days in May' on Sept. 19 | Penn State University". news.psu.edu. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  19. ↑ "DIRECTOR". centerforexperimentalethnography. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  20. ↑ "About the Center for Experimental Ethnography @UPENN". centerforexperimentalethnography. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  21. ↑ "Bearing Witness". TIVOLI STORIES. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  22. 1 2 "Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston – Penn Museum 2017-2018 Annual Report". www.penn.museum. Retrieved March 27, 2020.
  23. ↑ "TIVOLI STORIES". TIVOLI STORIES. Retrieved February 27, 2023.
  24. ↑ Thomas, Deborah A. (February 7, 2020). "Fathers of Empire". Public Books. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  25. ↑ "2024 New Member List | American Academy of Arts and Sciences". www.amacad.org. Retrieved November 14, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.