REGISTRATION: Archives and Liberatory Methodologies of Black Feminist Anthropology with Nala K. Williams and Pyar Seth Join us this Women’s History Month for a lunch and learn honoring and engaging with the archives and scholarship of Black feminist anthropologists Zora Neale Hurston and Eslanda Goode Robeson! Drawin...

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Drawing on their respective articles in our current issue, Nala K. Williams and Pyar Seth will be exploring archival research as well as Zora Neale Hurston and Eslanda Goode Robeson’s methodologies, including forms of “feather-bed resistance” and critical fabulation, that have shaped the field.

Join us this Women’s History Month on March 23 (12-1 pm ET) for a lunch and learn honoring and engaging with the archives and scholarship of Black feminist anthropologists Zora Neale Hurston and Eslanda Goode Robeson! 

Register here: bit.ly/TABFAMarch23

Marlene Cunha is widely recognized as one of the godmothers of Black anthropology in Brazil. We encourage you to read about her life and cite her work! You can start by reading a chapter of her thesis and a commentary from Marlene Cunha’s son, João Alípio Cunha, by following the link in our bio!

In our current issue, we uplift and celebrate the legacy and scholarship of Marlene Cunha, a pathfinding Black Brazilian anthropologist and activist whose work has often been under-recognized in the Brazilian academy and in anglophone North American anthropology.

Marlene Cunha: Black Woman, Activist, Anthropologist | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2

We are honored to publish a chapter from Marlene's thesis and to have a commentary from João in our current issue. Following João, we hope to make Marlene's activism and intellectual contributions visible to Brazilian society and to the larger anglophone anthropological academy.

In 2016, after entering the social anthropology graduate program at the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, João began to visit Marlene’s closet and write articles about her life and work. In 2022, João published Marlene Cunha’s master’s thesis as a book.

Only a few days after João Alípio Cunha’s birth, his mother, the pathfinding Black Brazilian anthropologist and activist Marlene Cunha, passed away. Marlene Cunha’s archive was safeguarded by Marlene’s mother in a closet until João was ready to share his mother’s legacy.

“The Terreiro as an Ethnic Expression” | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2 Abstract This essay examines the history and culture of African-Brazilian religious houses (also called terreiros do candomblé) in Brazil’s modern urban cities. It was first published as chapter 3 of…

The essay, translated for the first time into English by Christen A. Smith, was initially a chapter of Cunha’s master’s thesis, which was recently published for her posthumously as a book in 2022 by her son, João Alípio Cunha.
Read the full essay by following the link in our bio!

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In “The Terreiro as an Ethnic Expression,” Black Brazilian anthropologist and activist Marlene Cunha examines the history and culture of African-Brazilian religious houses (also called terreiros do candomblé) in Brazil’s modern urban cities.

You can read Trouillot's previously unpublished manuscript and commentaries on this essay from Alyssa Paredes and Alyssa A.L James by visiting the link in our bio!

Our special issue honors Black intellectual elders whose work has shaped the field. Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012) was an anthropologist and historian that spent his life committed to the study of the Caribbean and its place in modernity.

The Commodity Strange: Trouillot, Coffee, and the Edges of Capital | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2

Read the full article here! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Our current issue contains a brilliant reflection by Alyssa A.L James on Trouillot's line about the "strange sweetness about commodities." For James, the estranged commodity is not just historically produced but affectively and spatially "remade, negotiated, and contested."

Trajectories in the Anthropology of Commodities | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2

Read the full essay here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Happy Sunday! Don't miss this thoughtful commentary by Alyssa Paredes, where she reflects on the divergent visions of an "anthropology of commodities" from Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Arjun Appadurai.

As Dr. Bolles joins the ancestors, we are grateful that her legacy and rich archive will remain for generations to come. 🤍

Elsewhere, her writings on citation and erasure have profoundly shaped our discipline and generations of Black feminist anthropologists. Dr. Bolles was an intellectual giant, a generous mentor, a dear friend, and her passing is a great loss to the TA and ABA community.

Her scholarship on Caribbean women and organized labor is reflected in her books, Sister Jamaica: A Study of Women, Work and Households in Kingston, We Paid Our Dues: Women Trade Union Leaders of the Caribbean, and Women and Tourist Work in Jamaica: Seven Miles of Sandy Beach.

The team at Transforming Anthropology is devastated to learn of the passing of A. Lynn Bolles.

Dr. Bolles was a groundbreaking anthropologist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland.

Banana Wars: The Sweetness of Commodities (1992) | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2 Abstract Michel-Rolph Trouillot delivered this paper as part of a session entitled “Histories of Commodification: Papers in Honor of Sidney Mintz” at the 1992 American Anthropological Association…

Delivered in 1992 at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Trouillot calls for an anthropology of commodification that begins with the transformation of things into goods and goods into commodities.

Read the article here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

For our special issue we are honored to feature Michel-Rolph Trouillot's previously unpublished manuscript "Banana Wars: The Sweetness of Commodities," edited by Ryan Cecil Jobson.

Read more in Transforming Anthropology: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

#TransformingAnthropology #BlackFeministPraxis

Dr. Prisca Gayles explores how Medeiros & Perry’s "Black Women in Latin America and the Caribbean" disrupts epistemic erasure and centers Black women as "bearers of knowledge."

A must-read for anyone looking to globalize Black studies. 📚

Read Maya J. Berry’s article in this issue to learn more about Diggs’s life, scholarship, and legacy.

#TransformingAnthropology #IreneDiggs

Our special issue honors Black intellectual elders whose work has been under-recognized in anthropology. Ellen Irene Diggs (1906–1998) was a pioneering anthropologist, curator, and educator who challenged biological racism and advanced a global, diasporic framework.

Dr. Berry shows how Diggs utilized her unique position to bridge global north-south divides, challenging an English-only approach to Black thought and insisting that the history of Black people in the U.S. cannot be understood in isolation.

Read the full article by following the link in our bio!

By situating Diggs’s training in Cuba within the complex landscape of 1940s US imperialism, Berry demonstrates how Diggs navigated the "possibilities and perils" of being a Black woman scholar abroad.

Drawing on Diggs’s 1978 charge to the next generation, Berry examines the "bounden duty" of Black anthropologists to create autonomous research spaces while maintaining a commitment to transnational collaboration.

In our current issue, Maya J. Berry highlights the legacy of Black US-American anthropologist Irene Diggs, exploring how her global perspective on Black history shaped her vision for the field.