Emory University | Department of Anthropology | Areas of Specialization

Race and Racism

Among anthropology’s most important and enduring contributions to academic and popular culture is the field’s analysis of race. Anthropologists have long been at the forefront of forging a critical understanding of this contentious concept, one that understands race as historically contingent, culturally inflected and socially constructed. Emory faculty are concerned with a broad range of forces—cultural and biological—that contribute to distinctive formations and experiences of race and racism. These range from population movements to political economy, from gene frequencies to constructions of gender, from nationalism to religion.

The anthropology faculty at Emory has conducted research on race in a range of world areas—from Africa to Latin America and the Caribbean, from the US to Southeast Asia, from the South Pacific to the Far East. In addition to being concerned with manifestations of race that are distinctive to particular regions, our research is also sensitive to the relationships between area-specific patterns and the transnational dimensions of race and racism.

The core members of the Race and Racism area of specialization are George Armelagos, Carla Freeman, Bruce Knauft, Peter Little, David Nugent, Chikako Ozawa-de Silva and Michael Peletz.

Intellectual communities and academic units outside anthropology that intersect with the Race and Racism area of specialization include: the Departments of African-American Studies, History, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Women’s Studies, and Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures; the Institute of African Studies, and the Institute of the Liberal Arts; the Programs of East Asian Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and South Asian Studies; the Center for Russian and East European Studies; and the Interdisciplinary Workshop in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.

Faculty in other programs include: