Participants

Conerly Casey
Dr. Conerly Casey is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She has research interests in the dynamics of psychocultural and global processes, particularly experiences of political violence and amplifications of memory and emotion through media and social networking. Working with youths and young adults in northern Nigeria and Kuwait, Dr. Casey’s current research evaluates the vital affects of mediated violence and violent sensoria, such as the sights, sounds, and movements of war, on memory and emotion. Dr. Casey has written about a range of subjects, most recently, traumatic memory, traumatic expressions via art and aesthetics, sensory politics and armed conflict, and affective forms of justice. Her most recent publications include: 2014 Remembering and ill health in post-invasion Kuwait: Topographies, collaborations, mediations. In Genocide and Mass Violence: Memory, Symptom and Recovery, Devon Emerson Hinton and Alexander Laban Hinton, Eds., pp. 83-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2014 The art of suffering: Postcolonial (mis) apprehensions of Nigerian art. In Suffering, Art and Aesthetics, Ratiba Hadj-Moussa and Michael Nijhawan, Eds., New York: Palgrave Macmillan; and 2014 “States of emergency”: Armed youths and mediations of Islam in northern Nigeria. Journal of International and Global Studies 5(2): 1-18.
Dr. Conerly Casey is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She has research interests in the dynamics of psychocultural and global processes, particularly experiences of political violence and amplifications of memory and emotion through media and social networking. Working with youths and young adults in northern Nigeria and Kuwait, Dr. Casey’s current research evaluates the vital affects of mediated violence and violent sensoria, such as the sights, sounds, and movements of war, on memory and emotion. Dr. Casey has written about a range of subjects, most recently, traumatic memory, traumatic expressions via art and aesthetics, sensory politics and armed conflict, and affective forms of justice. Her most recent publications include: 2014 Remembering and ill health in post-invasion Kuwait: Topographies, collaborations, mediations. In Genocide and Mass Violence: Memory, Symptom and Recovery, Devon Emerson Hinton and Alexander Laban Hinton, Eds., pp. 83-104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2014 The art of suffering: Postcolonial (mis) apprehensions of Nigerian art. In Suffering, Art and Aesthetics, Ratiba Hadj-Moussa and Michael Nijhawan, Eds., New York: Palgrave Macmillan; and 2014 “States of emergency”: Armed youths and mediations of Islam in northern Nigeria. Journal of International and Global Studies 5(2): 1-18.

Katherine Pratt Ewing
Katherine Pratt Ewing is Professor of Religion and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Sexuality at Columbia University. She is also Professor Emerita of Cultural Anthropology and Religion at Duke University. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan, Turkey, and India, and among Muslims in Germany, The Netherlands, and the United States. Her research has focused on debates among Muslims about the proper practice of Islam in the modern world, the place of Muslims within the German national imaginary, and sexualities, gender, and the body in South Asia. She is working on a series of papers that examine how Muslims are reworking concepts such as “culture,” “Jahiliyya (state of ignorance),” and “honor” as they negotiate identity, belonging, and the practice of Islam in diasporic settings. She is also writing a book on the politics of sex change surgery within India’s middle class. Recent articles include “Naming our sexualities: Secular Constraints, Muslim Freedoms” (Focaal 2011) and “From German Bus Stop to Academy Award Nomination: The Honor Killing as Simulacrum” (2013). Her previous books include Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (1997), Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin (2008), and the edited volumes Shariat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam (1988) and Being and Belonging: Muslim Communities in the US since 9/11 (2008).
Katherine Pratt Ewing is Professor of Religion and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Sexuality at Columbia University. She is also Professor Emerita of Cultural Anthropology and Religion at Duke University. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan, Turkey, and India, and among Muslims in Germany, The Netherlands, and the United States. Her research has focused on debates among Muslims about the proper practice of Islam in the modern world, the place of Muslims within the German national imaginary, and sexualities, gender, and the body in South Asia. She is working on a series of papers that examine how Muslims are reworking concepts such as “culture,” “Jahiliyya (state of ignorance),” and “honor” as they negotiate identity, belonging, and the practice of Islam in diasporic settings. She is also writing a book on the politics of sex change surgery within India’s middle class. Recent articles include “Naming our sexualities: Secular Constraints, Muslim Freedoms” (Focaal 2011) and “From German Bus Stop to Academy Award Nomination: The Honor Killing as Simulacrum” (2013). Her previous books include Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (1997), Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin (2008), and the edited volumes Shariat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam (1988) and Being and Belonging: Muslim Communities in the US since 9/11 (2008).

Jack R. Friedman
Jack R. Friedman, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Friedman researches communities under stress (political economic and ecological/climatological) and mental health care in Romania and the United States (recently focusing on Native American populations in California and Oklahoma). He currently is part of Oklahoma’s 2013-2018 NSF-funded EPSCoR research (“Adapting Socio-ecological Systems to Climate Variability”) and is Co-Primary Investigator on projects examining mental health care in rural Oklahoma and Native American experiences of cancer and cancer treatment. His published work focuses on post-state socialism, political economy, experiences of downward mobility, experiences of mental illness, and mental health services research in both Romania and the United States.
Jack R. Friedman, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Friedman researches communities under stress (political economic and ecological/climatological) and mental health care in Romania and the United States (recently focusing on Native American populations in California and Oklahoma). He currently is part of Oklahoma’s 2013-2018 NSF-funded EPSCoR research (“Adapting Socio-ecological Systems to Climate Variability”) and is Co-Primary Investigator on projects examining mental health care in rural Oklahoma and Native American experiences of cancer and cancer treatment. His published work focuses on post-state socialism, political economy, experiences of downward mobility, experiences of mental illness, and mental health services research in both Romania and the United States.

Yehuda Goodman
Dr. Yehuda Goodman is a senior lecturer in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His central interest lies in the ways identities are formed, manufactured, and negotiated in the contexts of social and political contestations. He explores, in particular, how the pragmatics of identity politics and their entailed moralities constitute various forms of cultural criticisms – which he examines within various fields in Israel, including therapeutic settings, religious conversions, schools, and the army. Before turning to anthropology in his PhD studies at the Heb U, he studied Jewish philosophy (BA & MA from the Heb U and graduate studies at Harvard), and clinical psychology (MA at the Heb U). Later, he was a post-doc and a visiting scholar at Haifa U, UC Berkeley, and MIT. Together with Yossi Yonah he is the editor of Maelstrom of Identities: A Critical Look at Religion and Secularity in Israel (2004; Hebrew), and he is the author of The Exile of the Broken Vessels: Haredim in the Shadow of Madness (won the Bahat Prize for best book manuscript in Hebrew 2013). Among the journals in which he has published, he has contributed to American Ethnologist, Transcultural Psychiatry, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Social Science and Medicine, Sociology of Religion, Anthropological Quarterly, Medical Anthropology Quarterly and Ethos (an article, co-authored with Yoram Bilu, on using facilitated communication with autistic children won the Society of Psychological Anthropology’s Sterling Prize).
Dr. Yehuda Goodman is a senior lecturer in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His central interest lies in the ways identities are formed, manufactured, and negotiated in the contexts of social and political contestations. He explores, in particular, how the pragmatics of identity politics and their entailed moralities constitute various forms of cultural criticisms – which he examines within various fields in Israel, including therapeutic settings, religious conversions, schools, and the army. Before turning to anthropology in his PhD studies at the Heb U, he studied Jewish philosophy (BA & MA from the Heb U and graduate studies at Harvard), and clinical psychology (MA at the Heb U). Later, he was a post-doc and a visiting scholar at Haifa U, UC Berkeley, and MIT. Together with Yossi Yonah he is the editor of Maelstrom of Identities: A Critical Look at Religion and Secularity in Israel (2004; Hebrew), and he is the author of The Exile of the Broken Vessels: Haredim in the Shadow of Madness (won the Bahat Prize for best book manuscript in Hebrew 2013). Among the journals in which he has published, he has contributed to American Ethnologist, Transcultural Psychiatry, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Social Science and Medicine, Sociology of Religion, Anthropological Quarterly, Medical Anthropology Quarterly and Ethos (an article, co-authored with Yoram Bilu, on using facilitated communication with autistic children won the Society of Psychological Anthropology’s Sterling Prize).

Peter Hervik
Peter Hervik holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Copenhagen, and is currently Professor at the Centre for the Study of Migration and Diversity (CoMID) at Aalborg University, Denmark. Hervik has conducted research among the Yucatec Maya of Mexico and in Denmark on issues of identity, categorization, populism, neoracism, neonationalism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, tolerance, and the news media. His books include Mayan Lives Within and Beyond Boundaries. Social Categories and Lived Identity in Yucatan, (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999, Routledge, 2001); The Annoying Difference. The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books; and The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Conflict. Current Themes in IMER Research 13, Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University (2012). Recent articles include “Erostratus Unbound: Norway’s 22/7 Converging Frames of War.” (with Susi Meret) and “Danish Media Coverage of 22/7” (with Sophie Boisen), both in the Nordic Journal for Migration Research Vol 3, Issue 4, and “Ending Tolerance as a Solution to Incompatibility: The Danish ‘Crisis of Multiculturalism.’” European Journal of Cultural Studies 15(2):211-225. “Cultural War of Values: The Proliferation of Moral Identities in the Danish Public Sphere.” In Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities in Europe and India, Tripathy, Jyotirmaya and Sudarsan Padmanabhan (eds.), pp. 154-173. New Delhi: Sage Publications, India.
Peter Hervik holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Copenhagen, and is currently Professor at the Centre for the Study of Migration and Diversity (CoMID) at Aalborg University, Denmark. Hervik has conducted research among the Yucatec Maya of Mexico and in Denmark on issues of identity, categorization, populism, neoracism, neonationalism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, tolerance, and the news media. His books include Mayan Lives Within and Beyond Boundaries. Social Categories and Lived Identity in Yucatan, (Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999, Routledge, 2001); The Annoying Difference. The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books; and The Danish Muhammad Cartoon Conflict. Current Themes in IMER Research 13, Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University (2012). Recent articles include “Erostratus Unbound: Norway’s 22/7 Converging Frames of War.” (with Susi Meret) and “Danish Media Coverage of 22/7” (with Sophie Boisen), both in the Nordic Journal for Migration Research Vol 3, Issue 4, and “Ending Tolerance as a Solution to Incompatibility: The Danish ‘Crisis of Multiculturalism.’” European Journal of Cultural Studies 15(2):211-225. “Cultural War of Values: The Proliferation of Moral Identities in the Danish Public Sphere.” In Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities in Europe and India, Tripathy, Jyotirmaya and Sudarsan Padmanabhan (eds.), pp. 154-173. New Delhi: Sage Publications, India.

Dorothy Holland
Dorothy Holland, Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a sociocultural anthropologist with a long history of field research in several countries including the US. Currently Director of the Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research, former Chair of the department and past President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, she has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles including Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (Harvard), Local Democracy Under Siege (New York University Press), Educated in Romance (University of Chicago Press), and Cultural Models in Language and Thought (Cambridge), and the co-edited History in Person (School of American Research). A long time student of identity, social movements and activism, she is also interested in anthropological research and theory relevant to communities’ responses to politically intense challenges such as race-related inequality, economic dislocation, and environmental destruction.
Dorothy Holland, Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a sociocultural anthropologist with a long history of field research in several countries including the US. Currently Director of the Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research, former Chair of the department and past President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, she has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles including Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (Harvard), Local Democracy Under Siege (New York University Press), Educated in Romance (University of Chicago Press), and Cultural Models in Language and Thought (Cambridge), and the co-edited History in Person (School of American Research). A long time student of identity, social movements and activism, she is also interested in anthropological research and theory relevant to communities’ responses to politically intense challenges such as race-related inequality, economic dislocation, and environmental destruction.

Charles Price
Charles Price is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Charles's research, writing, and activity focus on Black identity, Rastafari identity, life narrative genres, action research, community organizations and community organizing, people-centered community development, and social movements, with a geographic concentration on the United States and Jamaica. Charles authored the book Becoming Rasta: The Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica (2009, New York University Press), co-authored the monograph Community Collaborations: Promoting Community Organizing (2009, Ford Foundation), and is under contract with NYU Press to write a sequel to Becoming Rasta. Charles is writing a book on collective identity formation and ethnogenesis among the Rastafari people of Jamaica. He is seeking to develop a historically-grounded qualitative approach to collective identity formation.
Charles Price is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Charles's research, writing, and activity focus on Black identity, Rastafari identity, life narrative genres, action research, community organizations and community organizing, people-centered community development, and social movements, with a geographic concentration on the United States and Jamaica. Charles authored the book Becoming Rasta: The Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica (2009, New York University Press), co-authored the monograph Community Collaborations: Promoting Community Organizing (2009, Ford Foundation), and is under contract with NYU Press to write a sequel to Becoming Rasta. Charles is writing a book on collective identity formation and ethnogenesis among the Rastafari people of Jamaica. He is seeking to develop a historically-grounded qualitative approach to collective identity formation.

Claudia Strauss
Claudia Strauss, Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College, is a cognitive anthropologist and discourse analyst who studies the way ordinary Americans talk and think about the distribution of economic rewards, government social welfare programs, immigration policy, and foreign policy. Currently she is studying the life stories and political-economic outlooks of Southern Californians who were looking for work in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Her most recent book is Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs (2012).
Claudia Strauss, Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College, is a cognitive anthropologist and discourse analyst who studies the way ordinary Americans talk and think about the distribution of economic rewards, government social welfare programs, immigration policy, and foreign policy. Currently she is studying the life stories and political-economic outlooks of Southern Californians who were looking for work in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Her most recent book is Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs (2012).

William H. Westermeyer
Bill Westermeyer is completing his doctorate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is also Instructor of Sociology and Anthropology at High Point University. Bill’s dissertation research was conducted with eight local-level Tea Party chapters in the Piedmont region of North Carolina in 2010 and 2011. The dissertation argues that local-level Tea Party groups are key sites where Tea Partyists fashion powerful identities as activists who in turn have pronounced effect on the local and regional political terrain. His research is motivated by 13 years as a political campaign consultant and organizer prior to entering graduate school. Organizing and working on grassroots campaigns for ballot initiatives and candidates raised important questions regarding how everyday political actors arrive at political decisions – questions best answered through the engagement made possible by ethnographic research. His academic interests include social movements, American political culture, identity and agency and right-wing activism.
Bill Westermeyer is completing his doctorate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is also Instructor of Sociology and Anthropology at High Point University. Bill’s dissertation research was conducted with eight local-level Tea Party chapters in the Piedmont region of North Carolina in 2010 and 2011. The dissertation argues that local-level Tea Party groups are key sites where Tea Partyists fashion powerful identities as activists who in turn have pronounced effect on the local and regional political terrain. His research is motivated by 13 years as a political campaign consultant and organizer prior to entering graduate school. Organizing and working on grassroots campaigns for ballot initiatives and candidates raised important questions regarding how everyday political actors arrive at political decisions – questions best answered through the engagement made possible by ethnographic research. His academic interests include social movements, American political culture, identity and agency and right-wing activism.