Lisa Maya Knauer

faculty

Lisa Maya Knauer, PhD

Associate Professor / Chairperson

Sociology / Anthropology

Contact

508-999-8405

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Liberal Arts 392G

Teaching

Programs

Teaching

Courses

An exploration of the manifold interactions between human populations, cultures, and the environment from varied disciplinary perspectives including environmental anthropology, cultural ecology, and feminist and indigenous scholarship. Topics include: the racialized and gendered nature of population policy and debates, struggles over reproductive justice, challenges to our food systems, the relationship between human consumption and sustainability, and environmental activism.

An exploration of the social, cultural, and political dynamics of transnational migration which takes the U.S. as a case study. Specific questions include: why people leave their homes; how they establish new ways of life, identities, and communities; and what kinds of challenges they face along the way. We will also examine the impact immigration has had on U.S. society and develop a critical understanding of current controversies and policy debates around immigration in the U.S. This course is an upper-level elective for majors and open to non-majors.

Research project under independent faculty supervision, by permission. May be taken in sequence with 493 over 2 semesters for a total of 6 credits.

Investigation of special areas in Sustainable Studies. May be repeated with change of content.

Teaching

Online and Continuing Education Courses

Exploration of how understandings of the past are shaped by present-day politics. Students investigate how collective memories are represented and contested in public spaces such as memorials, museums and schools while honing research and writing skills. Why do we celebrate some aspects of a nation's past, while ignoring or suppressing others? Case studies include controversial events from around the world.
Register for this course.

Dr. Knauer’s teaching, scholarship and community service are closely linked. They are rooted in her passion for social justice and the idea that anthropology – the study of human culture and difference -- can provide tools to understand, engage with and help foster change in a transforming world.

Dr. Knauer’s dissertation on Afrocuban music and religion in Cuba and New York explored the intersection of racialized identities and transnational cultural flows. An active participant in the NYC Afrocuban scene since the mid-1990s, her current work looks at cultural performance, the politics of representation and the role of digital media. In 2007, following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a factory in New Bedford, she began to work with and study the local Central American community, and helped found an immigrant workers’ center and a Mayan women’s organization. She spent 2011 in Guatemala as a Fulbright scholar, and her current research looks at the representation and self-representation of Mayan women, focusing on community radio. Additional areas of interest include public history and the politics of memory; and the gendered dynamics of genocide, violence and migration.

She believes the best way to learn anthropology is by doing anthropology, and to read what anthropologists write (rather than textbooks) and so students in all her classes conduct original ethnographic fieldwork, and read classic and cutting edge anthropological studies. .

A committed interdisciplinary scholar, she is a affiliate of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Program, the Black Studies Program, and Sustainability Studies.