CENTER  FOR  EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY

Hyper-Fictions/Hyper-Realism | 2021-2022 theme

WHO WE ARE

DIRECTOR

Deborah A. Thomas is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also core faculty in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, holds a secondary appointment with the Graduate School of Education, and is a member of the graduate groups in English, Africana Studies, Comparative Literature, and the School of Social Policy and Practice.  Thomas is the author of ​Modern Blackness:  Nationalism, Globalization and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (2004), Exceptional Violence:  Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (2011), and Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, and Repair (2019),  and co-editor of the volume Globalization and Race:  Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness (2006). She also co-produced and co-directed the experimental documentary Four Days in May, co-curated the Bearing Witness Exhibit and co-directed the documentary Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens. Prior to her life as an academic, she was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women.  

CONTACT: deborah.thomas@sas.upenn.edu