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.

This Black History Month, we invite you to read Hurston not only for who she was, but for what her work still makes possible.

#TransformingAnthropology #ZoraNealeHurston #BlackHistoryMonth

In our newest issue of Transforming Anthropology, Dr. Pyar Seth’s article, “A Wayward Method: Zora Neale Hurston’s Critical Fabulation,” offers a powerful reading of Hurston’s enduring influence on how Black life is studied, written, and imagined.

Across ethnography, folklore, and fiction, Hurston insisted on Black sociality as full, generative, and intellectually rich. Her work collapsed the distance between observer and observed, transforming fieldwork into relationship, narrative, and care.

As we open Black History Month, we honor Zora Neale Hurston—an anthropologist who refused to treat Black life as a problem, an absence, or an object to be explained.

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

Happy Friday! Head into the weekend with this wonderful review of Erin L. Durban's _The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti_ written by Nessette Falu. In this review, Falu details Durban's contributions to the fields of anthropology, Black queer studies and Caribbean studies.

A Wayward Method: Zora Neale Hurston’s Critical Fabulation | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2 Abstract Zora Neale Hurston looked for angularity in everyday life, where some cast her as nothing more than a liar. Despite the criticism, she continued on a path toward what she viewed as a…

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

In response to recent calls to "let anthropology burn," Seth's article makes the case for a move towards the "fictionalizing" of anthropology, a mode of methodological creativity in the face of objectivity's limitations and the institutional encroachment on black life and knowledge production.

In our current issue, Pyar Seth examines the ethnographic work of Zora Neale Hurston through the lens of Saidiya Hartman's "critical fabulation," arguing that Hurston's commitment to reframing Black sociality establishes her as a progenitor of this intellectual tradition.

Experiments with Power: Obeah and the Remaking of Religion in Trinidad. J. Brent Crosson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 328 pp. (Paper US$32.00; Cloth US$97.00; E-Book US$31.99) Obeah, O...

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

The review essay by Gabrielle Mahabeer in our current issue brings together three recent works on Obeah and Orisa in Trinidad and Tobago. Mahabeer synthesizes the “distinct temporalities and traditions” in each text to “provide a syllabus of Africana-world-making technologies."

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Our special issue offers readers an opportunity to honor our Black intellectual elders and ancestors, especially those who have been historically under-recognized in anthropology.

Read about Eslanda Goode Robeson and her anthropological praxis in our current issue!

“Feather-Bed Resistance” and Racial Vindication in Eslanda Goode Robeson’s African Journey | Transforming Anthropology: Vol 33, No 2 Abstract Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895–1965) is relatively absent from discussions of Black women in anthropology. Though an American, she studied at the London School of Economics with Bronisław Malino...

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

Drawing on Zora Neale Hurston’s concept of “feather-bed resistance,” Williams shows how Robeson “both engaged and disengaged with anthropology’s representational power” to advance her political goals for Black liberation and dignity.

In our current issue, Nala K. Williams highlights the work of Black feminist anthropologist Eslanda Goode Robeson, showing how Robeson’s African Journey offered a critical counternarrative to notions of African inferiority and insisted on the unity of Black peoples globally.

Read the full intro here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

In assembling this issue, co-editor-in-chiefs, Ryan Jobson and Christen Smith, demonstrate that the archives of Black anthropology are not a “stable repository” but are actively reworked and engaged through forms of “wake work,” reclamation, familial practice, and translation.

Our special issue, “Archives of Black Anthropology,” invites our readers to engage in intergenerational dialogue with our intellectual elders and to reflect on a tradition of Black anthropologists “appropriat[ing] anthropological methods in pursuit of Black liberation.”

Happy Holidays from the team at Transforming Anthropology! We hope this season is filled with peace, love and rest for you all!

Transforming Anthropology is looking for interns with a passion for Black anthropology to join our Social Media Team! Apply by January 19th using the Google Form linked in our bio.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Alejandro Cerón traces 15 years of Guatemalan Indigenous and Mestizo communities demanding answers about water contamination and illness. The obscure responses they received from agribusinesses make clear whose health is valued, and whose is rendered invisible. #ABAxTA_NOLA

Erin Mellett’s work reveals how “healthcare that prioritizes efficiency over accessibility puts deaf immigrants at risk—through misdiagnoses, incorrect medications, and life-threatening language barriers.” #ABAxTA_NOLA

“Ghosted: Race, Health & the Haunting of Medical Systems” traced the spectral dimensions of health inequity—how Black and Indigenous communities are erased in data, neglected in care, and rendered invisible by the very systems meant to protect them. #ABAxTA_NOLA