Join us this Women’s History Month on March 23 (12-1 pm ET) for a lunch and learn honoring and engaging with the archives and scholarship of Black feminist anthropologists Zora Neale Hurston and Eslanda Goode Robeson!  Register here: bit.ly/TABFAMarch23

In our current issue, we uplift and celebrate the legacy and scholarship of Marlene Cunha, a pathfinding Black Brazilian anthropologist and activist whose work has often been under-recognized in the Brazilian academy and in anglophone North American anthropology.

Only a few days after João Alípio Cunha’s birth, his mother, the pathfinding Black Brazilian anthropologist and activist Marlene Cunha, passed away. Marlene Cunha’s archive was safeguarded by Marlene’s mother in a closet until João was ready to share his mother’s legacy.

In “The Terreiro as an Ethnic Expression,” Black Brazilian anthropologist and activist Marlene Cunha examines the history and culture of African-Brazilian religious houses (also called terreiros do candomblé) in Brazil’s modern urban cities.

Our special issue honors Black intellectual elders whose work has shaped the field. Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012) was an anthropologist and historian that spent his life committed to the study of the Caribbean and its place in modernity.

Our current issue contains a brilliant reflection by Alyssa A.L James on Trouillot's line about the "strange sweetness about commodities." For James, the estranged commodity is not just historically produced but affectively and spatially "remade, negotiated, and contested."

Happy Sunday! Don't miss this thoughtful commentary by Alyssa Paredes, where she reflects on the divergent visions of an "anthropology of commodities" from Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Arjun Appadurai.

The team at Transforming Anthropology is devastated to learn of the passing of A. Lynn Bolles. Dr. Bolles was a groundbreaking anthropologist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland.

For our special issue we are honored to feature Michel-Rolph Trouillot's previously unpublished manuscript "Banana Wars: The Sweetness of Commodities," edited by Ryan Cecil Jobson.

Dr. Prisca Gayles explores how Medeiros & Perry’s "Black Women in Latin America and the Caribbean" disrupts epistemic erasure and centers Black women as "bearers of knowledge." A must-read for anyone looking to globalize Black studies. 📚

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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!

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.

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!

“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

Recap of a roundtable on “The Anthropology of White Supremacy,” Studio 10 📍 #ABAxTA_NOLA

At “Shadows: Addressing Our Past, Reconciling the Present within the African Diaspora”, Dr. Fairweather and Dr. Escalada Invite us to think about how our youth are being taught the shared histories of people affected by chattel slavery in America and within the African Diaspora.

Courtney D. Morris on the petrochemical industry, “I felt an urgency to document and create a counter archive of the Black and Indigenous communities in Mossville…I photographed self portraits and the seemingly empty sites that had been demolished to make the unseeable seen.” #ABAxTA_NOLA

Happening now in Salon E, Habitable Air: Urban Inequality in the Time of Client change #ABAxTA_NOLA

Kicking off our ABAxTA session spotlights, we’re reporting live from the roundtable on “Fugitive Anthropology: Embodying Activist Research” #ABAxTA_NOLA

Our latest issue on the “Archives of Black Anthropology” is now available online! We are thrilled to share this special issue and to invite our readers to engage in dialogue with our intellectual ancestors and meditate on an archive that crosses borders, languages, and histories.

TA and the @assocofblackanthro.bsky.social are collaborating again on AAA coverage this year! Follow the hashtag #ABAxTA_NOLA to tag us in photos, follow online discussions, and connect with fellow attendees! We can’t wait to see you in New Orleans! @americananthro.bsky.social

@ujju.bsky.social's recent ethnography, Unsettling Choice, critically contextualizes school choice policy in the Manhattan Valley within the broader context of neoliberalism and the discourse of education as a public good.

In our current issue, Maya Stovall Dumas and Alex B. Hill argue that white supremacy should be 𝘵𝘩𝘦 anthropological subject of study, offering five white supremacist principles theorized through the context of Detroit.

Interested in expanding your understanding of sovereignty through the lens of affect? Read Alexandra Sánchez Rolón's review of Sovereignty Unhinged, a critical volume edited by Deborah Thomas and Joseph Masco that centralizes affect in the analysis and disruption of sovereignty’s current condition.

In her article “Gendered Disaster Recovery: Radical Care Work in New York City after Hurricane María,” Lisa Figueroa Jahn centers the stories and experiences of the working-class Latina disaster case managers who supported displaced Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane María.

For scholars with an interest in Black resistance movements, critical ethnographies and Black geographies, Damien M. Sojoyner's Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums will be of interest to you!

For fans of Tyler the Creator and Frank Ocean, this is for you! In his essay in our latest issue, Jeff Gu mines the politics of coming out, public performance, and black queer masculinity in a comparative analysis of the discographies and personas of both artists.

Scholars and students working in and beyond anthropology will find Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West by Karla Slocum an important contribution to the literature on Black placemaking and rurality.

In our current issue, Kessie Alexandre follows the stewards of community gardens and urban green spaces in Newark, challenging reductive narratives that position Black people as solely alienated or traumatized by nature and land as a result of slavery and its afterlives.

Our first issue under the editorial leadership of Christen A. Smith and Ryan Cecil Jobson begins with a letter to our readers marking a new chapter for the journal and grappling with the “struggle for liberation” that is the “very foundation of Black anthropology.”

Check out the lineup of articles and book reviews in our current issue! Which are you reading first? Read the full issue here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/tra/curr...

Our spring issue is out! The issue, the first under the new editorial leadership of Christen Smith and Ryan Cecil Jobson, features beautiful cover art by Madjeen Isaac and articles on Black geographies, queer Black hip-hop discographies, and state violence and “witch talk” in the DR.

The spring issue of @transformanthro.bsky.social —and debut issue with my coeditor Christen Smith—is out! Read for articles on Black geographies, state violence in Haiti/Quisqeya, and queer hip hop genealogies. Thanks to Madjeen Isaac for the cover art! www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/tra/2025...