Faculty and Staff

• Dr. Faye V. Harrison, Program Director
• Ms. Sharon Burney, Office Manager
• Dr. William Conwill
• Dr. William Baber
• Dr. James Davidson
• Dr. Stephanie Evans
• Dr. Faye V. Harrison
• Dr. Marilyn Thomas-Houston
• Adjunct Professors and Affiliate Faculty
• Student Assistants

Dr. Faye Harrison   fayeharr@ufl.edu

Professor, African American Studies and Department of Anthropology

Personal Home Page  http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/fayeharr/

Faye V. Harrison is Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology.  She is a sociocultural anthropologist who specializes in the study of racial, gender, and class inequalities and the politics that emerge in response to them.  She is also interested in the history of ideas, with a particular focus on the scholarly contributions of African Americans and other African diaspora intellectuals.  She has done research in the U.S., the U.K. and the Caribbean. In her current research she is examining African American women activists within a transnational coalition organizing against race- and gender-related human rights violations in both the U.S. South and the Global South.  She is also interested in the human rights implications of poverty and political clientelism in Jamaica, where political violence and an underground economy generate a volatile cycle of crime and punishment.  In this work, she is exploring the everyday experiences of “outlaws” and “sufferers.”

Dr. Harrison’s scholarship has been published widely in books and journals in the U.S., the Netherlands, India, and China. She has edited several books, including Decolonizing Anthropology, African-American Pioneers in Anthropology (with Ira Harrison), and, most recently, Resisting Racism and Xenophobia: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Human Rights.  She is also author of Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology for the Global Age, which will be available by the beginning of 2008.

A past president of the Association of Black Anthropologists, she currently chairs the Commission on the Anthropology of Women, a unit of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.  She also serves as a key advisor for the American Anthropological Association’s “Understanding Race and Human Variability” public education initiative.

Ms. Sharon Burney  sburney@clas.ufl.edu

Office Manager

Ms. Burney was born in Virginia and was raised in Washington D.C. and New York. She is a widely respected community activist and poet in Gainesville. She joined the AASP staff in August 2003 after working three years as the administrative assistant for one of the top children’s neurosurgeons in Florida. She has been instrumental in handling the administrative component of course schedules, the October 2003 Newsletter, research and travel arrangements for faculty and invited guests, and coordinating the student assistants for program and project tasks. In a short time, her organizational and creative skills have considerably contributed to the growth and development of AASP.

Dr. William Conwill   wconwill@ufl.edu

Assistant Professor, African American Studies Program and the Department of Counselor Education

Personal Home Page  http://www.coe.ufl.edu/Counselor/MeetingUs/Conwill.php

William Conwill is committed to working with problems affecting family and community health. Conwill’s approach to theory development and practice reflects his history as a philosopher-turned-psychologist-turned-healer. He uses a semiotic concept of the culture as a context within which complex systems of construable signs can be intelligibly—that is, thickly (Geertz, 1973)—described. As a Counseling Psychologist, he addresses researchers, teachers, providers, and other stakeholders’ perceptions of clinical and educational dilemmas as normal, given their backgrounds, and sets about uncovering the meaning of their observations and scientific attributions.

This theoretical approach, which first surfaced in Conwill’s doctoral work on the normative social science perception of the Black family as unstable, recurred in his study of patients suffering with chronic pain. Conwill directed study on the reactions, referral practices and personal and family backgrounds of surgeons, internists, family practitioners, and other physicians who referred patients to his clinic at the University of Louisville. The findings suggested that the history of chronic pain in the physicians’ own families was a key factor in his or her reaction to the patient, affecting perception of patient credibility as well as the complex decisions about treatment. He recommended a candid assessment of physicians’ emotional reactions as these doctors considered treatment plans for patients suffering with chronic pain.

Conwill is now developing a metadisciplinary ecological model of the intersectionality of gender, race, and class.  He applies this model to theory development, research design, training, policy formation, and evaluation in health services. One of his current projects is an analysis of domestic violence in the Black community, the most cogent health issues facing Black women today. It is Conwill’s hope that future generations of health care providers can use an understanding of how our own and our clients’ and other significant stakeholders’ cultural backgrounds and perception of available resources affect our gendered experiences of the problems and issues we encounter, so that we can work together to solve them more efficaciously.

Geertz, C. 1973 “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Cultures” in C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures. NY: Basic Books.

Dr. William Baber   wbaber@anthro.com

Professor, Department of Anthropology

Personal Home Page  http://web.anthro.ufl.edu/faculty/Baber.htm

Dr. Baber earned his PhD from Stanford University in 1979 and held positions at Tuskegee University, Purdue University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro before coming to the University of Florida in 2004.

His most recent research is on African American masculinity and HIV risk behavior. He also is working on a book-length manuscript, “The Social Ecology of Booker T. Washington,” based on research funded by the Department of the Interior from 1997 to 1999 and research conducted at the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Franklin County, Virginia.

Dr. James Davidson   davidson@anthro.ufl.edu

Assistant Professor, African American Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology

Personal Home Page  http://web.anthro.ufl.edu/faculty/Davidson.htm

Dr. Davidson earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in August 2004 in anthropology, with a subdiscipline in archaeology. His research focuses on mortuary archaeology, mainly studying burial sites dating from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. His graduate research involved exhuming Freedman's Cemetery in Dallas, Texas, a burial ground for former black slaves from 1869 to 1907.

In describing his research, he writes, "Although my early training was in North American prehistory, since the early 1990s I have worked primarily in historical archaeology, pursuing two main threads--issues of the African Diaspora and Mortuary Archaeology. These two interests emerged out of my work at a single site: Freedman's Cemetery in downtown Dallas, Texas, the primary place of burial for all of Dallas's African American community between 1869 and 1907. Due to highway construction, in the early 1990s a team of researchers spent nearly three years exhuming 1,157 individuals from an acre of the venerable cemetery."

"I deal primarily with late 19th century and early 20th century contexts, in cemeteries as well as occupation/household sites. Through a partnership with the St. Paul United Methodist Church, I helped lead an excavation at a former shotgun house site adjacent to and owned by the church. I have a strong desire to contextualize my archaeological data as much as possible with archival documentation and other sources. Within these contexts, I deal with the theoretical issues of race/ethnicity, identity, memory, and domination/resistance. At the University of Florida I plan to continue my work documenting the African-American Experience in Dallas as well as begin local projects within North Florida, allowing the African-American community to guide my research, addressing those issues and sites they deem of value. My first effort toward this goal is my current work with the survivors and descendant community of Rosewood, the former African-American community destroyed by a white mob in January 1923."

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans   drevans@ufl.edu

Assistant Professor, African American Studies and Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research

Personal Home Page  http://www.ProfessorEvans.com

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans is author of  Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (University Press of Florida, 2007). In May 2003, she received her Ph.D. in Afro-American Studies with a concentration in History and Politics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and in May 2002 earned a Master’s Degree in the same field. Also in 2002, she completed the Graduate Certificate Program in Advanced Feminist Studies.

Her research interest is Black women’s intellectual and educational history in the United States. In her dissertation, "Living Legacies: Black Women, Educational Philosophies, and Community Service, 1865-1965," she considered the educational ideas of four African American women educators: Fanny Jackson Coppin, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Septima Clark.

The 2007-08 academic year marks Dr. Evans' 5th year at University of Florida. She teaches introductory courses in Women's Studies and African American Studies, community service-learning courses in which she partners with East Gainesville agencies, and she also teaches a travel abroad course: "African Americans in Paris."

Dr. Evans has published work in Florida Historical Quarterly, Feminist Teacher, Griot: Southern Conference on African American Studies, Journal of African American History, International Journal of Women's Studies, Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter, and International Journal of Humanities.

Publications: http://www.professorevans.com/Research_2.asp
Courses and Syllabi: http://www.professorevans.com/teaching.asp

Dr. Faye Harrison   fayeharr@ufl.edu

Professor, African American Studies and Department of Anthropology

Personal Home Page  http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/fayeharr/

See Profram Director Profile (above)

Dr. Marilyn Thomas-Houston   marilynm@.ufl.edu

Assistant Professor, African American Studies Program and Department of Anthropology

Personal Home Page http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/marilyth/

Dr. Thomas-Houston earned her PhD in cultural anthropology from New York University in 1997. Before coming to UF in 2001, she was an assistant professor of anthropology and African American studies at the University of South Carolina. Her current research is on social action in the black communities of Nova Scotia, Canada. She also recently published a book, “Stony the Road” to Change: Black Mississippians and the Culture of Social Relations, on the Civil Rights Movement in Oxford, Mississippi.

Affiliate Faculty

Student Assistants, 2007-2008

Katrina Harvey
Venice Dorestin   
Francesca Francois

--top--