Deborah A. Thomas

Deborah A. Thomas (born 1966) is an American anthropologist and filmmaker, and is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published books and articles on the history, culture, and politics of Jamaica; and on human rights, sexuality, and globalization in the Caribbean arena. She has co-produced and co-directed two experimental films, and has co-curated a multimedia exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2016, she began a four-year term as editor-in-chief of the journal American Anthropologist.[1] Before pursuing her career as an anthropologist, Thomas performed as a professional dancer with Urban Bush Women,[2] a New York dance company that used art to promote social equity by illuminating the experiences of disenfranchised people.[3][4]

This article is about the American anthropologist. For Australian businesswoman, see Deborah Thomas.
Deborah A. Thomas
NationalityAmerican
Alma materNew York University, Brown University
OccupationProfessor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography
OrganizationUniversity of Pennsylvania

Education and career

Thomas received her B.A. in Semiotics with Honors from Brown University in 1988. She continued her education at New York University, earning an MA in 1994 from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and a PhD in 2000 from the Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation, entitled “‘Tradition’s not an intelligence thing’: Jamaican cultural politics and the ascendence of modern blackness,” focused on the intersection of identity and politics in Jamaica in the 1990s. It served as the foundation for her first book, Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica.[5]

After a short time as Adjunct Professor at NYU, Thomas was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Americas at Wesleyan University from 2000 to 2002. From there, she secured an appointment at Duke University, where she served as an Assistant Professor, in both the Department of Cultural Anthropology and the Women's Studies Program (now Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies), between 2002 and early 2006.[6] In January 2006, she was promoted to Associate Professor.

In 2006, Thomas joined the faculty in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania as an Associate Professor.[6] In 2011, she became the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and between 2009-2012 and 2015–2017, she served as chair of the Anthropology Graduate Group. In addition to her appointment in the Department of Anthropology, Thomas was an affiliate in Penn's Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies program;[7] and secured a secondary appointment in Penn's Graduate School of Education.[8] She advised graduate students also in the Departments of Africana Studies,[9] English,[10] and Comparative Literature,[11] and in the School of Social Policy and Practice.

Scholarship

Deborah A. Thomas has written three books and has published one edited volume, focusing on Jamaican culture and politics. Her studies of Jamaican life have illuminated what is known as the "rude boy" street subculture in Kingston, whose participants have often drawn inspiration in their fashion and comportment from Hollywood cowboy and gangster films and from jazz and soul musical genres.[12] Her research has also explored the continuing legacies of colonial-era violence, and the impact of trauma on memory, in postcolonial Jamaica,[13] while sometimes also bringing the study of Jamaican music, violence, and politics together.[14]

Deborah A. Thomas has directed and produced several films related to her research.[15] Her first film was Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens (2011).[16] which blended the use of archival sources and oral histories with Rastafari elders to consider how violence and legacies of trauma persist in shaping postcolonial Jamaican politics and popular beliefs,[17] Her second film was Four Days in May (2018), which again blended visual and textual materials, in this case while giving participants in oral histories the opportunities to memorialize loved ones who died during the 2010 State of Emergency in Kingston, Jamaica.[18][19][20] She has described this film as a work of "experimental ethnography".[21] In 2018, Thomas began serving as Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania, which promotes the use of multi-media, "extra-textual", and digital scholarship for the diffusion of learning in the humanities and social sciences.[22][23]

Deborah A. Thomas has also disseminated scholarship through the medium of a museum exhibit, called Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston, which the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology featured from November 18, 2017 to March 31, 2020.[24][25] The exhibit used audio and video footage featuring first-hand accounts of peoples’ experiences during the “Tivoli Incursions,” which took place at Tivoli Gardens in Kingston Jamaica on May 2010. Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston combined the qualities of an art installation, memorial, and call to action to shed light on how violence impacted people within this Jamaican community. It grew out of a collaborative oral history project called “Tivoli Stories”, which Thomas led in 2012 with colleagues including Deanne M. Bell, Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn, and Varun Baker.[25][19]

In an article about the work of black British feminist theorist Hazel V. Carby, Thomas expressed a major question that runs through her scholarship, which is, "What histories do we inherit?"[26]

Major publications
  • Deborah A. Thomas, Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2004. ISBN 978-0-8223-3408-8.
  • Kamari Maxine Clarke and Deborah A Thomas, eds., Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-8223-3772-0.
  • Deborah A. Thomas, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0-8223-5086-6.
  • Deborah A. Thomas, Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2019. ISBN 978-1-4780-0669-5.

References
  1. "Editorial Board". Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  2. "Urban Bush Women | Annenberg Center". annenbergcenter.org. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  3. "Mission and Core Values". Urban Bush Women. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  4. "Deborah Thomas | Initiative on Race, Gender and Globalization". irgg.yale.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  5. Thomas, Deborah A., 1966- (2004). Modern blackness : nationalism, globalization, and the politics of culture in Jamaica. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3408-9. OCLC 55511491.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. "Deborah Thomas | Department of Anthropology". www.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  7. "Core Faculty | Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies". www.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  8. "Faculty Directory | Penn GSE". www.gse.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  9. "People | Africana Studies". africana.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  10. "Deborah Thomas | Department of English". www.english.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  11. "Faculty | Comparative Literature & Literary Theory". complit.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  12. Henriques, Julian (2011). Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. London: Bloomsbury. pp. xxiv. ISBN 9781441149343.
  13. Yale University, Whitney Humanities Center (February 12, 2019). ""Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Affect, Witnessing, Repair" | Whitney Humanities Center". whc.yale.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  14. Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Amsterdam) (November 9, 2018). "NALACS | Reggae Vibrations Film: Four Days in May: Kingston 2010". NALACS. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  15. "Deborah A. Thomas". IMDb. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  16. "Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens - Available from TWN". www.twn.org. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  17. Astacio, Patricia Alvarez (September 3, 2013). "Screening Room: Bad Friday: Rastafari After Coral Gardens". Society for Cultural Anthropology. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  18. "FOUR DAYS IN MAY". TIVOLI STORIES. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  19. Thomas, Deborah A. (2020-01-02). "Making Four Days in May". Interventions. 22 (1): 93–105. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659157. ISSN 1369-801X. S2CID 204350553.
  20. Downtown State College (September 19, 2018). "Four Days in May Screening and Q&A session with Deborah Thomas, Penn State University". Downtown State College Improvement District. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  21. Penn State News (September 4, 2018). "Sawyer Seminar Series to host free screening of 'Four Days in May' on Sept. 19 | Penn State University". news.psu.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  22. "DIRECTOR". centerforexperimentalethnography. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  23. "About the Center for Experimental Ethnography @UPENN". centerforexperimentalethnography. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  24. "Bearing Witness". TIVOLI STORIES. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  25. "Bearing Witness: Four Days in West Kingston - Penn Museum 2017-2018 Annual Report". www.penn.museum. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  26. Thomas, Deborah A. (2020-02-07). "Fathers of Empire". Public Books. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
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