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Anna Eisenstein

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Virginia, 2020

Master of Arts, University of Virginia, 2015

Bachelor of Arts, Lafayette College, 2013

Specialties

Personhood, care, body, temporality, anthropology of the life course, kinship and relatedness, race and gender, Christianity, language ideology, narrative, participatory action research methods; Uganda, Africa, US

My research and teaching focus on the sociocultural and linguistic production of personhood, care, and value. My dissertation explored changing meanings of pregnancy in Mbarara, a fast-growing urban center in southwestern Uganda. Two earlier research projects studied: 1) the politics of memory and place in a post-industrial city in the mid-Atlantic US; and 2) bureaucratic constructions of difference in American healthcare. Across all three projects, a semiotic approach informs the way I think about the circulation, reformulation, or endurance of particular forms of social connection.

Selected Publications

Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past.  Co-authored with Andrea Smith. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016.

Thoroughly Mixed yet Thoroughly Ethnic: Indexing Class with Ethnonyms.  Co-authored with Andrea Smith. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2013, Volume 23(2): E1-E22. DOI: 10.1111/jola.12012