Podcast appearances and mentions of Deborah A Thomas

Dr. Deborah A. Thomas is Chair and the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania.  She is also core faculty in Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, holds secondary appointments with the Graduate School of Education and the Department of Africana Studies, and is a member of the graduate groups in English, Comparative Literature, and the School of Social Policy and Practice.  She is also a Research Associate with the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Johannesburg.  Prior to her appointment at Penn, she spent two years as a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for the Americas at Wesleyan University, and four years teaching in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.  In today's conversation, we discuss Dr. Thomas' latest monograph, Exorbitance:  A Speculative Ethnography of Inheritance, where she calls for new approaches to political sovereignty grounded in the embodied forms of autonomy and relation created in daily life.

The legacy of trauma resulting from more than 200 years of slavery in North America, and colonialism abroad, has yet to be fully comprehended. In this episode, Breanna Moore discusses her engagement with fellow student collaborators to recreate the history of Penn's connections to slavery, which began with a memory book and a journey through her own family's history. And Deborah Thomas explains how the many mediums of art, including film, dance, and photography, have helped her promote healing within communities marked by trauma in Jamaica and beyond.This episode includes excerpts from Four Days in May: Kingston 2010 featuring Jacqueline Gordon, Shawn Bowen, and Aaliyah Levy. The documentary film was directed and produced by Deanne M. Bell, Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn, and Deborah A. Thomas.Guests:Breanna Moore, C'15 and Ph.D. candidate, Department of HistoryDeborah Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography***Produced by Blake ColeNarrated by Alex ScheinEdited by Alex Schein, Loraine Terrell, and Brooke SietinsonsInterviews by Blake Cole and Loraine TerrellTheme music by Nicholas Escobar, C'18Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions Illustration and logo by Marina MuunIn These Times is a production of Penn Arts & Sciences. Visit our series website to learn more and listen to the first three seasons of In These Times: web.sas.upenn.edu/in-these-timesVisit our editorial magazine, Omnia, for more content from Penn Arts & Sciences faculty, students, and alumni: omnia.sas.upenn.edu

The legacy of trauma resulting from more than 200 years of slavery in North America, and colonialism abroad, has yet to be fully comprehended. In this episode, Breanna Moore discusses her engagement with fellow student collaborators to recreate the history of Penn's connections to slavery, which began with a memory book and a journey through her own family's history. And Deborah Thomas explains how the many mediums of art, including film, dance, and photography, have helped her promote healing within communities marked by trauma in Jamaica and beyond.This episode includes excerpts from Four Days in May: Kingston 2010 featuring Jacqueline Gordon, Shawn Bowen, and Aaliyah Levy. The documentary film was directed and produced by Deanne M. Bell, Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn, and Deborah A. Thomas.Guests:Breanna Moore, C'15 and Ph.D. candidate, Department of HistoryDeborah Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography***Produced by Blake ColeNarrated by Alex ScheinEdited by Alex Schein, Loraine Terrell, and Brooke SietinsonsInterviews by Blake Cole and Loraine TerrellTheme music by Nicholas Escobar, C'18Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions Illustration and logo by Marina MuunIn These Times is a production of Penn Arts & Sciences. Visit our series website to learn more and listen to the first three seasons of In These Times: web.sas.upenn.edu/in-these-timesVisit our editorial magazine, Omnia, for more content from Penn Arts & Sciences faculty, students, and alumni: omnia.sas.upenn.edu

Mo' money, fewer problems? Today, Brendane & Alyssa take on the question of getting that government guap - reparations, baby! Our new sound is finally here - shout out to our music producer Segnon Tiewul for di big tuuuune! Let us know what you think on Twitter and Instagram. Additionally, the Graduate Workers at Columbia University are currently on strike to push agreement on a fair labor contract with the university, who has threated to dock pay. Donate to the solidarity fund here. *Note* The conference panel Alyssa talks about moderating was postponed due to the strike. An opinion poll released last summer found that 80% of Black Americans believed the federal government should compensate the descendants of enslaved people, compared with 21% of white Americans. In our segment What's the Word? we discuss reparations - what it has meant and what it could mean. In What We're Reading, we talk about Deborah A. Thomas's introduction and coda to her monograph Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (2011) to understand what it means to use reparations as a framework for thinking. In our last segment, What in the World?! we have Dr. Thomas on to discuss how her thinking has evolved from reparations to repair, embodiment to affect, and citizenship to sovereignty in her follow up book, Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair (2019). We also talk about the questions that animate her research, the announcement of reparations for (some) Black residents in Evanston, Illinois, the 'conjuncture' that's got everyone talking about reparations, and why we should mobilize for reparations and repair on multiple scales. Liked what you heard? Donate here! Discussed this week: Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (Deborah A. Thomas, 2011) Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair (Deborah A. Thomas, 2019) The Case for Reparations (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2014) U.S. Museums Hold the Remains of Thousands of Black People (Delande Justinvil and Chip Colwell, 2021) Payback's a B**** (Code Switch, NPR, 2021) ZD Merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 102 is here! Follow us @zorasdaughters on Instagram and @zoras_daughters on Twitter! Transcript will be available on our website here.

How can ethnographers use multimedia presentations of their work to reach new audiences, build different relationships with their participants, and promote new practices of witnessing and representation? On today’s episode we talk with Dr. Deborah Thomas, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She tells us about her collaborative and multimodal project, Tivoli Stories (tivolistories.com), based on the 2010 police and military incursion into a West Kingston community in search of a notorious drug trafficker and community don that left at least 75 dead.  The project includes a documentary film titled Four Days in May, a museum exhibit, and the 2019 book Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Entanglement, Witnessing, Repair (Duke UP, 2019). Deborah explains how a background in dance led her to become an accidental anthropologist with an interest in both sovereignty and experimental ethnographic practices. She then discusses the Tivoli Stories project, describing how collaborative attempts to gather testimonies of the incursion led to first a documentary and then her book. She takes us behind the curtains for some of the simultaneously aesthetic and political choices of the film and book, including the use of portraits to humanize participants as distinct from the common images of suffering that may be termed ghetto porn. Her reflections offer a concrete and insightful look at an alternative means of ethnographic practice attuned to the lives, experiences, and politics of the communities we study. Alex Diamond is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Dr. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

How can ethnographers use multimedia presentations of their work to reach new audiences, build different relationships with their participants, and promote new practices of witnessing and representation? On today’s episode we talk with Dr. Deborah Thomas, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She tells us about her collaborative and multimodal project, Tivoli Stories (tivolistories.com), based on the 2010 police and military incursion into a West Kingston community in search of a notorious drug trafficker and community don that left at least 75 dead.  The project includes a documentary film titled Four Days in May, a museum exhibit, and the 2019 book Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Entanglement, Witnessing, Repair (Duke UP, 2019). Deborah explains how a background in dance led her to become an accidental anthropologist with an interest in both sovereignty and experimental ethnographic practices. She then discusses the Tivoli Stories project, describing how collaborative attempts to gather testimonies of the incursion led to first a documentary and then her book. She takes us behind the curtains for some of the simultaneously aesthetic and political choices of the film and book, including the use of portraits to humanize participants as distinct from the common images of suffering that may be termed ghetto porn. Her reflections offer a concrete and insightful look at an alternative means of ethnographic practice attuned to the lives, experiences, and politics of the communities we study. Alex Diamond is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Dr. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

How can ethnographers use multimedia presentations of their work to reach new audiences, build different relationships with their participants, and promote new practices of witnessing and representation? On today’s episode we talk with Dr. Deborah Thomas, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She tells us about her collaborative and multimodal project, Tivoli Stories (tivolistories.com), based on the 2010 police and military incursion into a West Kingston community in search of a notorious drug trafficker and community don that left at least 75 dead.  The project includes a documentary film titled Four Days in May, a museum exhibit, and the 2019 book Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Entanglement, Witnessing, Repair (Duke UP, 2019). Deborah explains how a background in dance led her to become an accidental anthropologist with an interest in both sovereignty and experimental ethnographic practices. She then discusses the Tivoli Stories project, describing how collaborative attempts to gather testimonies of the incursion led to first a documentary and then her book. She takes us behind the curtains for some of the simultaneously aesthetic and political choices of the film and book, including the use of portraits to humanize participants as distinct from the common images of suffering that may be termed ghetto porn. Her reflections offer a concrete and insightful look at an alternative means of ethnographic practice attuned to the lives, experiences, and politics of the communities we study. Alex Diamond is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Dr. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

How can ethnographers use multimedia presentations of their work to reach new audiences, build different relationships with their participants, and promote new practices of witnessing and representation? On today’s episode we talk with Dr. Deborah Thomas, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She tells us about her collaborative and multimodal project, Tivoli Stories (tivolistories.com), based on the 2010 police and military incursion into a West Kingston community in search of a notorious drug trafficker and community don that left at least 75 dead.  The project includes a documentary film titled Four Days in May, a museum exhibit, and the 2019 book Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Entanglement, Witnessing, Repair (Duke UP, 2019). Deborah explains how a background in dance led her to become an accidental anthropologist with an interest in both sovereignty and experimental ethnographic practices. She then discusses the Tivoli Stories project, describing how collaborative attempts to gather testimonies of the incursion led to first a documentary and then her book. She takes us behind the curtains for some of the simultaneously aesthetic and political choices of the film and book, including the use of portraits to humanize participants as distinct from the common images of suffering that may be termed ghetto porn. Her reflections offer a concrete and insightful look at an alternative means of ethnographic practice attuned to the lives, experiences, and politics of the communities we study. Alex Diamond is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Dr. Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm