Social & Cultural Anthropology

Stephanie V. Love

Stephanie V. Love received a Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2022. From 2022-23, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, participating in the interdisciplinary seminar “Repairing the Past.” Her first book project, “Streets of Grievance: Everyday Poetics and Postcolonial Politics in Urban Algeria,” explores the complex ways that violent pasts (both colonial and postcolonial) get reanimated in ordinary urban speech, landscapes, and memory practices. It asks: How can a people repair the past—characterized by 132 years of violent settler colonialism and six decades of postcolonial civil strife—when the past is not dead? This project examines the “afterlives” of violence through the social work of anticolonial martyrs, abandoned cemeteries, colonial placenames that will not die, and the vital presence of other sites of ‘dead’ colonialism in contemporary Algerian society. This lens sheds light on how contemporary city dwellers speak about the past to make claims on the future and how they talk to each other across entrenched, seemingly unbridgeable political divides. The book argues that everyday urban poetics is central to this emergent social action. It allows people to make novel connections by playing with urban forms in their ordinary speech, shaping collective sentiments with political potential. Dr. Love is also dedicated to rethinking higher education in the post-pandemic world and has coordinated several pedagogical initiatives at CUNY, including the STEM Pedagogy Institute, Carnegie Educational Technology Fellowship, and the Heritage Arabic eBook project at the Center for Integrated Language Communities.

Degrees and Education

Ph.D. Anthropology, Linguistic and Cultural The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY

Research Description

Urban anthropology, postcolonialism, semiotics, history/memory, materiality, migration, language politics, poetics, spatiotemporal imaginaries (chronotopes), the dead/ afterlives, revolution, the Middle East and North Africa, exile, the Mediterranean

Publications

Love, Stephanie V. 2023. Echoes of ‘Dead’ Colonialism: The Voices and Materiality of a (Post)colonial Algeria­n Newspaper. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 33(1): 72-91. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12392

Love, Stephanie V. 2021. The Poetics of Grievance: Taxi-drivers, Vernacular Placenames, and the Paradoxes of Postcoloniality in Oran, Algeria. City & Society 33(3): 422-443.  https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ciso.12412

Love, Stephanie V. 2021. “Are we not of interest to each other?” A pedagogy of presence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anthropology Now! 13(2): 65-76. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19428200.2021.1973330

Love, Stephanie V. & L. Wu. 2020. Are We in the Same Boat? Ethnographic Lessons of Sheltering in Place from International Seafarers and Algerian Harraga in the Age of Global  Pandemic. Anthropology Now! April 2020 issue. https://anthronow.com/press-watch/are-we-in-the-same-boat-ethnographic-lessons-of-sheltering-in-place-from-international-seafarers-and-algerian-harraga-in-the-age-of-global-pandemic

Love, Stephanie V. 2019. Decolonizing the Church/Decolonizing Language: Postcolonial Christianity, Language Ideologies, and the Morality of Teaching Vernacular Arabic (Darija) in Algeria. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education,18(1): 25-38. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15348458.2019.1575740

Love, Stephanie V. 2016. ‘Broken Arabic’ and Ideologies of Completeness: Contextualizing the Category of ‘Native’ and ‘Heritage’ Speaker in the University Arabic Classroom. Bellaterra Journal of Teaching and Learning Language and Literature, 9(2): 78-93. https://raco.cat/index.php/Bellaterra/article/view/310698 

Love, Stephanie V. 2016. An Educated Identity: The School as a Modernist Chronotope in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. In G. R. Bullaro and S. Love (eds.), The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins (pp. 71-97). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bullaro, Grace R. & Stephanie V. Love. 2016. Beyond the Margins: Ferrante Fever and Italian Female Writing. In G. R. Bullaro and S. Love (eds.), The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins (pp. 1-12). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137590626

Bullaro, Grace R. & Stephanie V. Love 2016. The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137590626

Love, Stephanie V. & Dora Kotai. 2015. The Invisible Learners in the Classroom: Macro-Level Politics and Micro-Level Experiences of LESLLA in Italy. In M. Santos & A. Whiteside, Proceedings from the 9th annual LESLLA (low educated second language and literacy acquisition) symposium. City College of San Francisco.

Love, Stephanie V. 2014. Mother Tongue: Identity in the Translingual and Transnational Narratives of Carmine Abate and Cristina Ali Farah. In G. R. Bullaro & E. Banelli (Eds.), Shifting and Shaping a National Identity in a Pluricultural Society: Transnational Writers in Italy Today (pp. 107-127). Leicester, UK: Troubador Italian Studies Series. https://www.amazon.com/Shifting-Shaping-National-Identity-Pluriculturalism/dp/1783063785

Love, Stephanie V. 2014. Language Testing, ‘Integration’ and Subtractive Multilingualism in Italy: Challenges for Adult Immigrant Second Language and Literacy Education. Current Issues in Language Planning, 15(3/4). Special issue. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14664208.2014.947017

Love, Stephanie V. & Manka Varghese. 2012. The Historical and Contemporary Role of Race, Language, and Schooling in Italy’s Immigrant Policies: Public Discourses and Pedagogies. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14(2). Special Issue: Challenging Anti-Immigration Discourses in School and Community Contexts. (with M. Varghese). https://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/491

Noël Marsh

Noël is a sociocultural anthropologist pursuing a PhD in Anthropology (with a focus on medical anthropology) and an MPH in Behavioral and Community Health (concentration in maternal and child health). Her research interests include reproductive health / justice, the politics of care and social support, race, gender and sexuality, and incarceration. Her dissertation focuses the on the politics of providing doula support to incarcerated, pregnant people, especially as these efforts are linked to broader social movements for racial, economic, and reproductive justice. As an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina Noël had the opportunity to collaborate on a process evaluation that examined the incorporation of CenteringPregnancy, a midwifery-based model of group prenatal care, into various obstetric practices across the state.

Publications

Van De Griend K, Billings DL, Marsh LN, Kelley S. CenteringPregnancy. Expansion in South Carolina Process Evaluation: Final Report to South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. December 2015. Columbia, SC.

Degrees and Education

B.A. in Experimental Psychology and Religious Studies, English Minor | University of South Carolina (2014). Honors Thesis – “Transforming Care through Disruptive Design: Incorporating a Midwifery Model of Care into Medical Practices”

Awards

2021-2022 Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
2021 William T. Green, Jr. Award in Public Health Studies
2021 University of Pittsburgh Arts and Sciences Fellowship
2019 GSWS Student Research Grant
2017-2018 Arts and Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh

Wei Mei (Nicolette) Wong

Nicolette Wei Mei Wong is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in anthropology with a focus on intimacy, technology, and China. Her current project looks at the impact and affordances mobile platforms like dating apps have on existing social mores surrounding intimacy.

Research interests: Human-computer interaction, user experience research, gender studies, technology, intimacy, family studies, urban China

 

Publications

Wong, W. M. (2019). The politics of pity versus piety: The poetics and politics behind different feminist accounts on the Muslim Woman. Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Multidisciplinary Studies. 6 (1), 1-25.

Wong, W. M. (2016). Parental matchmaking: Is it really such a selfless act after all? A case analysis of China’s marriage markets. Asian Profile, 44(4), 315-325.

Wong, W. M. (2016). Past matchmaking norms and their influence on contemporary Marriage Markets in China. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, VIII(3), 371-383.

von Gleichen, R., Barker, C.E., Bowen, C.S., Larsen, O., Shillabeer, O., Tan, G. Y., Wong, W.M., & Youssef, A. (2016). Affordable childcare when you need it? Childcare opening hours in the context of the Childcare Act 2016.

Wong, W.M., Chung, S.; Guidi, L., Goh, M.S., Jiang, Y., Miklos, M., & Stinton, H. (2016). British Chinese secondary students and racial bullying: Understanding British Chinese students’ racial bullying experience in secondary schools. OxPolicy.

Wong, W. M. (2015). Consumer preferences between hypermarkets and traditional retail shophouses: A case study of Kulim consumers. Asian Profile, 43.

Wong, W. M. (2014). Finding “love” in China: An overview of Chinese marriage markets (BaiFaXiangQin). Student Pulse, 6(12).

Wong, W. M. (2014). AirAsia's application of the 'Thirty-six stratagems'. Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences, 13(1).

Degrees and Education

MSc Sociology, University of Oxford
BBA International Trade, Central China Normal University

Awards

2020 Predissertation Travel Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies (2020)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2020)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2018-2019)
International Studies Fund Grant (Summer 2018)
University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Anthropology Graduate Student Small Grants for Research (Summer 2018)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2017-2018)
Khazanah - Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies Merdeka Scholarship (2017)
CCNU Distinguished Student Scholarship 华中师范大学优秀学生奖学金 (Academic Year 2011-2015)
Outstanding Academic Achievement Award CCNU, CICE (2015)

Dafne Lastra

I am a sociocultural anthropologist enrolled in the Joint Degree Program PhD in Anthropology (focus on medical anthropology) and MPH in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. My current research interests are in the provision of medical care for Amazonian indigenous peoples, public health and inequities, anthropology of the state, and humanitarianism in Peru. I am particularly interested in how indigenous peoples view and interact with the Peruvian state through the healthcare system.

These interests come from my previous experience teaching courses in medical anthropology, working and researching on topics related to child malnutrition and anemia, intercultural education with indigenous youth, intercultural health, tuberculosis and maternal health, and climate change and contamination of water sources among indigenous communities in the Amazonian region in Peru.

In the past, I have been awarded a young researchers fellowship by SEPIA (a research organization that promotes and funds research projects on agrarian, rural and environmental topics) to conduct ethnographic research focused on family strategies among small coffee farmers, their articulation to the market in Peru, and published articles based on this and my previous research for my B.A. thesis.

Degrees and Education

Postgraduate Diploma, Interculturality and Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University, Peru (2015)
B.A. Social Sciences, Anthropology Major, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (2012)

Research

2018 - CLAS Field Research Grant (Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh)

2017-2018 - Arts & Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh

2013 - SEPIA Young Researchers Grant (Permanent Seminar in Agrarian Studies, Peru)