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Dr. Deborah Ann Thomas

Affiliated Institutions

University of Pennsylvania

Deborah A. Thomas is Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica and Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica; and co-editor of the volume Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness. Her articles have appeared in a diverse range of journals including Cultural Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Radical History Review, small axe, Identities, and Feminist Review. Thomas was also editor of the journal Transforming Anthropology, and currently sits on the editorial boards of American Anthropologist and Social and Economic Studies. Thomas was also co-director and co-producer of the documentary film, BAD FRIDAY: RASTAFARI AFTER CORAL GARDENS. Prior to her life as an academic, she was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women.

Areas of Research

Nationalism, State Formation, Citizenship, Diaspora, Transnationalism, Globalization, Violence and Cultural Production

Publications

Thomas, Deborah. 2011. Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Thomas, Deborah. 2004. Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Thomas, Deborah. 2006. Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness, Eds. Kamari M. Clarke and Deborah A. Thomas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Thomas, Deborah. 2013. “Globalization and Race: Structures of Inequality, New Sovereignties, and Citizenship in a Neoliberal Era.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (with Kamari Clarke).

Thomas, Deborah. 2013. “The Problem with Violence: Exceptionality and Sovereignty in the New World.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 5(1).

Thomas, Deborah. 2013. “Caribbean Studies, Archive Building, and the Problem of Violence.” small axe 17(2):27-42.

Thomas, Deborah. 2012. “Violence.” Oxford Bibliographies Online, http://oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0027.xml?rskey=DRZfAn&result=5&q=violence#firstMatch

Thomas, Deborah. 2009. “The Violence of Diaspora: Governmentality, Class Cultures, and Circulations.” Radical History Review 103:83-104.

Thomas, Deborah and Karla Slocum. 2008. “Caribbean Studies, Anthropology, and U.S. Academic Realignments.” Souls 10(2):123-137.

Thomas, Deborah. 2008. “Walmart, ‘Katrina,’ and Other Ideological Tricks: Jamaican Hotel Workers in Michigan.” Special Issue of Feminist Review (Co-Edited with Tina M. Campt), “Gendering Diaspora,” 90:68-86.

Projects

Jamaica

Tivoli Stories

This is a multi-media collaborative installation/public art project addressing the state of emergency that began in Jamaica in May 2010. Tivoli Stories is designed to provide a platform through which participating West Kingston community members can narrate their experiences during and after the extradition of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, and to support the efforts of human rights activists working on issues related to extra-judicial killing.

Jamaica

Mapping Alternative Sovereignties: Violence, Politics and Prophecy in Jamaica

This ethnohistorical project builds on my earlier work on violence, and explores the sorts of politics that become visible when we shift our gaze slightly away from explicitly revolutionary models of political change. I have been working with members (past and present) of the International Peacemakers Association - the organization built by Claudius Henry in Clarendon, Jamaica during the late 1960s and 1970s) - to address questions regarding alternative visions of state organization.

Michigan, United States

Mapping Alternative Sovereignties: Violence, Politics and Prophecy in Jamaica

This ethnohistorical project builds on my earlier work on violence, and explores the sorts of politics that become visible when we shift our gaze slightly away from explicitly revolutionary models of political change. I have been working with members (past and present) of the International Peacemakers Association - the organization built by Claudius Henry in Clarendon, Jamaica during the late 1960s and 1970s) - to address questions regarding alternative visions of state organization.

South Africa

From Prison Camp To Pilgrimage Site: Robben Island And The Quotidian Violence Of Postcolonialism

This is a collaborative project with faculty and students at the University of Cape Town geared toward parsing the "post" in "post-apartheid," using Robben Island as our primary field site. It focuses on physical space and its transformations, as well as archiving and how the past is memorialized. What does Robben Island symbolize vis-à-vis the "New" South Africa, within the contemporary context of neoliberalism? What can we glean about post-colonialism and citizenship from this site?