Dr. Cheryl Rodriguez is chair of the Department of Africana Studies and Director of the Institute on Black Life at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include: community ethnography, public housing policy, feminisms in Africa and the Diaspora, and community-based organizations for youth. Since 1994, Dr. Rodriguez has directed several community history projects and is currently collecting oral histories of Black neighborhoods in Tampa. In 2000, Dr. Rodriguez co-directed a project on the impact of the Federal HOPE VI program on women and children in the U. S. public housing system. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Rodriguez has also conducted extensive research on programs for youth in low-income communities. Her work on women and gender includes a co-edited text with colleagues at the University of Ghana entitled Transatlantic Feminisms.
Areas of Research
Community Ethnography, Black Feminisms, Low-Income Housing
Publications
Rodriguez, Cheryl (2010). “Review of the Works of Mark Schuller and Gina Ulysse: Collaborations with Haitian Feminists”, American Anthropologist, 112(4), 638-640.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (2008). “Beyond Today and Pass Tomorrow: Self-Efficacy Among African-American Girls in Youth Focused Organizations”, VOICES, 8 (1), 18-22.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (2006). “We Came With Truth”: Black Women’s Struggles against Public Housing Policy in marilyn thomas-houston and Mark Schuller (editors) Homing Devices: Poor People and Public Housing Policies, Lexington, MA: Lexington Press.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (2003). “Invoking Fannie Lou Hamer: Research, Ethnography and Activism in Low-Income Communities”, Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Development, 32 (2), pp. 231-251.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (2001) “A Homegirl Goes Home: Black Feminism and the Lure of Native Anthropology” in I. McClaurin (editor) Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Praxis, Poetics and Politics. Pp. 233-257. Rutgers University Press.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (1998). “Recapturing Lost Images: Narratives of a Black Business Enclave”, Practicing Anthropology, 20 (1), pp. 6-11.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (1998) “Activist Stories: Culture and Continuity in Black Women’s Narratives of Community Work”, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, XIX (2), pp. 94-112.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (1996) “African-American Anthropology and the Pedagogy of Activist Community Research”, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 27 (3), pp. 414-431.
Rodriguez, Cheryl R. (1996) “Anthropology and Womanist Theory: Claiming the Discourse on Gender, Race, and Culture”, Womanist Theory and Research,2 (1), pp. 3-11.