Education:
Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Chicago
M.A., Social Science, University of Chicago
M.A., Anthropology, University of Connecticut
B.S., Anthropology, Southwest Missouri State University
Research Areas:
Socio-cultural
Anthropology
Urban Studies; Space, Embodiment, and Technology
Fieldwork contexts: U.S. and South Africa
Dr.
Jackson conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town, South Africa
between 1989 and 1997. This early research involved tracing the
contours of “mixed-race” or Cape Coloured identity in the Western
Cape Region. This research culminated in a Masters Thesis (University
of Chicago) on the history of the Coloured category, and then a
Dissertation (University of Chicago) on the topic of the politics
of Coloured identity and the uses of the urban public sphere as
material and discursive domains of identity-formation.
Subsequent archival research in 2001, funded
by a University of Missouri, South Africa Exchange Grant, focused
on Colonial architecture and early nineteenth-century urban planning
as sources of the standardization that influenced on-going racial
tensions over the manipulation of the city-center as a privileged
domain of association.
A grant from the Social Sciences Research
Council in 2004 facilitated research project focused on the uses
of digital information as an Urban Planning tool and the prospects
for participatory planning in the Kansas City region. Dr. Jackson
is now seeking funding to extend this research into Cape Town, where
she hopes to demonstrate ways in which standardizing mechanisms
such as digital information extend the Modernist model of space
developed in South Africa in the nineteenth century.
Dr. Jackson has also been contracted by the
Center for Creative Studies at UMKC to ethnographically document
the creative projects of students in the Theater and Engineering
Departments. The ultimate goal of these research projects is to
develop new perspectives on the relationship between embodiment
and creativity and to publish an edited collection of essays on
the subject.
Publications:
“Critical Pedagogy and New Subjectivities:
Comparative Perspectives on Education in South Africa and the United
States.” Social Dynamics 23: 2, 1997.
“Miscast: The Place of the Museum in Negotiating
the Bushmen Past and Present” with Steve Robins, Critical Arts 13:
10, 1999.
“Being and Belonging: Cape Town and the Struggle
for Coloured Identity.” Anthropology and Humanism 28: 10,
2003.
“Coloureds Don’t Toyi-Toyi: Gesture and Constraint
in the Making of Cape Town.”
Forthcoming in Limits to Liberation: Culture, Citizenship and
Governance after Apartheid, Steve Robins, ed. London: James
Currey, 2005.
“Cape Colonial Architecture, Town Planning,
and the Crafting of Modern Space in South Africa.” Africa Today,
forthcoming Spring 2005.
“Creativity and Embodiment.” With Margaret
Brommelsiek. Submitted to Anthropology and Education. Under
Review.
Presentations and Synergistic Activities:
“The Digital Public Sphere and Prospects
for Participatory Planning in Kansas City.” Report delivered to
Digital Cultural Institutions Project, Social Sciences Research
Council, University of California, Santa Clara, October 23, 2004.
“Re-Territorializing District Six, Cape Town.”
Paper presented at International Sociological Association Annual
Conference, Milan, Italy, Sept. 26, 2003.
“Continuities in the Meaning of Space in
Cape Town.” Paper presented at American Anthropological Association
Annual Meeting, New Orleans, November 23, 2002.
“Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Race and
Ethnicity.” Diversity Training Workshop, United Way of Kansas City,
April 25, 2002.
“Mapping Space, Mapping Race: The Ambiguities
of Belonging in Cape Town.” Paper presented at the American Anthropological
Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, Nov. 28, 2001.
“Architecture and Emancipation in the Production
of Cape Town.” Paper presented to the Urban Studies Workshop, Cape
Town, July 28, 2001.
“Coloureds Don’t Toyi-Toyi: Identity and
the Production of Cape Town.” Paper presented at Spencer Foundation
Advanced Studies Seminar, Univ. of Chicago, May 12, 2001.
Discussant, Spencer Foundation Advanced Studies
Seminar, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Sept. 27-30, 2001.
“Coloureds Don’t Toyi-Toyi: South Africa
and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Subjectivity.” Paper presented at
the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco,
Nov. 16, 2000.
“Ubuntu and the Transformation of Education
in South Africa.” Paper presented at the American Educational Research
Association Annual Meeting, April 13, 1998.
“Critical Pedagogy, the Classroom, and the
Public Sphere.” Paper presented to the Association of University
English Teachers of South Africa Annual Meeting, July 2, 1996.
“Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy in
the Classroom.” Presentation to Anthropology Seminar Series, University
of the Western Cape, South Africa, April 15, 1996.
Teaching Areas
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Social Stratification
Urban Anthropology
Anthropology of the Body
Technology
and the Body (Fall 2005 with
Gary Ebersole (Religious Studies))
