Dr. Shannon Jackson Associate Professor of Anthropology 106 B Manheim Hall 816.235.2517 (fax) 816.235.1117 e-mail

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))