Rosa De Jorio

Associate Professor of Anthropology & Anthropology Program Director
(Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Kinship and Gender; Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and Democratization; Memory and Political Identities; Globalization; West Africa.

Background:
Rosa De Jorio received a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a M.Sc. in social anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK; and a B.A. (Laurea) in Modern Literature with a specialization in ethno-anthropology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” Italy.

Research Interests:
De Jorio has carried out extensive fieldwork research in Mali, West Africa predominantly in urban areas. Topics of enquiry include the study of memory and political identities, gender politics, political culture, social movements and globalization. Her research was sponsored by several institutions including the Social Science Research Council, the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities (MUCIA), and the Italian institute for African studies (Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente).

Courses Offered:
Kinship and the Family in a Cross-cultural Perspective
People and Cultures of the World
People and Cultures of Africa
Survey of Anthropological Theories
Cities and Globalization
Memory, History, and Anthropology
Gender, the Body, and Culture

Recent Publications:

Articles and Book Chapters

Rosa De Jorio and Maria Grosz-Ngaté “Memory, Women, and Community: Sub-Saharan Africa” in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. Volume 6,  Leiden, Brill 2007,  pp. 47-51

2006. “Politics of Remembering and Forgetting: The Struggle over Colonial Monuments in Mali.” Africa Today 52(4): 79-106.

2005 "Kinship" in Horowitz, Maryanne Cline (ed.) New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol. 3. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons.

2003. “Narratives of the Nation and Democracy in Mali: a View from Modibo Keita’s Memorial” Cahiers d'Études africaines 172 (4): 827-855.

2002. “When is 'Married' Married? Multiple Marriage Avenues in Urban Mali.” Mande Studies 4:31-44.

2002. “Gendered Museum, Guided He(tour)topias: Women and Social Memory in Mali." Polar: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review 25 (2): 50-72.

2001. “Women’s organization, the ideology of kinship, and the state in postindependence Mali” (pp. 322-340). In Stone, Linda (ed.) New Directions in Anthropological Kinship. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

2001. “Negoziare tradizioni e modernità: il Museo della Donna 'Muso Kunda' a Bamako, Mali” (Negotiating traditions and modernity: the Woman’s Museum “Muso Kunda” in Bamako, Mali. Etnosistemi 8 (8): 79-90.

2001. “Malian National Culture” In Ember, Melvin and Carol R. Ember, (eds.) Countries and Their Cultures. Vol III, pp. 1384-1399. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

Special Issues Editor

2006. Introduction to Special Issue on “Memory and the Formation of Political Identities in West Africa” Africa Today 52(4): v-ix.

2002. Introduction to Special Issue on “Narratives of the Past/Sites of Memory: Constructing Social, Religious, and Political Identities in the Postcolony.” Polar: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review 25 (2): 1-4.

Contact information:
Office: 51/2209
Phone: 904-620-1642
Email: rdejorio@unf.edu