Anthropology | Faculty & Staff Directory

Department Chair, Anthropology

Prof. Dent is the author of Chesapeake Prehistory: Old Traditions, New Directions and a significant number of other publications on the archaeology of the Chesapeake and Middle Atlantic regions. He maintains interests in both prehistoric and historic... [More]

Professorial Lecturer

Professor

Dolores Koenig is a specialist in international development, interested in both its challenges and its successes. She is especially interested in finding new ways of talking about development and social change that value the experiences of local peop... [More]

Professor

Language in everyday life is shaped by material conditions, by ideology, by power, by resistance– and by yearnings that are never extinguished by social regulation. Professor Leap's studies of American Indian English, language and AIDS, “gay men’s En... [More]

Assistant Professor

Professor McNeil's fieldwork since 2000 has been based in southern West Virginia. It focuses on social and community activism surrounding mountaintop removal coal mining. He incorporates themes of social movements, political and historical ecology, e... [More]

Assistant Professor

Adrienne Pine is a militant medical anthropologist who has worked in Honduras, Mexico, Korea, the United States, and Egypt. In her book, Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras, she argues that the symbolic violence resultin... [More]

Police Officer

Public Anthropologist in Residence

Assistant Professor

Dr. Sayers is an historical archaeologist whose research is very much influenced by his training in philosophy, history, and anthropology. At present, Dr. Sayers directs the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study (GDSLS), an interdisciplinary research pr... [More]

Public Anthropologist in Residence

Filmmaker in Residence

Nina Shapiro-Perl is an award-winning producer and director who currently holds the position of Filmmaker-in-Residence at American University, where she teaches and leads the Community Voice Project. Before joining the faculty of American University,... [More]

Assistant Professor

Ed Smith is a third-generation Washingtonian and has been teaching at American University since 1969. He is also a Civil War, African-American Cultural Heritage, and Art History Lecturer and Study Tour Leader for The Smithsonian Institution, The Nati... [More]

Public Anthropologist in Residence

Taylor had extensive experience in nursing administration and clinical practice when she pursued a career in anthropology focusing on issues of health and gerontology. She directed a graduate program in medical anthropology at Wayne State University ... [More]

Senior Administrative Assistant

Professorial Lecturer

Assistant Professor

Author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton, 2009), David Vine’s work focuses on issues including U.S. foreign and military policy, military bases, forced displacement, and human rights. He is th... [More]

Associate Professor

My research focuses on the biological and social history of African Americans living in the 19th and 20th century urban US. Specifically, I examine the health consequences of poverty and inequality through skeletal and documentary data analysis. I co... [More]

Professor

Brett Williams began her work as an anthropologist working among migrant farm workers in Illinois, exploring how they coped with terrible poverty and helping them organize a lettuce boycott and raise money for a halfway house. Since coming to Washing... [More]

Assistant Professor

A Massachusetts native, Dr. Woodfork joined American University's Department of Anthropology in 2010, after serving as assistant professor of American Studies at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY since 2005. He earned his PhD in American Studi... [More]