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Krista E. Van Vleet

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Spring 2007

  • Tasting Hierarchies: Food in Latin America (ANTH 025)
  • INTERMEDIATE INDEPENDENT STUDY (ANTH 291)
  • Contemporary Issues in Anthropology (ANTH 310)
  • ADVANCED INDEPENDENT STUDY (LAM 402)

Phone (207) 725-3817
Title Associate Professor
Department SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
Work Location 212 Adams Hall
E-Mail kvanvlee@bowdoin.edu
 
Bowdoin College: Sociology

Education

M.A., Ph.D. Michigan
B.S. Beloit College

Krista Van Vleet's research focuses on the practices and politics of kinship and gender among Native Andeans in Bolivia. She is particularly interested in how discourses of emotion, such as 'love' and 'envy' are mobilized by individuals of different generations and genders and how these discourses are situated in a changing social, political, and economic context. Her most recent research focuses on narrative and religion and explores the ways Andean Catholics, international missionaries, and evangelical Protestants in Bolivia express divergent conceptions of morality and gendered identity. She is also currently engaged in research on the interrelationships of narrative and non-verbal expression, and is exploring the use of digital video in research and teaching. She teaches courses in Anthropology, some of which are also cross-listed in Latin American Studies, Women's Studies, and Gay and Lesbian Studies.

Research Interests

Kinship, gender and sexuality; narrative; language and identity; emotion discourse; violence; feminist theory; religion, popular culture; Andean South America, Latin America.

Research Activities

Ethnographic and interview research on evangelical Protestant missionization and narratives of conversion among Quechua-speaking migrants. Sucre, Bolivia (January-March 2003).

Ethnographic research on Catholic marriage classes including participant observation and interviews. Sullk'ata, Bolivia (August 2000) and Sucre, Bolivia (March 2001).

Ethnographic research on kinship, narrative, and violence in a Quechua-speaking community of 50 families based on open-ended interviews, participant observation, and local archival research. Sullk'ata, Bolivia (December 1994 to July 1996).

Selected Publications

(forthcoming, Spring 2007) Relative Intimacies: Performing Kinship and Narrating Violence in the Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Natives Making Nation(2005) "Dancing on the Borderlands: Girls (Re)Fashioning Kinship and Citizenship." In Natives Making Nation: Gender, Indigeneity and the Nation-State in the Andes. Edited by Andrew Canessa. Pp. 107-129. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

2003a "Adolescent Ambiguities and the Negotiation of Belonging in the Andes." Ethnology 42(4): 349-363.
Abstract »

2003b "Partial Theories: Gossip, Envy, and Ethnography in the Andes." Ethnography 4(4): 1-29.
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2002a "The Intimacies of Power: Rethinking Violence and Kinship in the Andes." American Ethnologist 29(3): 567-601.

2002b "Repensando la violencia y el parentesco en los Andes d Bolivia." T'inkazos 12: 11-39.

2002c "En torno a la violencia en contra de las mujeres. Respuesta-Comentario de Krista Van Vleet." T'inkazos 12: 55-58.

2000 "Surtout, ne vous endormez jamais dans un bus...Le dialogisme dans la narration quechua méridionale." Co-authored with Bruce Mannheim. In Les Rituals du dialogue: Promenades Ethnolinguistiques en Terres Amérindiennes (Proceedings from the 49th Annual Meetings of the International Congress of Americanists). Edited by Aurore Monod-Becquelin and Philippe Erikson. Pp. 29-78. Nanterre, France: Société d'ethnologie.

1999 "'Now my daughter is alone': Performing Kinship and Embodying Affect in Marriage Practices among Native Andeans in Bolivia." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, The University of Michigan.

1998 "The Dialogics of Southern Quechua Narrative." Co-authored with Bruce Mannheim. American Anthropologist 100(2): 326-346.
Abstract »

Selected Presentations

"Narrating Ambiguous Boundaries: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Highland Bolivia." To be presented at the XXVI Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 15-18, 2006.

"Encountering Almas: Emergent Sociality, Public Emotion, and Agentive Corporeality among the Dead and the Living in Bolivia." Presented at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington D.C., December 3, 2005.

Organizer and Chair of Panel "Intimate Anxieties: Embodied Emotion, Emergent Religiosity, and Narrated Lives in Neoliberal Bolivia" at the Joint Meeting of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Psychological Anthropology, San Diego, California, April 7-10, 2005.

"I Was the Champion!": Performing Masculinities and Negotiating Belonging in Transnational Narratives of Ritual Battles. Presented at the Third International Gender and Language Association Conference, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, June 5-7, 2004.

"Performing Kinship and Citizenship: Children’s Agency and the Negotiation of Identities in Bolivia." Presented as part of the Invited Panel (SLAA) "Ñustas, Natives and the Nation: Gender, Indigeneity and the State in Highland South America," at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 20-24, 2001.

"A political economy of emotion: Gossip, envy, and ethnography in the Andes." Presented at the 99th Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA, November 16-19, 2000.

"Stealing women and remembering souls: Narrative, Performance, and Gender in the Andes." Presented at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, IL, November 17-21, 1999.

Co-Organizer and Chair of Panel, "Lived Bodies, Spoken Memories: Gender, Narrative, and Embodiment," 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, IL, November 17-21, 1999.

"Warmi Suwapuna: Andean Love, Consumer Desire, and Gendered Performances during a Bolivian Carnival." Presented at the XXI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, September 24-26, 1998.

"'Now my daughter is alone': Sentiments and Violence among Affines in the Bolivian Andes." Presented at the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington D.C., November 19-23, 1997.

"Porque no se debe dormir en el ómnibus: Dialogue and Dialogicity in Southern Quechua Narrative." Presented at the 49th International Congress of Americanists, Quito, Ecuador, July 7-12, 1997.

Selected Awards and Fellowships

Kenan Fellowship, Bowdoin College, 2002-2005. "Transnational Cosmologies: Narrating Identity and Power among Migrants and Missionaries in the Bolivian Andes."

Richard Carley Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 2003. "Performing Kinship: Narratives of Intimacy, Embodiments of Power in the Bolivian Andes."

Joseph Criscenti Prize for Best Article, 2003, New England Council of Latin American Studies. Awarded for "The Intimacies of Power: Rethinking Violence and Kinship in the Andes" (American Ethnologist, 2002)

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1995-1996

Professional Affiliations

American Anthropological Association
American Ethnological Society
Association for Feminist Anthropology
Society for Latin American Anthropology
New England Council of Latin American Studies
International Gender and Language Association