Karen Morris

Liberal Arts & Visual and Critical Studies
Faculty

Background

Education
• Ph.D., Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University, C.A. 2005
• M.A., Anthropology, Stanford University, C.A. 1999
• B.A. with honors, Anthropology, Davidson College, N.C. 1996
• Study Abroad, Université de Niamey, Niger, West Africa, 1994

Personal statement

Karen Morris joined SAIC in 2005. She is currently assistant professor of cultural anthropology in Liberal Arts and Visual & Critical Studies. Karen's research and writing focus on the role of new media practices and transnational populations in national affairs within the context of neoliberal global capitalism and increasingly transnational forms of governance and crisis. Since 1998, she has conducted ethnographic research in both Côte d'Ivoire and within the Ivoirian diaspora in the United States. Karen is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Blood on the Cocoa: Transnational Mediations of a "National" Crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, in which she examines the circulation of "news" between diasporic Ivoirians and their friends and families in Côte d'Ivoire during what has come to be know as la crise ivoirienne, or The Ivoirian Crisis, in order to reveal a discourse that is deeply nationalistic.

Current Interests

Cultural anthropology; representation; politics of difference; mass media and public culture; nationalism and transnationalism; diasporas and nation-states; theories of globalization, postcoloniality, and neoliberalism; transnational manifestations of war and crisis; ideas of “Africa”; West Africa and the United States