Brackette F. Williams is an American

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

, and Senior Justice Advocate,

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is an American grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the s ...

. She is currently an associate professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Arizona. Williams graduated from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

with a BS, from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

with a master's in Education, and from the

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. She has taught at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...

, the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...

, the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, and the

. Her work has centered on the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

region, and in particular, examined how racial and ethnic categories are reproduced in

Guyana Guyana, officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern coast of South America, part of the historic British West Indies. entry "Guyana" Georgetown, Guyana, Georgetown is the capital of Guyana and is also the co ...

nationalism. Categories and classification systems - how they are developed, what basis they have in cultural contexts, and how they are put to use, by whom and for whom - have been a general theme in her work as well. Williams's

ethnographic Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

work on the categories informing

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...

in the United States demonstrates has also been an interest. She was editor of the journal ''Transforming Anthropology''.

Awards

* 1997

MacArthur Fellows Program The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and ...

* 2008 Soros Justice Fellowships

Works

*Williams, Brackette F. 1989. "A Class Act: Anthropology and the Race to Nation Across Ethnic Terrain." ''Annual Review of Anthropology'' 18: 401– 444. *Williams, Brackette F. 1991
''Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle''
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, . *Williams, Brackette F. 1995. Classification Systems Revisited: Kinship, Caste, Race, and Nationality as the Flow of Blood and the Spread of Rights. In ''Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis,'' ed. Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney, 201-236. London: Routledge. *Williams, Brackette F., ed. 1996
"A Race of Men, A Class of Women"
''Women out of place: the gender of agency and the race of nationality'', Routledge, . *Williams, Brackette F. 2005
"Getting out of the Hole"
''South Atlantic Quarterly'' 104(3):481-499 *Williams, Brackette F. 2008. “‘Dominando’ os bárbaros: Barbados, ativismo abolicionista e classificação da pena de morte.” ''Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 23'' (68): 23-39.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Brackette American anthropologists Cornell University alumni University of Arizona alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni Duke University faculty Queens College, City University of New York faculty The New School faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty Johns Hopkins University faculty University of Chicago faculty University of Arizona faculty MacArthur Fellows Living people 1955 births