Kay Warren
Charles C. Tillinghast Jr. '32 Professor in International Studies and Professor of Anthropology; Director Pembroke Center.:
Department of Anthropology; Pembroke Center
Phone:
Kay_Warren@brown.edu
PhD Princeton University 1974
Brown University Research Profile Page for Kay Warren
Interests
Kay Warren received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Princeton University in 1974. She served on the senior faculties of Princeton (1982-1998), where she chaired the Department of Anthropology for four years, and Harvard (1998-2003) before coming to Brown in 2003. She is the Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. '32 Professor in International Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Brown. Warren is currently directing the Pembroke Center advanced research seminar on "Markets and Bodies in Transnational Perspective." She directed the Politics, Culture, and Identity Program at the Watson Institute for International Studies, where she had a joint appointment with Anthropology, from 2003-2009.
Warren's most recent research on international norms, human trafficking, and foreign aid has focused on Colombia, Japan, and Washington. Her earlier projects focused on Guatemala and Peru. Warren's wider research agenda has involved multi-sited ethnographic studies of counterinsurgency wars, community responses to violence and peace processes, indigenous intellectuals, the anthropology of multi-cultural democracies, and gender and politics. She also works on documentary film and media issues.
Warren's major awards include a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, Abe Fellowship (Japan), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Fellowship, Member of Institute for Advanced Study, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Wenner-Gren Fellowship, and the Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures. She has been a delegate to the Global Agenda and the Global Redesign initiatives of the World Economic Forum since 2008.
PUBLICATIONS: BOOKS
Human Trafficking, Transnationalism, and the Law: Global Solutions, Local Realities (in process)
Japanese Aid and the Construction of Global Development: Inescapable Solutions, co-edited with David Leheny. London: Routledge, 2010. (available now)
Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State. Co-edited with Jean Jackson. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Life in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change. Co-edited with Carol Greenhouse and Beth Mertz. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998
The Violence Within: Cultural and Political Opposition in Divided Nations. Edited volume. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993.
Women of the Andes: Patriarchy and Social Change in Two Peruvian Towns. Coauthored with Susan C. Bourque. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981.
The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. Second edition, 1989.
For her published articles, see http://research.brown.edu/myresearch/Kay_Warren
Teaching
AN 128/IR 137. VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA examines the role of diverse media and media makers in constructing and shaping our understandings of violent conflict on the global stage. The course contrasts the ways in which cultural, cognitive, evolutionary, sociological, political, and psychodynamic theories reverberate in media representations and offer explanations to the public of the cause, effect, and dynamics of violence. The course examines how media makers tactically use "cultural," "racial," "ethnic," "gender," "sexual," and "status" differences in order to naturalize their versions of conventionally accepted motives behind violent acts. We interrogate the ways in which forms of violence are thought of as "individual," "interpersonal," or "collective," as "religious" vs. "ethnic," "racial" vs. "non-racial," "female" vs. "male," and "state-sponsored" vs. "terrorist." Throughout the course, we will explore case studies of violent conflict and news reporting – 9/11, the Cold War, counterinsurgency wars in Latin America, the war in Iraq, international trafficking in persons, the Rodney King beating, the "troubles" of Northern Ireland, the Rwandan genocide, the Columbine school shootings, the Brandon Teena killing, and the Vincent Chin murder.
We will consider the ways in which victims of violence are represented in different times and places, the appropriation of suffering and trauma by wider institutions, and the gendered dimension of images of suffering. The course examines the role of mass media in intensifying, marginalizing, ignoring, and censoring violence, as well as its role in preventing and defusing violence. We study the multiple subject positions and political interests involved in the circulation and consumption of diverse forms of media: from documentary films, Hollywood blockbusters, and television to digital media of all sorts, from intimate oral testimonies to political art and experimental theatre. At issue are the ways mainstream media and counter-media challenge each other as they portray our world and its news.
Web Links
- Kay Warren named director of Pembroke Center
- 2010 Intellectual Mission of the Pembroke Center
- Warren to Address New Students September 7, 2004
Curriculum Vitae
