Laura R. Graham
Associate Professor
Office: 223 Macbride Hall/17A Macbride Hall 
Phone: (319) 335-0517
laura-graham@uiowa.edu
Background:
Laura Graham’s current work focuses on native peoples of lowland South American activities in national and international arenas. She concentrates on two prominent and especially politically engaged groups: Xavante of central Brazil (Ge) and the Wayúu (Arawak, also known as Guajiro) of Venezuela and Colombia. Her research ethnographically documents and analyses ways in which native peoples engage and represent themselves to outsiders, asking what forms of self representation they select, what factors inform their decisions, and what effects their outreach work has on individual lives and subjectivities, internal dynamics within communities, and broader political arenas. The research emphasizes documentation and analysis of instances of actual spoken discourse, use of new media technologies (audio, video, computers, world wide web), and presentations of ritual behaviors in contexts where outsiders constitute the primary audience. Graham is particularly interested in notions of cultural consciousness, control of cultural and intellectual property, and image and cultural work as forms of politics and advocacy. Much of Graham’s work promotes engaged ethnography and participant advocacy.
Laura Graham is past chair and current emeritus member of the American Anthropological Association's Committee for Human Rights (CfHR). She chairs CfHR's Task Group on Language and Social Justice. From 1994-2005 she directed the Xavante Education Fund, a Cultural Survival Special Project and now serves as a coordinator of Xavante Warã Association's projects with Cultural Survival. She has served as a consultant for World Wildlife Fund and UNICEF and works actively to support projects that benefit indigenous communities. She has served as anthropologist on several recently documentary films on Wayúu peoples. Among her immediate projects is the book she is now writing tentatively entitled, Xavante in Public: re-presenting and performing "Indianness" in the public sphere and the collaborative ethnographic film, "Owners of the Water: Conflict and Collaboration over Rivers," that she codirected with Caimi Waiásse (Xavante, Brazil) and David Hernández Palmar (Wayuu, Venezuela). She is also coordinating a collaborative indigenous video project that brings together Xavante and Wayúu indigenous filmmakers and focuses on the centrality of dreams, cultural beliefs and practices related to dreaming and dream sharing among Wayúu and Xavante peoples.
Courses Taught: Language, Culture and Communication Multimedia Ethnography |
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