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Jennifer Curtis

Jennifer Curtis
Name
Dr Jennifer Curtis
Title
Postdoctoral Fellow
Address
Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
Email
URL
http://www.san.ed.ac.uk/people/honorary_fellows/curtis_jennifer

Research Interests

  • Political and legal anthropology
  • Human and civil rights
  • Social movements
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Gender and Sexuality
  • History and memory
  • Political violence and conflict resolution
  • Urban space 
  • Linguistic anthropology

Biographical Statement 

Jennifer Curtis received her AB from Harvard University and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis.  Her work focuses on how grassroots social movements appropriate and alter rights discourse and law. She has conducted long-term ethnographic research in Belfast, Northern Ireland and in the United States.  She is currently completing an ethnographic monograph on race, sexuality, and rights in red state America, based on fieldwork in Missouri. The book explores the local and national significance of #BlackLivesMatter, movements for LGBT equality, and anti-equality movements, within the broader historical context of racialized violence, slavery, and inequality in the US south.

Selected Publications

2014  Human Rights As War By Other Means:  Peace Politics in Northern Ireland. Philadelphia PA:  University of Pennsylvania Press.

2013  "Pride and Prejudice: Gay Rights and Political Moderation in Belfast." Sociological Review.

2012  (with Jonathan Spencer) 'Anthropology and the Political.' in R. Fardon et al., (eds) Sage Handbook of Social Anthropology. London: Sage.

2011  “Spillover Discussion with Jim Ferguson, Akhil Gupta, and Jennifer Curtis.” PoLAR:  Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(2).  Special Issue “Getting It Done:  Ethnography of and in NGOs.” http://www.aaanet.org/sections/apla/polar.html

2010  "'Profoundly Ungrateful':  The Paradoxes of Thatcherism in Northern Ireland." PoLAR:  Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(2):  201-224.

Public Engagement

BBC Radio 4, "Thinking Allowed," 21 October 2015
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06j57f3

BBC Radio 4, "Thinking Allowed," 10 February 2014 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03sztx5

"LGBT Advocacy in Northern Ireland," Penn Press Log, 11 August 2014 http://pennpress.typepad.com/pennpresslog/2014/08/lgbt-advocacy-in-northern-ireland.html