Dr. Erickson received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000. She conducted research with the Yaquis of northern Mexico. Her dissertation, "Ethnic Places, Gendered Spaces: the Expressive Constitution of Yaqui Identities" focuses on Yaqui women's verbal and non-verbal production of gendered and ethnic identities of self. Dr. Erickson is currently working on a manuscript that examines the articulation of space, place, and memory in Yaqui identity narratives. Her teaching interests include Native American culture and social history, Indians of the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico, the politics of representation, linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics and semiotics, social theory, gender, U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and the anthropology of space and place.

Publications:

“They will come from the other side of the sea”: Prophecy, Ethnogenesis, and Agency in Yaqui Narrative. Journal of American Folklore 116 (462): 465-482, Fall 2003.

Moving Stories: Displacement and Return in the Narrative Production of Yaqui Identity.  Anthropology and Humanism 28 (2): 139-154, Winter 2003.

This Weeping Land: Place, Relationality, and the Narrative Negotiation of Yaqui Identity

(Book project – in process.)

Courses Taught:

ANTH 1023: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

ANTH 3173: Introduction to Linguistics

ANTH 3213: Indians of North America

ANTH 4263: Identity and Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

ANTH 5153: Cultural Core

ANTH 5153: Performance, Narrative and Identity

Professional Presentations:

“Monitoring Sadness, Containing Trouble: Dangerous Emotions in a Yaqui Community.” Paper presented at American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, 2003.

 “Lutu’uria: Truth, Co-Presence, and Ethnographic Practical Consciousness.” Paper presented at American Ethnological Society (AES) Annual Meeting, 2003.

“The Virgin Mary brought me here to the house: Power, Gender, and Domestic Sacred

Space in Yaqui Healing Narratives.”  Paper presented at annual meeting of the

Society for the Anthropology of Religion, 2002.

“‘So That I Might Care for the Poor’: Power and Subversion in Yaqui Healing Narratives.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 2001. 

“Yaqui Identity and the Idiom of Endurance: Historical Consciousness, Gendered Practices, and Anthropological Constructions.”  Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 1999. 

“Places of Testimony: Narrating the Yaqui Homeland.”  Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 1998.