Department of
Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
Old Main 330, University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Phone: (479) 575-2508; Fax: (479) 575-6595
E-mail: chitt@uark.edu
Maintained by Web Guy
JoAnn D'Alisera
Associate Professor
Ph.D. University of Illinois 1997
West Africa
Africans in America
Islam
American Islam
Symbolic and interpretive anthropology
Religion
Material culture
Transnational communities and identities
Dr. D'Alisera received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1997. In her book An Imagined Geography: Sierra Leonean Muslims in America, she focuses on the way in which Sierra Leonean Muslims seek to preserve nostalgic images of "back home," and how they and their children come to view Africa through negative popular imaginings they encounter in the United States.
Selected Recent Publications
- An Imagined Geography: Sierra Leonean Muslims in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
- "Icons of Longing: Homeland and Memory in the Sierra Leonean Diaspora." PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 25(2):73-89, 2002.
- "I ♥ Islam: Popular Religious Commodities, Sites of Inscription, and Transnational Sierra Leonean Identity." Journal of Material Culture 6(1): 89-108, 2001.
- "Field of Dreams: The Anthropologist Far Away at Home." Anthropology and Humanism 24(1): 5-19, 1999.
- "Born in the USA: Naming Ceremonies of Infants among Sierra Leoneans in the American Capital." Anthropology Today 14:16-18, 1998.
Courses Taught
- ANTH 1023H Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
- ANTH 3123 The Anthropology of Religion
- ANTH 4363 Museums, Material Culture, and the Popular Imagination
- ANTH 4513 African Religions: Gods, Witches, Ancestors
- ANTH 4583 Peoples and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa
- ANTH 5153 The Anthropology of the City