Faculty Guide

Title

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Anthropology
Latin American and Latino Studies

Expertise

Economic anthropology, Property and value, Latin America, Mexico.

Profile

My interests lie in Mexico and U.S.-Mexican relations, and in silver mining, with special focus on theoretical concepts of patrimony and the production of value. My current book project looks at the extraction, circulation and consumption of mineral specimens from Mexican mines, by miners, dealers, collectors, curators and mineralogists, to see how these transactions manifest and influence the experience of transnational space.
This project addresses questions of great interest in the fields of popular culture, migration, and politics, but from a fresh perspective.

In the future, I plan to research the recently enhanced activities of Canadian mining companies in Mexico, focusing on several localiteis. I am especially interested in the role of NGOs and Corporate Social Responsibility projects in these places, and their understanding of longstanding debates within Mexican mining localities over the proper role of corporations in society.

At Brandeis, I teach courses in economic anthropology, power and violence, Latin American ethnography, development, and the anthropology of food.

Awards and Honors

Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer '69 and Joseph Neubauer Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring, Brandeis University (2010)

Mandel Humanities Center/NEH award to team teach course on "Writing Across Culture: How Novelists and Anthropologists Depict the Human" in the spring of 2012 (with John Plotz) (2010)

Newhouse Center for the Humanities Fellowship, Wellesley College. (2008)

Bernstein Award for Faculty Research (2005)

Norman Award for Faculty Research (2005)

Smithsonian Institution Fellowship, Washington, D.C. (2005)

Visiting Research Fellow, Center for US-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego (1999)

Courses Taught

ANTH	20b	Feast and Famine: Food and Social Relations
ANTH	55a	Anthropology of Development
ANTH	131b	Latin America in Ethnographic Perspective
ANTH	156a	Power and Violence: The Anthropology of Political Systems
ANTH	163b	Production, Consumption, and Exchange
ANTH	181aj	Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research
ANTH	183aj	Anthropological Inquiry
ANTH	203b	Contemporary Anthropological Theory
ANTH/ENG	150a	Cases and Clues: Reading Novels and Ethnographies as Cultural Explorations
GS	202b	Critical Global Issues
GSAS	302d	Interdisciplinary Dissertation Seminar

Scholarship

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "The Discovery of the Mineral ‘Aguilarite’ and What Came Next: A Twice-Told Tale.." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. (2013). (forthcoming)

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. Minerals, Collecting, and Value across the U.S.-Mexican Border. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2013. (forthcoming)

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico´s National Parks, 1910-1940.." by Emily Wakild. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 17(3): 522-524. vol. 17(3) 2013: 522-524.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Canadian Mining and the Costs to Workers: Notes on the El Cubo/Local 142 Strike, 2010-2011." http://www.miningwatch.ca (2012)

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Economic Anthropology and its Audiences.." Anthropology of this Century http://aotcpress.com/ 5. (2012): <http://aotcpress.com/>.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "If the Miners had been Mexican:” The Chilean Mine Rescue as Mexican “Politics Machine”." Anthropology Today. (2011): vol. 27 (4) 15-18. Atelier Hermes Artist Book, Seoul, Korea. 2012 ed. 2012.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Andrés Manuel del Rio (1764-1849) The father of Mexican mineralogy." Mineralogical Record 42. 5 (2011): 487-492.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "El Patrimonio Minero." La construcción de la idea de nuestro patrimonio histórico y cultural. O de cómo hemos llegado a valorar y celebrar ciertas cosas nuestras.. Ed. Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo. Mexico City: UNAM, 2011

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Waste and Potency: Making Men with Minerals in Guanajuato and Tucson." Comparative Studies in Society and History 53. 4 (2011): 914-944.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "“If the Miners had been Mexican:” The Chilean Mine Rescue as Mexican “Politics Machine”." Anthropology Today 27. 4 (2011): 15-18.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. No Sólo Nuestro: Patrimonio, Valor y Colectivismo en Una Cooperativa Minera Guanajuatense. (translation of my book Not Ours Alone, Columbia 2005). Trans. Marcelo Damiani and Martín Árias. Mexico City/Zamora: Universidad Iberoamericana/Colegio de Michoacán., 2011.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Asuntos de Consumo: Sobre elLugar del Consumo en la Antropología de Minería.." Relaciones XXX. 1 (2010): 57-95.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Like Ziegfeld Girls Coming Down a Staircase: Exhibting Minerals at the Smithsonian." Journal of Material Culture 15. 1 (2010): 30-63.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "The World of Lucha Libre." Rev. of The World of Lucha Libre, by Heather Levi. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute vol. forthcomin

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma and Mandana Limbert, ed. Timely Assets: the Politics of Resources and their Temporalities. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press., 2008.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Moumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage." Rev. of Monumental Ambivalence: The Politics of Heritage, by Lisa Breglia. American Ethnologist 2008

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "2006 Memory as Wealth, History as Commerce: Uses of Patrimony in a Central Mexican City.." Ethos: the Journal of Psychological Anthropology 34. 2 (2006): 297-324..

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Fields of Power, Forests of Discontent: Culture, Conservation and the State in Contemporary Mexico.." Rev. of Fields of Power, Forests of Discontent: Culture, Conservation and the State in Contemporary Mexico., by Nora Haenn. Journal of Anthropological Research. vol. 62 (3) 401-403.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint." Rev. of Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint, by Paul Vanderwood. Anthropological Quarterly vol. 79(3) 561-565.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Geologies of Power: Value Transformations and Mexican Mineral Specimens." American Ethnologist 32. 3 (2005).

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value and Collectivity in Contemporary Mexico.. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Negociando la Transición: Producción Flexible, Conciencia y Calidad en Guanajuato, Mexico, 1996-2001." Guanajuato: Aportaciones Recientes para su Estudio. Ed. Moctezuma, Patricia Uzeta, Jorge & Ruíz, Juan Carlos ­. San Luis Potosi­: Colegio de San Luis and Centro D., 2004

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma Walsh, Casey Laveaga, Gabriela S. Sesia, Paola & Hill, Sarah. Social Relations of Mexican Commodities: Power, Production and Place. La Jolla: UCSD Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies., 2003.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Envisioning Power in Mexico: Legitimacy, Crisis and the Practice of Patrimony.." Journal of Historical Sociology 16. 1 (2003): 22-53.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Fetishism and Hauism in Central Mexico: Understanding Commodity Production in a Cooperative Setting." Research in Economic Anthropology 22. (2003): 261.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. "Inalienable Commodities: the Production and Circulation of Silver and Patrimony in a Mexican Mining Cooperative.." Cultural Anthropology 17. 3 (2002): 331-358.