MARK AUSLANDER
Mellon Fellow in African Art and Aesthetics
Department of Anthropology
Brandeis University
Project title: "Space and Place in African-American
Families"
My research examines historical memory, narrative and ritual performance
in African-American families in Georgia. I am especially interested
in experiences of space and place, at local and "translocal" levels.
In what ways are families' understandings of themselves and of kinship
linkages structured by enduring (or emergent) linkages with geographical
site--such as cemeteries, current and former neighborhoods, former
plantations, business districts, farms, and parks--and with spatial
microenvironments--such as house interiors, yards and gardens, street
corners, family plots, and specific trees? I am particularly intrigued
by recent initiatives to reclaim local landscapes and the histories
embedded within them, including family trips to cemeteries and old
slave-based plantations, family geneological research into African-American
and Native American kinship links in rural Georgia, and pilgrimages
to the Carribean and Africa.
In our work on The Newton County African-American Family Research
Project, my students and I document and attempt to understand the
roles played by narrative, story-telling, architecture, landscape,
and ritual performance in the lives of African-American families
in this Georgia county. For more information about this project,
please visit the Newton County
African-American Family Research Project page of this website.
"Something
We Need to Get Back To: Mythologies of Origin and Rituals of Solidarity
in African American Working Families"
(Working Paper 006-02) April 2002
Mark Auslander
"The Myth of Kitty:
Paradoxes of Blood, Law and Slavery in a Georgia Community"
(Working Paper 001-01) January 2001
Mark Auslander
"Taking
Difference Seriously: Considering Race in Work-Family Studies"
in
the Sloan Research Network Newsletter. Fall 2002. Volume
4(3)
"Rituals
of the Family" in the Sloan Work-Family Encyclopedia.
"Rituals
of the Workplace" in the Sloan Work-Family Encyclopedia.
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