Ph.D. 1978 Brown University
University Distinguished Professor
Heroy Hall 451
(214) 768-4254
cbrettel@smu.edu
Recent Happenings
Dr. Brettell was recently asked to speak at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on the influx of immigrants to Nebraska over the last several years. Click here to see an article written on her talk.
Dr. Brettell was recently interviewed by KERA radio. Please click here for a podcast of that interview.
Bio
Caroline Brettell joined the faculty of Southern Methodist University in 1988. In 2003, she was named Dedman Family Distinguished Professor and in 2009 University Distinguished Professor. She served as Director of Women's Studies from 1989-1994 and as Chair of Anthropology from 1994-2004, as well as Dean ad Interim of Dedman College, 2006-2008. She was born and raised in Montreal and received her B.A. in Latin American Studies from Yale University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University. In 2000-2001, she served as President of the Social Science History Association and between 1996 and 1998, she was President of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe (SAE). She served as President of the SMU Faculty Senate and as a member of the SMU Board of Trustees in 2001-2002. She served as a member of the selection committee for the International Dissertation Research Program for the Social Science Research Council (2003-2005) and for their International Migration Program (2000-2002). She has also served as a member of SNEM-3 Scientific Review Panel, National Institute of Health (1999-2003). Among her research interests are: migration and immigration, the cross-cultural study of gender, the intersections of anthropology and history, and European ethnography, particularly Portugal. Other interests include ethnicity, historical demography and family history, kinship, and the anthropological study of religion.
Brettell's recent research on immigration includes one funded by the National Science Foundation, focusing on the DFW metroplex as a new city of immigration and how immigrants are incorporated into the economic, social, and political structures of a sunbelt city. Another, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, explores aspects of citizenship practice and civic engagement among Asian Indian immigrants in the DFW area. A third addresses the experience of a group of post-colonial migrants, Goans, who left Portuguese India after the "liberation" (or "invasion" from Portugal's perspective) of Goa in 1961 and settled in Lisbon.
Exploring the Relationships Among Anthropology, History, Gender, and Migration
Dr. Caroline Brettell's work has focused on the comparative and interdisciplinary study of population movement across time and space. She was a pioneer in exploring the role of women in the migration process in her monographs Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait (1986) and We Have Already Cried Many Tears (1982/1995), and in a co-edited volume International Migration: The Female Experience (1986). In Men Who Migrate, a work that combines anthropology with historical demography, she looked at the impact of emigration on marriage and fertility patterns in northern Portugal over two and a half centuries. Her book Anthropology and Migration, a collection of essays, explores a host of questions pertinent to the study of migration from an anthropological and historical perspective. A recent co-edited volume, with Deborah Reed-Danahay, explores citizenship and the political integration of immigrants in the U.S. and Europe. And a book co-authored with Deborah Reed-Danahay looks at the citizenship practices of Indian and Vietnamese immigrants.
Dr. Brettell is also extremely interested in both theory and methodology and has often published essays on these topics as they emerge from her research. The essay "Anthropology, Gender and Narrative", for example, looks back on the development of feminist anthropology and also addresses the role of life history in anthropological writing - a method Brettell has used herself in We Have Already Cried Many Tears and in her book about her own mother, Writing Against the Wind (1999). The essay "Gendered Lives" wrestles with how historical records are "transformed" into social scientific data; and the essay "The Individual/Agent and Culture/Structure" (Brettell's 2001 Presidential Address to the Social Science History Association) traces the dialogue between and among these concepts in the social sciences during the 20th century. Another edited book, When They Read What We Write, a response to some of the debates in reflexive anthropology, explores the reactions of anthropological informants to how they are portrayed in anthropological writing. A recent essay, "Anthropology, Migration, and Comparative Consciousness" explores the significance of a comparative framework to the study of population movements.
Memberships and Affiliations:
American Anthropological Association
Society for Applied Anthropology
Society for the Anthropology of Europe
Society for Urban, National and Transnational Anthropology
American Ethnological Society
Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
Social Science History Association