Sónia Silva
Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Office:  Tisch Learning Ctr 226
Tel:     (518) 580-5418
Email:  ssilva@skidmore.edu

EDUCATION

• PhD, Sociocultural Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1999
• Master of Arts, Sociocultural Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1995
• Licenciatura (BA), Social Anthropology, University of Lisbon, Portugal, 1991

REGIONAL FOCUS

• Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Central and Southern Africa

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

• Ritual and religion; Performance; Social suffering; Personhood; Embodiment; Art and material culture; Social memory; Forced displacement and refugees; Issues of representation; Social theory; Ethnographic writing

COURSES

• Africa in Stereotypes (SSP101-001)
• Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (AN101)
• Sub-Saharan Africa from a Cultural Perspective (AN227)
• Thinking Through Objects (AN251C)
• History of Anthropological Thought (AN270)
• Ritual & Religion (AN343)

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

• Along an African Border: Angolan Refugees and Their Divination Baskets. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (Contemporary Ethnography Series), 2011. Pp. 192.
• Vidas em Jogo: Cestas de Adivinhação e Refugiados Angolanos na Zâmbia. Foreword by Michael Jackson. Lisbon: Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 2004. Pp. 237 [in Portuguese].
• A Vez dos Cestos/ Time for Baskets. Lisbon: Museu Nacional de Etnologia, 2003. Pp. 186 [in Portuguese and English]. This book accompanied an ethnographic exhibit held at the Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Lisbon, in the same year.

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

• Remarks on Similarity in Ritual Classification: Affliction, Divination, Object Animation.  History of Religions (In Press).
  
• Reification and Fetishism: Processes of Transformation.  Theory, Culture & Society 30(1)(2013): 79-98.
  
• Creativity Revisited: Narration and Embodiment in African Art.  Museum Anthropology Review 6 (1) (2012):1-22.
  
• Mothers of Solitude: Childlessness and Intersubjectivity in the Upper Zambezi. Anthropology and Humanism 34 (2) (2009):179-202.
• Mães da Solidão: Socialidade, Empatia e Emoções no Sul da África Central. Etnográfica 9 (2) (2005):313-330 [in Portuguese].
• The Birth of a Divination Basket. In Chokwe! Art and Initiation among the Chokwe and Related Peoples, edited by Manuel Jordán, 141-151. Munich: Prestel, 1998.

SHORTER PUBLICATIONS

• Review of Makishi: Masked Characters of Zambia, by Manuel Jordán (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2006). Museum Anthropology Review 4 (1) (2010).
• Personhood. The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by F. Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo, 2:215-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Basketry: Africa. African Folklore: An Encyclopedia, edited by Philip Peek and Kwesi Yankah, 20-23. New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Review of The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone, by Mariane C. Ferme (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2001). American Ethnologist 29 (3) (2002):759-760.
• Review of Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda, by Susan R. Whyte (Cambridge University Press, 1997). American Ethnologist 28 (1) (2001):216-217.

CURATORIAL WORK

• A Vez dos Cestos/ Time for Baskets, an ethnographic exhibition curated for the National Museum of Ethnology, Lisbon, 2003.

FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND HONORS

• Research Associate, Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2004–present
• Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, 2001–2004
• Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Smithsonian Institution, 1999–2000
• Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation, 1995–1996
• Doctoral Research Fellowship, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Portugal, 1994–1996
• Foreign Fulbright Fellow, Fulbright-Hays, 1992–1994