Anthropology is a wonderful place to situate myself as a teacher, as a writer, and as a researcher. It always asks us to challenge our most fundamental assumptions and then learn how to broaden our understandings and our horizons for what we think is humanly possible.
– Joanna
Joanna Davidson is an associate professor of anthropology and associate director of Kilachand Honors College at BU. In her anthropology work, Joanna has spent a lot of time in the country of Guinea-Bissau, during which she became inspired by the natural world and learned about the different ways that naming, marriage, and death are practiced, valued, and discussed.
With MISI, Joanna wrote a series of anthropological “braided essays” on naming, marriage, and death. She compares the braided essay structure to that of a Karararaku vine, which is an unassuming yet very deliberate intertwined structure. “These three things are very central to most human experiences,” says Joanna. “They punctuate all of our lives even if they are done in different ways across time and space.” Joanna brought environmental issues to new audiences by including them in her writing and framing them as a part of life without making it the main focus.