Ana-Maurine Lara

Pronouns:  She/Her/Hers

Associate Professor

William and Susan Piché Faculty Fellow

WGSS – UOregon

 

AB, Anthropology (Harvard-Radcliffe University)

MPhil, Anthropology (Yale University)

PhD, Anthropology (Yale University)

Joint Program in African American Studies, Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

 

Professional Biography (150 words):

Ana-Maurine Lara (PhD) is currently an Associate Professor and the William and Susan Piché Faculty Fellow in the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies department at the University of Oregon. Lara’s work focuses on questions of Black and Indigenous people and freedom. She is a national award-winning poet, novelist, performance artist and scholar. She is the author of: Erzulie’s Skirt (RedBone Press, 2006), When the Sun Once Again Sang to the People (KRK Ediciones, 2011), Watermarks and Tree Rings (Tanama Press, 2011) Kohnjehr Woman (RedBone Press, 2017), Cantos (letterpress, limited edition 2015), and Sum of Parts (Tanama Press, 2019). She has led numerous performances including the collaboration piece, Sanctuary (2021), Landlines (2015) among others. Her academic books include: Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty (SUNY Press, 2020)  – winner of the Gregory Bateson Book Prize (Society for Cultural Anthropology) and the Ruth Benedict Prize (Association of Queer Anthropologists); and Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic (Rutgers University Press, 2021) – which received an honorable mention for the Isis  Duarte Book Prize. She has been published in numerous literary and scholarly journals (Sable LitMag, Transitions Literary Journal, Small Axe, Bilingual Revue, Sargasso, Feminist Review) and anthologies. Her collaborative digital humanities, The Healers Project, recently received an Honorary Mention from the Latin American Studies Association and has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Dominican Studies Institute, and the University of Oregon.