Ruti Talmor

Biography

Ruti Talmor is the Center's 2009-11 Mellon Post-Doc Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology.  She holds a B.A. in Art History, a Certificate in Culture and Media, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from New York University (2008). Talmor came to Haverford from the University of Michigan, where she was the DuBois-Mandela-Rodney Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies in 2008-2009.

Research

Drawing on her training in anthropology and her background in art and documentary film, Ruti Talmor's work combines visual, oral, and archival history with ethnographic methodologies.  She works in Ghana, the Ghanaian diaspora, and global tourism and art systems, investigating art worlds as intercultural zones where globally-circulating cultural and discursive models of Africa provide a contentious, shared language for Ghanaians and foreigners.  She explores how participation in art worlds past and present as well as engagements with media representations of Africa transform notions of gender, race, nation, knowledge, and power, and serve as a conduit for cosmopolitan ambitions, transnational desires, and political struggles for Africans, members of the African diaspora, and Westerners.

Courses: Fall 2009, Haverford

Courses: Spring 2010, Haverford