Congratulations to Paulla Ebron, Winner of the 2022-2023 Wenner-Gren Fellowship in Anthropology and Black Experiences!
The School for Advanced Research (SAR), in Santa Fe, New Mexico, administers the Wenner-Gren Fellowship in Anthropology and Black Experiences in collaboration with the Foundation. The purpose of this fellowship is to expand the anthropological conversation and build capacity in anthropology as a career and field of study, amplifying perspectives previously underrepresented in the discipline. Our inaugural winner is Paulla Ebron for her project, "Making Tropical Africa in the Georgia Sea Islands."
My book, tentatively entitled Making Tropical Africa in the Georgia Sea Islands, describes how the Gullah-Geechee region of the southeastern United States came into being—and continues to shape Black culture. I consider three kinds of region making: cultural representations, which contribute to a sense of collective “memory”; landscape reformations through the plantation economy; and political mobilizations for literacy and civil rights. The book project moves across varied forms of evidence, including ethnography, texts, and images, to show both semiotic and material emergence of this region, known for its imagined tropicality and African culture.