Biografia
Deborah Ann Thomas (born 1966) is an American anthropologist and filmmaker. She is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published books and articles on the history, culture, and politics of Jamaica; and on human rights, sexuality, and globalization in the Caribbean arena. She has co-produced and co-directed two experimental films, and has co-curated a multimedia exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2016, she began a four-year term as editor-in-chief of the journal American Anthropologist. Before pursuing her career as an anthropologist, Thomas performed as a professional dancer with Urban Bush Women, a New York dance company that used art to promote social equity by illuminating the experiences of disenfranchised people. == Education and career == Thomas received her B.A. in semiotics with honors from Brown University in 1988. She continued her education at New York University, earning an M.A. in 1994 from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and a Ph.D. in 2000 from the Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation, entitled "'Tradition's not an intelligence thing': Jamaican cultural politics and the ascendence of modern blackness," focused on the intersection of identity and politics in Jamaica in the 1990s. It served as the foundation for her first book, Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica. After a short time as adjunct professor at NYU, Thomas was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Americas at Wesleyan University from 2000 to 2002. From there, she secured an appointment at Duke University, where she was an assistant professor, in both the Department of Cultural Anthropology and the Women's Studies Program (now Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies), between 2002 and early 2006. In January 2006, she was promoted to associate professor. In 2006, Thomas joined the faculty in the department of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania as an associate professor. In 2011, she became the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and between 2009 and 2012 and 2015–2017, she served as chair of the anthropology graduate group. In addition to her appointment in the department of anthropology, Thomas was an affiliate in Penn's Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies program; and secured a secondary appointment in Penn's Graduate School of Education. == Scholarship == Deborah A. Thomas has written three books and has published one edited volume, focusing on Jamaican culture and politics. Her studies of Jamaican life have illuminated what is known as the "rude boy" street subculture in Kingston, whose participants have often drawn inspiration in their fashion and comportment from Hollywood cowboy and gangster films and from jazz and soul musical genres. Her research has also explored the continuing legacies of coloni
