Examines Zora Neale Hurston's work, particularly her collection of folklore and ethnography of the American South, "Mules and Men." Looks at the author's role, the ways the ethnographer inscribes herself into the text, and speculates about Hurston's understanding of the limits of the impersonal researcher.
"While plotting out the journeys that paved the way for their creative and innovative work in Afro-Cuban and African American ethnography, this study will address their bifocal vision as insider-outsiders within the minority cultures they represent in folktales and within the 'foreign' cultures to which they traveled. Cabrera's and Hurston's roles as 'native ethnographers' will also be considered. In creating alternatives to traditional ethnographies, such as Franz Boas's Bella Bella Tales (1932), their collections can be understood as early examples of experimental and feminist ethnography." (author)
"The 'spy-glass of Anthropology,' Zora Neale Hurston's telling metaphor for anthropological training under Franz Boaz during her Barnard years, is the most quoted and least interpreted image in a body of work remarkable for its rich configuration." --The Author
Since July 4, 1991, a new constitution has allowed Colombians to exercise their citizenship by displaying cultural diversity rather than by concealing it as required by the previous political charter. Paradoxically, invisibility continues not only to impede full ethnic inclusion of Afro-Colombians but to aggravate ethnic asymmetries that, in turn, erode nonviolent coexistence among the black and Indian people who have shared portions of the Baudo River valley (Department of Choco) for at least 150 years.
