Whitney Battle-Baptiste

Last updated
Whitney Battle-Baptiste
NationalityAmerican
Education
Known forBlack feminist archaeology
Scientific career
Fields Anthropology, archaeology
Institutions University of Massachusetts Amherst

Whitney Battle-Baptiste is an American historical archaeologist of African and Cherokee descent. She is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University. Battle-Baptiste's research focuses on "how the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality look through an archaeological lens". [1] She is also the president of American Anthropological Association. [2]

Contents

Battle-Baptiste is currently working on "Rules of Engagement: Community-Based Archaeology as a Tool for Social Justice" (Left Coast Press). [3] Her current research takes place on the Millars Plantation site on Eluethera island in the Bahamas, at a community-based archeology project. [4] She focuses on the archeology of gender and race because “if people are being written about, archaeology can be used not only to fill the gaps, but to create alternative stories and histories." [5]

Early life and education

Battle-Baptiste grew up in the Bronx and was exposed to history through her mother, who taught on Long Island. She attended Virginia State University, an HBCU in Petersburg, with the same goal, then earned her master's degree in history at The College of William and Mary. At a summer internship, she met several African-American women who were archaeologists, and this sparked her interest in the subject.

She pursued her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in the African Diaspora program in anthropology, and focused her studies on archaeology through the lens of race and gender. Her dissertation, titled “A Yard to Sweep: Race, Gender and the Enslaved Landscape” was published in 2004 and based on her research at Andrew Jackson's Tennessee plantation, The Hermitage. It explores the gender power dynamics in captive African domestic areas. [5]

Career

Battle-Baptiste has participated in archaeological excavations at Colonial Williamsburg, The Hermitage, the Rich Neck Plantation in Virginia the W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and the Millars Plantation on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. [3] [6] Battle-Baptiste was named the new Director of W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst in January 2015. "The W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the UMass Amherst Libraries was established in 2009 to engage the nation and the world in discussion and scholarship about the global issues involving race, labor and social justice." [3]

Degrees

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Massachusetts Amherst</span> Public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts, US

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public land-grant research university in Amherst, Massachusetts. It is the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system, and was founded in 1863 as the Massachusetts Agricultural College. It is also a member of the Five College Consortium, along with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. E. B. Du Bois Library</span> Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The W. E. B. Du Bois Library is one of the three libraries of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, the others being the Science and Engineering Library and the Wadsworth Library at the Mount Ida Campus. The W. E. B. Du Bois Library holds resources primarily in humanities and social and behavioral sciences. At 28 stories and 286 feet 4+18 inches tall, it is the third-tallest library in the world after the National Library of Indonesia in Jakarta at 414 feet and Shanghai Library in China at 348 feet. Measuring taller purely by height, the libraries in Jakarta and Shanghai both only have 24 floors. The W. E. B. Du Bois Library is also considered to be the tallest academic research library and 32nd tallest educational building in the world. The building maintains a security force, which is managed by various supervisors and student employees.

Landscape archaeology, a sub-discipline of archaeology and archaeological theory, is the study of the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. It is also known as archaeogeography. Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture, and is used by pre-historical, classic, and historic archaeologists. The key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites is that there is an explicit emphasis on the sites' relationships between material culture, human alteration of land/cultural modifications to landscape, and the natural environment. The study of landscape archaeology has evolved to include how landscapes were used to create and reinforce social inequality and to announce one's social status to the community at large. The field includes with the dynamics of geohistorical objects, such as roads, walls, boundaries, trees, and land divisions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gender archaeology</span> Archaeological sub-discipline

Gender archaeology is a method of studying past societies through their material culture by closely examining the social construction of gender identities and relations.

Feminist archaeology employs a feminist perspective in interpreting past societies. It often focuses on gender, but also considers gender in tandem with other factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. Feminist archaeology has critiqued the uncritical application of modern, Western norms and values to past societies. It is additionally concerned with increasing the representation of women in the discipline of archaeology, and reducing androcentric bias within the field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Graham Du Bois</span> American-Ghanaian writer, playwright, composer, and activist (1896–1977)

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Margaret W. Conkey is an American archaeologist and academic, who specializes in the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic in the French Pyrénées. Her research focuses on cave art produced during this period. Conkey is noted as one of the first archaeologists to explore the issues of gender and feminist perspectives in archaeology and in past human societies, using feminist theory to reinterpret images and objects from the Paleolithic Era or the late Ice Age. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was named by Discover magazine in their 2002 article, "The 50 Most Important Women in Science".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite</span> United States historic place

The W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite is a National Historic Landmark in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, commemorating an important location in the life of African American intellectual and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963). The site contains foundational remnants of the home of Du Bois' grandfather, where Du Bois lived for the first five years of his life. Du Bois was given the house in 1928, and planned to renovate it, but was unable to do so. He sold it in 1954 and the house was torn down later that decade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of race and ethnic relations</span> Field of study

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The New Africa House, formerly known as Mills House, is an academic building and former dormitory of the University of Massachusetts Amherst built in the Georgian revival style with Art Deco accents. It is part of the Central Residential Area at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It was designed by Louis Ross, who designed many of the dormitories on campus as well as the Student Union.

Barbara J. Heath is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville who specializes in historical archaeology of eastern North America and the Caribbean. Her research and teaching focus on the archaeology of the African diaspora, colonialism, historic landscapes, material culture, public archaeology and interpretation, and Thomas Jefferson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Humanities and Fine Arts</span> School at the University of Massachusetts

The College of Humanities & Fine Arts is a college of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The college was founded in 1915.

Randolph Wilson ("Bill") Bromery was an American educator and geologist, and a former Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1971–79). While Chancellor, Bromery established the W.E.B. Du Bois Archives at the University of Massachusetts, and was one of the initiators of the Five College Consortium. He was also President of the Geological Society of America, and has made numerous contributions as a geologist and academic. During World War II, he was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, flying missions in Italy.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is an art historian, curator, and professor of American art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has curated major exhibitions and published several books on African American art. In 2019, she became director of history, research and scholarship and senior historian at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Theresa A. Singleton is an American archaeologist and writer who focuses on the archaeology of African Americans, the African diaspora, and slavery in the United States. She is a leading archaeologist applying comparative approaches to the study of slavery in the Americas. Singleton has been involved in the excavation of slave residences in the southern United States and in the Caribbean. She is a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University, and serves as a curator for the National Museum of Natural History.

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Antoinette T. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa. Her research focusses on sociocultural and historical anthropology, the social construction of race, class, gender, ethnicity; heritage resource management, and American, African American and African Diaspora culture.

Maria Franklin is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a historical archaeologist whose work includes black-feminist theory, African Diaspora studies and race and gender.

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References

  1. "Department of Anthropology: Whitney Battle-Baptiste". University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  2. "AAA Presidents". The American Anthropological Association. Retrieved 2024-05-28.
  3. 1 2 3 Fitzgibbons, Daniel. "Battle-Baptiste Named New Director of W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst". University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  4. "Whitney Battle-Baptiste | Institute for Social Science Research | UMass Amherst". www.umass.edu.
  5. 1 2 Stewart, Pearl (14 February 2019). "She's Not Just Digging for Digging's Sake". Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.
  6. Riley, Ricky (9 July 2015). "6 Black Archaeologists and Anthropologists You Should Know About". Atlanta Blackstar. p. 5. Retrieved 29 December 2017.