Shannon Lee Dawdy

(PhD, U Michigan 2003) Assistant Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College, is an archaeologist and historical anthropologist concentrating on the Atlantic World after 1450. Her research focuses on the Southeast U.S. and Caribbean, with recent fieldwork on Louisiana and Cuba of the 18th-19th centuries. Her work concerns topics such as race and ethnicity, maritime culture, urban planning, food and agriculture, the formation of creole societies, and the development of colonial strategies of rule. Current theoretical/methodological interests include: the archaeology of smuggling and crime; the integration of archival microhistory and household archaeology; the affective associations of artifacts and landscapes; and the taphonomy of disasters. Recent fieldwork has focused on gender, sexuality, and tourism in post-colonial New Orleans during the early 19th century based on excavations at the Rising Sun Hotel site and the Tivoli Gardens amusement park. Her current book project, French Markets and Creole Queens: The Archaeology of New Orleans, is a material history of New Orleans from the protohistoric period to the post-Katrina present, exploring the intersection of economy, affect, and aesthetics in place-attachment and the performance of hospitality.
E-mail: sdawdy@uchicago.edu

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Publications:

2008 Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans. University of Chicago Press (forthcoming Spring 2008).

2008 Les mémoires de Dumont de Montigny: Aventures au monde atlantique, 1715-1747. (Co-ed. with C. Zecher and G. Sayre.) Québec/Paris: Septentrion/Sorbonne (forthcoming).

2008 Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen: Defamation and Society in French Colonial Louisiana. In R.F. Brown, ed., Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century. University of Nebraska Press (forthcoming).

2008 Excavating the Present, Vindicating the Dead (invited commentary). Historical Archaeology 42(2) (forthcoming March 2008).

2008 Colonial and Creole Diets in Eighteenth-Century New Orleans. (With Elizabeth M. Scott.) In K. Kelly and M. Hardy, eds., French Colonial Archaeology: A view from the South. Gainesville: University Press of Florida (in press).

2007 Beneath the Rising Sun: 'Frenchness' and the Archaeology of Desire. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 11(3): Fall 2007 (in press) (with Richard Weyhing).

2007 A French Soldier in Louisiana: The Memoir of Dumont de Montigny. The French Review 80(6): 1265-1277 (with Carla Zecher and Gordon M. Sayre).

2007 La Nouvelle-Orléans au xviie siècle: courants d'échanges dans le monde caraïbe [original English title: Undercurrents of the Atlantic World: The View from Eighteenth-Century New Orleans]. Annales (Paris, Fall 2007) 62(3): 663-685.

2006 The Taphonomy of Disaster and the (Re)formation of New Orleans. American Anthropologist. 108(4): 719-730.

2006 In Katrina's Wake. Archaeology 59(4) 16-21.

2006 The Burden of Louis Congo and the Evolution of Savagery in Colonial Louisiana. In S. Pierce & A. Rao, eds., Discipline and the Other Body: Correction, Corporeality, Colonialism. Duke University Press, 61-89.

2006 Proper Caresses and Prudent Distance: A How-to Manual from Louisiana. In A.L. Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Duke University Press, 140-162.

2005 Thinker-Tinkers, Race, and the Archaeological Critique of Modernity. Archaeological Dialogues 12(2): 143-164.

2005 (Co-ed. w/ A. Curet & G. La Rosa) Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology. University of Alabama Press.

2003 Enlightenment from the Ground: Le Page du Pratz’ Histoire de la Louisiane. French Colonial History 3: 17-34.

2003 La Ville Sauvage: 'Enlightened' Colonialism and Creole Improvisation in New Orleans , 1699-1769. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan (Program in Anthropology and History).

2002 La Comida Mambisa: Food, Farming, and Cuban Identity, 1834-1999. New West Indian Guide 76(1-2): 47-80.

2000 Understanding Cultural Change through the Vernacular: Creolization in Louisiana . Historical Archaeology 34(3): 107-123.

2000 Ethnicity in the Urban Landscape: The Archaeology of Creole New Orleans. In A. Young, ed., Archaeology of Southern Urban Landscapes. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 127-149.

1995 The Meherrin’s Secret History of the Dividing Line. North Carolina Historical Review. 72(4): 386-415.