Gillian Richards-Greaves

Associate Professor, Anthropology

Contact Gillian Richards-Greaves

Brittian Hall 350

Office Hours
Monday/Wedneday/Friday 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
*Please email for an appointment.

I am not afraid to try because I am not afraid to fail. Failure is an inherent feature of success."—Gillian Richards-Greaves

Biography

Dr. Gillian Richards-Greaves is an Associate Professor of Anthropology. Richards-Greaves' research interests include musical, cultural, linguistic, and ritual expressions of the African Diaspora, particularly of the English-speaking Caribbean. Over a period of five years (fall 2005-spring 2010), she conducted a multi-site, transnational, comparative dissertation research project on the African Guyanese pre-wedding ritual named kweh-kweh, in which she examined African Guyanese’s constructions of ethnic identities and rediasporization in New York City. She has since expanded her research on the African Diaspora to include the Gullah-Geechee of South Carolina; she is currently participating in a research project that examines African retentions and cultural traditions of the Gullah-Geechee people of Sandy Island and their relatives in surrounding areas. Richards-Greaves has drawn on interdisciplinary training and research to published peer reviewed articles, book chapters, and other scholarly essays. She is also currently working on her first monograph titled “'Come to My Kwe-Kwe': Ritual Performance and African Guyanese Rediasporization in the United States," which will be published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Education

Ph.D., Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington (2013)
Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, Indiana University, Bloomington (2013)
B.A. - M.A., Music Education, Hunter College-CUNY (2004)

Teaching Areas

ANTH 102: Understanding Other Cultures
ANTH 391: Ethnographic Methods in Anthropology
ANTH 311: Global Musics and Culture
ANTH 313: Food, Identity and Migration
ANTH 314: Survey of African American Musics
ANTH 315: The Caribbean
ANTH 317: Gullah Culture and Identity
ANTH 318: Topics in Ethnic Identity, which is taught one semester as “Rituals and Festivals of the African Diaspora”

Research Areas

Gender, race, migration, diaspora (rediasporization), the Caribbean, Gullah-Geechee, ethnicity-identity, music, performance, and sociolinguistics.