Janet Chernela: SALSA President 2005-2008

Janet Chernela

University of Maryland

SALSA President 2005-2008

Janet Chernela is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland.  After receiving her PhD from Columbia University in 1983, she served on the faculty of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (National Institute of Amazonian Research, INPA) in Manaus.  She has worked among indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for over three decades.  Her research interests include local knowledge, including environmental knowledge; indigenous rights and organizations; gender and language.   Her principal publications include a book, The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: A Sense of Space (1993, 1996) and a recent trilogy on language and gender in the Upper Rio Negro: “Talking Community in the Northwest  Amazon” (American Anthropologist, 2003); “The Second World of Wanano Women: Truth, Lies and Back-Talk in the Brazilian Northwest Amazon” (Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2011); and “Mascarading the Voice: Texts of Self in the Brazilian Northwest Amazon” (Journal of Anthropological Research, 2012).  She is the founder of AMARN/Numia Kura, one of the oldest ongoing indigenous associations in Brazil and former president of the international Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America.

Janet Chernela’s institutional webpage: http://www.anth.umd.edu/facultyprofile/Chernela/Janet