Keynote Lecture 2021: Janet M. Chernela

Keynote Lecture 2021

Desire and the Work it Does

SALSA XIII Biennial Conference 2021

Janet M. Chernela, Professor, University of Maryland

Janet M. 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.

–Jeremy M. Campbell (SALSA President 2020-2023), Laura R. Graham (SALSA President-Elect 2023-2027), Laura Zanotti (Secretary-Treasurer 2017-2020), George Mentore (SALSA 2021 Conference Organizer), Laura Mentore (SALSA 2021 Academic Program Chair), Juan Alvaro Echeverri (SALSA Webmaster).