CV
Adrienne J. Cohen
Curriculum Vitae
Department of Anthropology
Colorado State University
1787 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523–1787
adrienne.cohen@colostate.edu
TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS
Political anthropology; postcolonial Africa; urbanism; dance; postsocialism; semiotics; aesthetics and politics; transnational migration; anthropology of sport; body cultures; environmental knowledges; posthuman theory
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology, 2016
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Dissertation Advisors: Mike McGovern and Douglas Rogers
M.Phil in Sociocultural Anthropology, 2014
Yale University, New Haven, CT
M.S. Ed. in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 2006
Long Island University, New York, NY
B.A. in International/Intercultural Studies and Studio Art, Double Major, 2001
Pitzer College, Claremont, CA
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
2018- present Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University
2016-2018 Special Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University
PUBLICATIONS
Book
2021. Infinite Repertoire: On Dance and Urban Possibility in Postsocialist Guinea. The University of Chicago Press.
Peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters
2021 with Paul Ugor (Under Review) “Introduction: African Youth, Popular Arts, and Cultural Politics in Everyday Life.” Critical African Studies.
2021 (Forthcoming) “Deliberations in Dance: Affecting Publics and the Politics of Ethnicity in Guinea’s Nascent Democracy.” African Studies Review.
2021 “The Revolution Lost: Generational Change and Urban Youth Logics in Conakry’s Dance-Music.” In Young People and Popular Culture in Africa, edited by Paul Ugor. New York: University of Rochester Press, African History and Diaspora Series.
2019 “Performing Excess: Urban Ceremony and the Semiotics of Precarity in Guinea-Conakry.” Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute. 89 (4): 718-738.
2018 “Occult Return, Grace, and Saabui: Practicing Transnational Kinship in Postsocialist Guinea.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 24 (2): 1-18.
2016 “Inalienable Performances, Mutable Heirlooms: Dance, Cultural Inheritance, and Political Transformation in the Republic of Guinea.” American Ethnologist 43(4): 650-662.
Book Reviews
2018 “Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth Century Communism.” Kristen Ghodsee. American Ethnologist 45(3): 442-443.
Dissertation
2016 Improvising the Urban: Dance, Mobility, and Political Transformation in the Republic of Guinea. Doctoral dissertation, Yale University Department of Anthropology.
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
2021 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Post-PhD Research Grant
2014-15 Yale University, Dissertation Fellowship
2012-13 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
2012-13 National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant
2012-13 Yale MacMillan Center, Dissertation Research Grant
2011 National Science Foundation, Research Experience for Graduates Pre-dissertation
Fieldwork Grant
2007 Americorps Service Learning Grant
2006 New York City Teaching Fellowship
FIELDWORK
2013 Dissertation fieldwork, New York City and Oakland, California
2012-13 Dissertation fieldwork, Conakry, Republic of Guinea
2011 Pre-dissertation fieldwork, Conakry, Republic of Guinea
2010 Pre-dissertation fieldwork, Conakry, Republic of Guinea
2002-05 Dance Apprenticeship, Conakry, Republic of Guinea
CONFERENCE ACTIVITY
Papers Presented
2021 “Embodied Evidence” in roundtable series: Big Mouth: Film, Advocacy, and Truth Claims in a Guinean Trial. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, virtual.
2021 Participant on roundtable, Big Mouth: Film, Advocacy, and Truth Claims in a Guinean Trial. Royal Anthropological Institute Visual Anthropology Conference. Virtual.
2020 [Rescheduled for Fall 2021] “Semiotic Resourcefulness in Urban Guinea.” Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, Boulder, CO.
2019 “Affecting a Non-Ethnic Public: Dance and Emerging Democracy in Urban Guinea.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Boston, MA.
2018 “Resonance, Authority, and the Space of Dance in Urban Guinea.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose, CA.
2018 “Contingencies of Authoritarianism: Affect, Expressive Culture, and State Power in Postindependence Guinea.” Paper presented at the joint annual meeting of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Visual Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA.
2017 “Immaterial Infrastructures and the ‘Affective Register’ of Cities.” Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.
2017 “Dance and the Semiotics of Exposure in Urban Guinea.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Ethnological Society, Stanford, California.
2016 “Transnational Intimacies: Migration, Capacity, and the Mutual Being of Kinship.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
2016 “Powerful Signs: Dance as Aspirational Practice in Conakry, Guinea” Paper
presented at the East Coast Semiotic Anthropology Conference, University of Pennsylvania.
2016 “Improvising the African Urban in Postsocialist Conakry.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, California.
2015 “Mythologizing the Rural, Performing the Urban: Retrofitting the Rural/Urban
Dichotomy in Contemporary Conakry.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, Colorado.
2014 “Grassroots Postsocialism: Ambivalence, Legibility, and the Privatization of Dance in Guinea, West Africa.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.
2013 “The Gift of Dundunba: Dance and Social Cohesion in Urban Guinea.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, Illinois.
2013 “Reinventing the Dundunba: Dance, Power, and Social Change in Conakry
Guinea.” Paper presented at the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) and
Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) International Joint Conference,
Riverside, California.
2010 “Critical Absences: Praise, Memory, and the Avoidance of Political Critique in Guinean Popular Music.” Paper presented at the Graduate Conference on Music and War, University of Texas, Austin.
Panels Organized
2021 Organizer, “Politics, Aesthetics, Performances, and the African City,” Author Meets Critic Roundtable, annual meeting of the African Studies Association, virtual.
2019 Co-organizer, “Afterlives of Nationalism in African Expressive Cultures.” Annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Boston, MA.
2018 Organizer, “Affecting the Political.” Joint conference of the American Ethnological
Society and the Society for Visual Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA.
2014 Co-organizer, “Performance Between the Posts: Afro-Asian Dialogues at the
Intersection of Postsocialism and Postcoloniality.” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.
INVITED TALKS AND OTHER PRESENTATIONS
2021 Aesthetics, Politics, and Urban Youth Culture in Guinea, West Africa. Lecture, Colorado State University Musicology Club, Virtual.
2021 Book talk: Infinite Repertoire: On Dance and Urban Possibility in Postsocialist Guinea. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, Virtual.
2018 “Immaterial Infrastructures” Part of a public panel entitled “Innovations Out of Africa: Cities.” Africa Center for Sustainable Ecosystems and Societies Under Global Change. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO.
2015 “Mythologizing the Rural, Performing the Urban: How Guinean Dancers Fracture the Rural/Urban Dichotomy” Ethnography and Social Theory Colloquium, Yale University Department of Anthropology.
2011 Moderator, World Performance Project talkback “Engagement Fémenin: an Evening of West African Contemporary Dance” Art’ Dév/ Compagnie Auguste-Bienvenue, Yale Repertory Theatre.
2011 Commentator, Yale Colloquium on Agrarian Studies. Paper by Jocelyn Alexander “Nationalism and Self-Government in Rhodesian Detention: Gonakudzingwa, 1964-1974.”
COURSES TAUGHT
Colorado State University
Undergraduate
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, ANTH 100
Anthropology of the Arts, ANTH 225
African Cities, Ethnographic Perspectives, ANTH 310
Global Mobilities: Transnationalism, Culture, and the African Diaspora, ANTH 315
Language and Culture, ANTH 335
Contemporary Theory in Cultural Anthropology, ANTH 440
Graduate
Development of Anthropological Theory, ANTH 500 (co-taught with Mica Glantz and Mary Van Buren)
Contemporary Theory in Cultural Anthropology, ANTH 548
Manuscript Reviewer
ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies
Africa (Journal of the International African Institute)
African Studies Review
Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Current Anthropology
Ethnos Journal of Anthropology
Indiana University Press
Oxford University Press
Routledge
Sage Publishing
LANGUAGES
Highly proficient in Susu (coastal Guinea)
Highly proficient in French
Basic Malinke (upper Guinea)
Basic German