معرفی
Mary Elena Wilhoit serves as an Associate Instructional Professor of Anthropology within the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) at the University of Chicago, where her work bridges environmental, political, and economic anthropology with critical examinations of gender, sexuality, and kinship structures in rural contexts across the Americas.
Her academic credentials include:
- PhD and MA in Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Northwestern University
- BA in Anthropology and Spanish from Vanderbilt University
Professor Wilhoit's research program investigates gendered navigations of labor, displacement, and ecological transformation through two major ethnographic projects. Her first project—based on over a decade of fieldwork in Peru's Ayacucho region—analyzes how rural women's economic mobility reshapes sexuality norms, marriage practices, and kinship networks amid racialized displacement and ecological violence. Her second project extends these inquiries to Southeastern U.S. agricultural communities, examining small-scale farmers' experiences with tenancy systems, political consciousness, and more-than-human interdependence in farming ecosystems.
She teaches core courses including Ethnographic Research Methods, Gender, Sex, and Culture, and More than Human Ethnography, alongside innovative seminars like Sarah Baartman through $chitt’s Creek: an Introduction to Gender and Popular Culture. While her publication record spans the Anthropology of Work Review and Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the source text provides no details about student advising, grant funding, or award recognition.
