Anthropology - Faculty

Quality Teaching, Experienced Faculty

The diverse interests and expertise of the anthropology faculty at UHCL are bound together by our shared commitment to social justice. This commitment shows in our mutual dedication to our students' success, active community service, and engaged, scholarly research.

Program Convener:

Christine Kovic and the train that carries some Central American migrants on their dangerous journey north.	Christine Kovic has conducted research on the topics of human rights and religion in Mexico and the United States for the last 15 years. Her previous research on indigenous rights among the Mayan in Chiapas has been published in Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas and Women of Chiapas: Making History in Times of Struggle and Hope . Most recently, she has been conducting interviews with Central American migrants crossing southern Mexico en route to the United States on the topic of human rights. She is collaborating with a number of groups on the issue of day laborers and worker rights in Houston.
Full-time Faculty:
Maria Curtis preparing food with other women at the Turkish Center in Houston.	Maria Curtis has written on medical racism in the United States, and women’s spirituality, performance and globalization in Morocco, as well as Turkish and Turkish-American women’s experiences in interfaith initiatives. Her current research interests range from the history of women’s roles in the monotheistic religious traditions, to representations of contemporary women in Turkish television serials. Most recently, she has been conducting interviews with Turkish women who work in various areas in the national and international media exploring alternative conceptions of religious identities and modernity that she plans to develop into a documentary film. She launched a study abroad program to Turkey in 2008 around notions of interreligious and intercultural dialogue.
“Houston is a fascinating place to live and work as a cultural anthropologist.  Beneath the layers of concrete and new development and the facades of strip malls are some of the country’s most diverse neighborhoods with people who have many stories to tell.  Our classrooms at UHCL mirror this diversity and I have learned a lot from them in listening to their stories about family immigration and the settlement of the Gulf Coast.  They have taught me rethink some of the taken-for-granted paradigms of American identity.  I’ve taught in other places that were not nearly as diverse as Houston, and often classroom discussions felt as if we were talking about all the people not represented in our class.  The students at UHCL bring with them an amazing variety of experiences that enrich the classroom and that naturally lend themselves to anthropology and cross-cultural studies. When I talk about diversity of religion, of language, of ethnicity, they know what I am talking about instinctively. UHCL students are hardworking, they are flexible, they enjoy in depth conversations, and they have a sense of earnestness about wanting to learn for learning’s sake.  It is a privilege to have students who are so motivated and creative about applying the things they learn in the classroom to the world outside the university.”                                     Maria Curtis
Charlotte Haney clowning for the camera with friends at a bar only recently opened to women in downtown Chihuahua City.	Charlotte Haney has written on cultures of gendered violence in Mexico, the sequelae of childhood sexual abuse in pregnancies of survivors and the complex health risks plaguing  Korean immigrant communities. She is completing her dissertation, ImperiledFemininity: Reinventing Gender in a Dangerous Place.  Her diverse research interests are driven by a desire to better understand the role of violence in the formation of the social agent and society at large.  Her current research interests include her continuing investigation into the impact of the drug war on the reform of women’s legal rights currently taking place in the State of Chihuahua, Mexico and gendered violence in U.S. military cultures.  In addition to pursuing her own research interests, she has consulted with an applied anthropological research form.
“The students at UHCL are a privilege and a pleasure to teach.   Typically, our students are non-traditional They are older and usually employed.  Many have created families.  Quite a few are new to this country and more often than not our students are the first generation in their family to attend university.  These demographic features of our student body mean that they are juggling a number of responsibilities, which could be  seen in a negative light.  However, because of these same demographic features, our student’s bring a seriousness of purpose to the classroom. They come to the classroom after days and lives filled with diverse experiences.  The sacrifices that they make to be in the classroom mean that they bring a willingness to deeply engage with the course material and one another.  The diversity of our students is a joyful resource in the anthropology classroom where we not only learn about cultural differences but we use them to unsettle our preconceptions of how things are and attempt to imagine what could be.”                                     Charlotte Haney
Adjunct Faculty:
	Deepa Reddy has written on the contestations of identity politics in India, the globalization of caste via the discourses of race and human rights, and on how sample collection and donor registration initiatives such the International HapMap Project and the U.S. National Marrow Donor Program facilitate reconceptualizations of bioethics, civic identities, and even the role of the market in medicine and genetics. Her book, Religious Identity and Political Destiny, was published in 2006. Her current research interests range from (bio)ethics in human and animal research to medical tourism and drug development in India. She is continuing her series of children’s books.