Faculty biography - Emily (Molly) Margaretten
Emily (Molly) Margaretten is an assistant professor of anthropology at Ripon College. For more than ten years she has been conducting anthropological fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa. Upon graduating from Colgate University with a B.A. in anthropology and sociology, Prof. Margaretten took up a summer post on Pemba Island (just off the coast of Zanzibar) as an archaeological field assistant. The experience of camping and working side-by-side with local fieldworkers profoundly shaped Prof. Margaretten’s professional trajectory. For long after she dusted off the pottery shards, she continued to remember the stories and life views of her Tanzanian colleagues. This prompted Prof. Margaretten to enter graduate school, whereupon she received a Ph.D. from Yale University in cultural anthropology.
While Prof. Margaretten’s field investigations began in rural Tanzania, her doctoral research took her to South Africa to focus on issues of urban homelessness. Her research grants included fellowships from Fulbright-Hays, the National Science Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. For two years, Prof. Margaretten worked with older street youth, examining the communities they created on their own – in alleyways and drainage pipes as well as in condemned, gutted, and burnt-out buildings. To prepare for this intensive research, Prof. Margaretten took courses at Yale University specifically related to anthropological field methods as well as courses more broadly attuned to her geographic specialization in sub-Saharan Africa. One of the courses, isiZulu, combined the practicalities of learning a field language with her scholarly appreciation of African history, its cultures and people. To reach an advanced level of isiZulu, Prof. Margaretten participated in a language acquisition program in South Africa, which included a family home-stay in a township and a rural homestead. These experiences proved invaluable to Prof. Margaretten’s understanding of Zulu society, for she was able to engage directly with local people. With this knowledge of Bantu linguistic structures, Prof. Margaretten plans to learn Kiswahili too, with the goal of carrying out a full conversation in a Tanzanian bureaucratic office!
Prof. Margaretten and her research assistant in South Africa.
Upon completing her doctorate at Yale University, Prof. Margaretten returned to South Africa as a Mellon post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. During this time she taught a “Theory, Methods, Data” seminar, which included an intensive grant-writing workshop for honors and masters’ students. Prof. Margaretten also published an article in the journal
Anthropology and Humanism, which forms the basis of her current book manuscript,
Street Life under a Roof: Youth Homelessness in South Africa. With these endeavors, Prof. Margaretten aims to impress upon students the possibilities of not just collecting field data but also writing it up, as both humanistic and scientific text.
At Ripon College, Professor Margaretten has sustained her scholarly interests in sub-Saharan Africa by teaching courses such as “Societies of Africa” as well as a first year orientation seminar, “Africa!” which introduces students to the diversity and vitality of African cultural forms. Other courses in Prof. Margaretten’s repertoire include “Youth Cultures,” “Gender, Sex, and Sexuality,” “Anthropological Field Methods,” and the “History of Anthropological Theory.” Professor Margaretten’s recent publications in the journals City and Society and Transition also speak to her continuing research interests in South Africa, where she tackles issues of urban poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the myriad possibilities of community-building, right along the sidelines of the streets. Ultimately with these experiences, Prof. Margaretten aims to introduce students to Tanzanian society not merely as visitors but as active participants engaged in meaningful processes of cross-cultural learning.