Marcy Brink-Danan
Dorot Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology:
Judaic Studies, Anthropology
Phone: +1 401 863 2750
Marcy_Brink-Danan@brown.edu
A cultural anthropologist, Brink-Danan studies the role of language and symbol in the maintenance of social groups. With regional specialization in Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, she recently conducted ethnographic research among Jews in Turkey. Brink-Danan's current work looks at how cosmopolitan subjects relate to local politics; as such, she is interested in comparing knowledge production across time and space.
Biography
Trained as a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D., Stanford University 2005), I study the role of language and symbolism in the formation and maintenance of social groups, communities and nations. I most recently conducted ethnographic research with the Jewish community of Turkey, where I focused on issues of multilingualism, intimacy and ideology. The methodological approaches I use to examine cultural phenomena borrow from socio-cultural approaches to the present (participant observation and interviews) and an historical approach to things past (text and image analysis). I reckon with the problem of ideology by drawing upon theories developed in anthropology, semiotics, history and literary criticism, thereby introducing critical perspectives to Jewish culture and folklore studies.
Interests
My research focuses on the anthropology of the Sephardi Diaspora by merging social scientific and humanistic approaches to Judaic Studies. Following fourteen months of ethnographic study in Istanbul and a year of archival research at the Center for Jewish History in New York, I completed a dissertation entitled "Reference Points: Text, Context and Change in Definitions of Turkish-Jewish Identity." In this ethnography, I analyzed Turkish-Jewish communal practices in light of questions of multilingualism, minority politics and the ethics of representation. I received the Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University in September 2005 and am now Dorot Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and Assistant Professor of anthropology at Brown University.
I am now preparing a manuscript tentatively entitled "Cosmopolitan Ethnography: Writing Difference in Istanbul." The manuscript maps the logic of Turkish-Jewish culture as it surfaces in speech, architecture and other symbolic domains. Through ethnographic description and text analysis, this account collects stories and images from the lives of Jews in Istanbul in the beginning of the 21st century. The fragments, when assembled together as ethnography, reveal a cosmopolitan collective whose survival relies on an ability to function within and between various frames of reference (Judaism, Islam, secular humanism, etc.) arranged through relations of intimacy and power.
The work asks, "In what reference book might we locate a definition of the Jews of Istanbul?" Given the history of heteroglossia exhibited by the Jewish community in this multitudinous city, this study proposes that its members have built an encyclopedic knowledge of culturally significant (and, at times, oppositional) references which allow them to negotiate social and political change. In essence, these Jews are cosmopolitan in language, knowledge and ideology.
In this manuscript, I have taken the example of Turkish Jews to explore what it means to be an urban, multilingual, diasporic minority. Thinking about this population as "cosmopolitan" allows my analysis to cover topics such as the local and global, diaspora and exile, identity and citizenship. In addition to creating an ethnographic account of a cosmopolitan community, this text details the ways in which individuals and collectives negotiate multiple ideologies through which they imagine themselves as Turks, Jews and humans (not necessarily in that order!).
Central to this work is the notion that anthropologists and Judaic Studies scholars need a set of methodological and theoretical tools with which to study cosmopolitan identities. Thus the title of the book, "Cosmopolitan Ethnography," refers not only to descriptions of a cosmopolitan subject, but to the ways through which this anthropologist engages in cosmopolitan intellectual practices, such as interdisciplinarity, translation and other comparative ways to study cultural materials.
The Turkish milieu provided me with a fascinating set of problems and insights relevant to Jews and other minorities; nonetheless, lessons learned in Istanbul are not limited in their application to this region alone. Indeed, the specifics of my research program dictated that certain concerns were downplayed (such as class and gender) while others immediately came to the fore (religion and secularism). I am further interested in comparing the situation of Jews in Turkey with those in other locales.
If my current work frames issues of contemporary Sephardic Jews in terms of their cosmopolitanism, I am now working toward the ways cosmopolitanism relates to boundary-making in the metaphor of cultural, linguistic and economic islands. As I embark on comparative research, my work explores cultural isolationism in Judaic practice and text.
Degrees
BA, MA, Ph.D. Anthropology
Awards
Society for Humanistic Anthropology Award for
Best Graduate Student Paper
(Awarded at American Anthropological Association Meetings, 2005)
Elsie Clews Parsons Award (Honorable Mention)
for Best Graduate Student Paper
(Awarded at American Ethnological Society Meetings, 2005)
Stanley N. Fisher Prize Turkish Studies Association Award
for Best Student Essay
(Awarded at Middle Eastern Studies Association Meetings, 2005)
Affiliations
American Anthropological Association
Israeli Anthropological Association
Association for Jewish Studies
Bay Area Academic Consortium for Jewish Studies
American Ethnological Society
Society for Humanistic Anthropology
Teaching
My courses look anthropologically at language and culture and draw upon my fieldwork among Jewish communities.
As part of the Judaic Studies faculty, three of my courses normally deal with global Jewish cultures. My anthropology affiliation allows me to teach my subspecialty in linguistic anthropology. Currently I teach the following three classes: Studying Jewish Life: Anthropological Perspectives, Israeli Society and Sounds and Symbols: Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology (see full descriptions below). Beginning next year, I will offer a class which deals specifically with the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish diasporas.
Funded Research
Cogut Center for the Humanities, Faculty Fellow (Brown University 2009-10). Research proposal: "Local News, Global Jews: A Comparative Ethnography of Jewish Journalism"
ADVANCE Career Development Award for Junior Faculty (NSF-Sponsored; Brown University 2008-9). Funds toward conference organization, scheduled for Spring 2009 [Cultured Jews: The Art and Science of Jewish Ethnography.] Amount awarded: $14,650
Humanities Funds of the Vice President for Research (Brown University 2007; 2008);
Amount awarded: $1,250
Wayland Collegium Course Development Funds (Brown University 2007);
Amount awarded: $2,500
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Fellowship (U.S. Dept. of Education), Research Fellow, (2002-3)
Mellon Foundation, Pre-Dissertation Grant Recipient (2001)
Barnard College Alumnae Fellowship, Grant Recipient (for Graduate Study) (1999)
National Foundation for Jewish Culture, Dissertation Writing Grant Recipient (2004-5)
Center for Jewish History, New York, Dissertation Research Fellow (2003-4)
Department of Jewish Studies, Stanford University, Grant Recipient (2001-2004)
Maurice Amado Foundation for Sephardic Studies, Doctoral Fellow (1999-2004)
Eastern Consortium of Persian and Turkish, Merit Fellow (2001)
Institute of Turkish Studies, Pre-Dissertation Grant Recipient (2000)
Web Links
- Brink-Danan's Profile in "Brown's arts and humanities departments welcome 12 new faculty"
- Brink-Danan's research cited in the Judeo-Spanish press of Turkey
