Shannon Lee Dawdy

Shannon Lee Dawdy's fieldwork combines archaeological, archival, and ethnographic methods with a regional focus on the coastal communities of the U.S., Caribbean, and Mexico. The central thread running through her work concerns how landscapes and material objects mediate human relationships, whether this means an examination of the historical ecologies of capitalism, or the emotional trajectories of those who lost their intimate object worlds to Hurricane Katrina. She also has a strong interest in questions of temporality (past, present, future). She has written a couple of  books on New Orleans. Her current research focuses on rapidly changing death practices in the U.S., particularly around disposition and transformation of the body, and will take the form of both a film and a book. She has received support from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACLS and other organizations.