Jan French

Jan Hoffman French, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has been awarded a $6,000 Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Her project, “Lawyers and Anthropologists? The Brazilian Ministério Público Federal and the Production of Historical Memory,” is an institutional ethnography of a unique Brazilian institution, a division of the Ministério Público Federal (often referred to as the fourth branch of government) known as the Sixth Chamber for Indians and Minorities. It consists of lawyers and anthropologists charged with fulfilling one of the ministry’s roles in Brazilian society – to defend and protect the interests of indigenous peoples, fugitive slave and riverine communities, and gypsies (roma and calon). Using ethnographic methods anchored in the anthropology of law and justice, she will focus on cooperation, tensions, and conflicts between lawyers and anthropologists and between those two groups and the people they are charged with protecting. This is part of her ongoing research on law and society in Brazil with a focus on historical memory and identity. (excerpted from her NEH application)

Dr. French has taught at the University of Richmond since 2006 after having taught briefly at Duke University. Prior to that she was a practicing attorney. She holds a BA from Temple University, a JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law, and a PhD from Duke. She is the author f a number of published articles as well as the prize-winning book, Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil’s Northeast (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

The NEH Summer stipend program is extremely competitive, and awards are made after a three-tiered review process involving review by a panel of peers, by NEH staff and by the National Council on the Humanities. This award is one of only seven awarded in Virginia this round, and the only Summer Stipend in Virginia.