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Root Hall 113
On Leave/Away
spring 2025

Donald Martin Carter's research interests include culture theory, racial formation, visual culture, diaspora, invisibility, and transnational cultural politics. 

Carter wrote Navigating The African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility, published in 2010, and States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration, published in 1997. Carter, who came to Hamilton from the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, received a doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Recent Courses Taught

Africa in Diaspora
Imagining Africa
Stand: New Voices of Protest
Black Europe
Seminar in Urban Worlds

Research Interests

Anthropology of contemporary Europe, anthropology of invisibility, anthropological theory, states and migration, the Mourid of Senegal, urban anthropology, transnationalism, culture and the nation-state, modern Italy, colonial societies, diaspora, visual culture, black popular culture, postcolonial theory and race, class, ethnicity and other distinctions

Distinctions

  • Dickinson College, Luce Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Diaspora Community Studies, 2000-02
  • Stanford Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University, 1998-99
  • Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research International Symposium, Participant, “Transnationalism, Nation-State Building and Culture,” Mijas, Spain, 1994
  • Chancellor’s Ethnic Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, 1992-94
  • Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Nominee for Fellowship, 1993
  • Danforth Compton Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1991-92
  • Social Science Research Council Dissertation Fellowship, 1990-91
  • Fulbright Fellowship, 1989-90
  • National Science Foundation Dissertation Enhancement Grant, 1989
  • National Science Foundation Fellowship, honorary mention, 1987
  • CIC International Study Fellow, Turin, Italy, 1986
  • CIC Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1984-1987
  • Danforth honorary mention, 1979
  • Italian Government, language grant, Perugia, Italy, 1978

Selected Publications

  • States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
  • Navigating The African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Spring 2010.
  • “Forward,” by Donald Martin Carter and Heather Merrill. In Geographies of Privilege. Edited by France Winddance Twine and Bradley Gardener. London: Routledge, 2013.
  • Navigating Diaspora: The Precarious Depths of the Italian Immigration Crisis. In African Migrations Today. Edited by Abdoulaye Kane and Todd H. Leedy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2013.
  • “Blackness Over Europe: Meditations on Culture and Belonging.” In Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century. Edited by Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenhaft. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2013.
More
  • Review of Elizabeth L. Krause, Unraveled: A Weaver’s Tale of Life Gone Modern (2009). Transforming Anthropology, 19 (2), 2011.
  • “Navigating diaspora: Shipwrecks, identity and the nation: Ethnic Mobilization in the New Europe: An international interdisciplinary Workshop. April 21-22, 2006, Peter Vermeersch and Krista Harper, Organizers, Institute for International and European Policy, K. U. Leuven (Belgium) and Center for Public and Administration, University of Massachusetts. Paleis der Academiën, Brussels, Belgium. (Proceedings).
  • “State, migrant agency, and the Third Sector in Turin, Italy.” Rome: International Geographical Union and the Commissions on Political Geography and Public Policy. Heather Merrill and Donald Carter. In “Rights to the City.” Doris Wastl-Walter, Lynn A. Staeheli and Lorraine Dowler, Eds.: The International Geographic Union (IGU) and the Italian Geographical Society (Societá Geografica Italiana-SGI), 2005.
  • Bordering Humanism: Life and Death on the Margins of Europe. Heather Merrill and Donald Carter. Presented at the Association of American Geographers Meeting, Denver, May 2005. Published in Geopolitics, 12: 1-17, 2007.
  • Preface. New African Diasporas. Khalid Koser,(ed). Routledge 2003.
  • “Inside and Outside Italian political culture: Immigrants and diasporic politics in Turin.” GeoJournal 58: 167-175, (2002), Heather Merrill and Donald Carter.
  • Navigating Citizenship: Review of Generous Betrayal: Ethnic Politics in the New Europe, Unni Wikan, Anthropological Quarterly 2002.
  • “The Art of the State: Difference and other Abstractions,” Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 7 No. 1 March 1994.
  • Review of Cultural Change and the New Europe: Perspectives on the European Community, Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, Review American Anthropologist 1993 Dec., Vol. 95 pp. 1036-1037.
  • Review of J.S. Eades 1993 Strangers and Traders: Yoruba migrants, markets and the State in Northern Ghana. Edinburgh University Press.
  • Una confraternita Musilmana in emigrazione: l Murid del Senegal, in Religioni e Società Rivista di scienze sociali della religione, 12, Anno VI, luglio-dicembre Florence: Rosenberg & Sellier. 1991.
  • La Formazione di una Dahira Senegalese a Torino, in Uguali E Diversi: Il mondo culturale, le retti di rapporti, I lavori degli immigrati non europei a Torino, Istituto Ricerche Economico-Sociali del Piemonte: Rosenberg & Sellier 1991.

College Service

Chief Diversity Officer, 2010-13
Posse Foundation Selection Committee, 2010-13
Academic Council, 2009-10

Professional Affiliations

American Anthropological Association
Association of Black Anthropologist
Society for the Anthropology of Europe
Society for Humanistic Anthropology
Society for Cultural Anthropology
National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education
Liberal Arts Diversity Officers, 2010-13

Appointed to the Faculty

2010

Educational Background

Ph.D., University of Chicago
M.A., University of Chicago
B.A., University of California at Santa Cruz

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