LAURENCE RALPH Curriculum Vitae
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
116 Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 Tel. 609-258-2337 Fax. 609-258-1032
A
CADEMIC E MPLOYMENT
2018— Princeton University , Professor of Anthropology
2017-2018 Harvard University , Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies
2015–2017 Harvard University, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences
2011–2015 Harvard University, Assistant Professor
Departments of African and African American Studies and Anthropology 2010–2011 University of Michigan, Visiting Faculty and Mandela-Rodney-
Dubois Postdoctoral fellow, Center for African and Afro American Studies
E
XECUTIVE E XPERIENCE
2018— Editor-in-Chief , Current Anthropology 2017— Advisory Council , Wenner Gren
Foundation
2015— Co-Director, Center on Transnational Policing
2012-2017 Associate Editor, Transforming Anthropology
2011–2015 Advisory Board Member, Institute for African American Research at UNC, Chapel Hill
E
DUCATION
2010 Ph.D., Anthropology The University of Chicago
Dissertation Title: “You Never Hear About the Wheelchair”: Violence and Mobility in a Westside Chicago Gang
2006 Master of Arts, Anthropology The University of Chicago
MA Thesis: Revaluing the Drug Dealer: Rap Artists’ Amendments of a 1
Congressional Construction
2004 Bachelor of Science, History, Technology, and Society Georgia Institute of Technology
BS Thesis: Black Bonds: Ties and Tokenism of African- American Students
A
REAS OF PECIALIZATIONS
Urban Ethnography, Disability Studies, African American studies, Race, Policing, Social Inequality, Theories of Violence, Hip-Hop, Popular Culture
B OOKS
2020 The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence University of Chicago Press
• Robert Textor Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology, Won
• Society of Midland Authors, Honorable Mention
2014 Renegade Dreams: Living Through Injury in Gangland Chicago, University of Chicago Press
• Society for the Study of Social Problems: C. Wright Mills Award, Won
• J.I. Staley Award, School for Advanced Research, Won
• Society for Cultural Anthropology: Gregory Bateson Prize, Runner-up
• American Ethnological Society: Sharon Stephens First Book Prize, Honorable Mention
• Society for Humanistic Anthropology: Victor Turner Book Prize Competition, Honorable Mention
GRAPHIC NOVEL
UNDER CONTRACT Free From Harm
New York: First, Second Press F
ILM The Torture Letters
A New York Times Opinion Documentary
https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT956Ubh45k
• Spark Animation Film Festival, Best in Show
• St. Louis International Film Festival, Official Selection
• Chicago International Film Festival, Official Selection
• Meet the Press Film Festival, Official Selection
• Africa Rising International Film Festival, Official Selection
• Foyle Film Festival, Official Selection
• Atlanta Film Festival, Official Selection
• Sebastopal Documentary Film Festival, Official Selection 2
J
OURNAL A RTICLES
2020 Black Cargo. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 11, no. 2 2020 The Making of Richard Zuley: The Ignored Linkages between
the
US Criminal In/Justice System and the International Security State. American Anthropologist 122, no. 1 (2020): 133- 142.
2020 Torture without torturers: violence and racialization in black Chicago. Current Anthropology 61, no. S21 (2020).
2019 The logic of the slave patrol: the fantasy of black predatory violence and the use of force by the police. Palgrave
Communications 5, no. 1 (2019): 1-10. 2
2015 Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago. Russell Sage Journal of The Social Sciences.
2015 The Secret of the Blue Light. Contexts. Vol. 14
2014 Legacies of Fear: From Rodney King to Trayvon Martin [co- authored]. Transition, 113.
2013 The Qualia of Pain: Police Torture, Gang Life, and Communal Stories of Violence . Anthropological Theory, 13.
2012 What Wounds Enable: The Politics of Disability and Violence in
Chicago . Disability Studies Quarterly, 32, 3.
2012 Love, Peace, and Soul. Transition, 108, June.
2011 The Memory of Gold: Happy Slaves and the Problem of Security. Transition, 105, July.
2010 “As Soon as I Get Out Ima Cop Dem Jordans”: The Afterlife of the Corporate Gang. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 16, 6. December.
CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES
2018 The Black Box of Police Torture.
In The Anthropology of Police, pp. 188-208. Routledge.
2017 Alibi: How Extra-Legal Force Becomes Embedded
3
in the Law. In Writing in the World of Policing, editor Fassin, Didier.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
2017 Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago. In Unfinished, editor Joao Biehl. Durham: Duke University Press.
BOOK REVIEWS
2016 Pedagogy of the Flesh: A Review of Habeas Viscus . Theoretical Criminology.
2015 The Limitations of a “Dirty” World: A Review of On the Run and Punished. The Dubois Review 12:2 (2015) 1-11.
RESEARCH REPORTS
2007 With Cathy Cohen et al. The Attitudes and Behavior of African
American Youth: Research Summary. Chicago: University of Chicago, Center for Race, Politics, and Culture.
FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTSAND AWARDS
2021-2022 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
2021-2022 Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Fellowship Stanford University
2021-2022 Stanford Humanities Center, Fellowship (Declined)
2019-2020 T he University of Tokyo/Princeton University Strategic Partnership Teaching and Research Collaboration ($250,000)
International Affairs and Operations, Princeton University 2019-2020 Humanities Council Magic Grant ($75,000)
David A. Gardner ’69 Fund, Princeton University
2018-2019 Wenner Gren Foundation, Cultural Anthropology Grant ($20,000)
2017-2019 National Science Foundation, Senior Cultural Anthropology Grant (311,491)
2015-2017 John L. Loeb Chair ($15,000) Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 2015-2016 Clark Award ($6,000) Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2015-2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship ($200,000) 4
Carnegie Corporation of New York
2015-2016 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Visiting Fellow ($75,000) Cambridge, MA
2015-2016 Research Incubation Fund ($30,000)
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
2015-2016 American Academy for Arts and Sciences ($65,000) (Declined) Cambridge, MA, Visiting Scholar Program
2015-2016 National Humanities Center, Visiting Scholar ($65,000) (Declined) Durham, NC
2012–2013 Institute for Advanced Study ($50,000) Member, Princeton, NJ
2012–2013 National Research Council of the National Academies ($40,000) Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship
2012–2013 School for Advanced Research, Resident Scholar ($40,000) (Declined) Santa Fe, New Mexico
2012–2013 Wellesley College, Newhouse External Fellowship ($40,000)
(Declined) Newhouse Humanities Center
2012–2013 Provost’s Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration ($25,000)
Harvard University
2010–2011 Du Bois - Mandela - Rodney Post-Doctoral fellowship ($35,000) University of Michigan
2010–2012 The Carter G. Woodson Residential Research and (Declined) Teaching Fellowship ($80,000)
University of Virginia, Carter G. Woodson Institute
2009–2010 Erskine Peters Dissertation Year Fellowship ($25,000) University of Notre Dame
2009–2010 Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship ($30,000) (Honorary) University of Chicago
2009–2010 Frederick Douglass Institute Pre-Doctoral Fellowship ($25,000) (Declined) University of Rochester
2007–2008 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in Cultural Anthropology ($25,000)
2007–2008 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in Law and Social Science ($25,000) 5
2005–2007 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award ($90,000)
2004–2005 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies ($50,000) Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
2004–2009 University of Chicago, Trustees Fellowship ($50,000)
6
SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS
March 2021 Legacies of Uprisings Tufts University
March 2021 Police Violence and the Contemporary Moment University of Michigan
Jan. 2021 The History of Police Torture in the US Oregon State University
Jan. 2021 Animation and Anthropology: The Politics of Empathy New York University
Nov. 2020 Global Reckoning with Police Torture University of Edinburg
Sept. 2020 Whiplash: Anthropology in/of Disaster Duke University
Nov. 2019 Linked-Fate as Ethnography of Race Keynote, Swarthmore Keynote Mellon Mays Fellowship Conference Swarthmore, PA
Oct. 2019 Black Cargo
Keynote, Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture
Department of Anthropology, Rochester University New York, NY
Oct. 2019 First Major Works Book Lunch: Prayers for the People Brown University
Providence, RI
May 2019 The Craft of Ethnographic Lettering Keynote, Michel-Rolph Trouillot Lecture University of Chicago
Chicago, IL
May 2019 On Structural Tenderness Radcliffe Exploratory Workshop Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
May 2019 Torture without Torturers American Bar Foundation Chicago, IL
May 2019 Transnational Policing and Racial Justice University of Texas, Austin
Austin, TX
April 2019 “Bad Guys”: US Characterizations of Torture New York Academy of Science
New York, NY
March 2019 “Will Power of Addiction”
Harvard Medical School Cambridge, MA
Feb. 2019 Writing Ethnographic Futures
Keynote, American Ethnological Society St. Louis, MO
Feb. 2019 Nature of Police-Citizen Interactions
Center for Language, Interaction and Culture University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
May 2018 Emotional Labor in Academia
Smiling to Their Faces, University of British Columbia Vancouver, CN
May 2018 Fantasies, Anxieties, Difference Invited Lecture, Max Planck Institute Göttingen, Germany
Nov 2018 On Violence as Becoming
Invited Session, American Anthropological Association Annual Conference
San Jose, CA
Mar. 2018 Police Violence as Public Health Problem Tulane University
New Orleans, LA
Feb. 2018 Police Torture in Chicago
Invited Lecture, University of California, San Francisco Department of Anthropology
San Francisco, CA Feb. 2018 Grieving Police Violence
Invited Lecture, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
San Francisco, CA Feb. 2018 Tensions of Force
Sustainable Cities and Communities Conference Invited Lecture, Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA
Nov. 2017 On Black Lives Matter Moments Invited Discussion, Brown University Province, RI
Nov. 2017 A Tortured World
Invited Lecture, Bard University Annadale-On-Hudson, NY Oct. 2017 Opening the Black Box
Invited Lecture, Northwestern University Chicago, IL
Dec. 2016 Public Secrecy and Governmentality in Chicago Invited Lecture, Columbia University
New York, NY
Nov. 2016 Viral Videos and the Specter of Urban Violence
American Anthropological Association Annual Conference Minneapolis, MN
Nov. 2016 Temporality and the Movement for Black Lives
Invited Session, American Anthropological Association Annual Conference
Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 2016 The Craft of Ethnographic Lettering Invited Lecture, New York University New York, NY
Sept. 2016 The Secret of the Black Box
Invited Lecture, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC
Aug. 2016 The History of Police Torture in Urban Chicago Invited Lecture, Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
April 2016 The Contradiction: The Problem of Disproportionate Punishment Invited Lecture, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Cambridge, MA April 2016 Meet the Author Panel
Invited Session, American Ethnological Society Annual Conference Washington, D.C.
April 2016 Race, Policing, and the Limits of Democracy in the 21st Century Invited Lecture, Anthropology Colloquium
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor March 2016 The Politics of Disability
Invited Lecture, The University of Florida Gainesville, FL
March 2016 The Craft of Renegade Dreams
Invited Graduate Student Workshop on Ethnography
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Nov. 2015 Transforming “Public” Anthropology
Invited Presenter, American Anthropological Association Denver, Colorado
Nov. 2015 High Stakes: Marijuana, Ethnography, and American Geographies of Risk
Discussant, American Anthropological Association Denver, Colorado
Oct. 2015 Critical Medical Anthropology Today Invited Lecture, Brandies University Waltham, MA
May 2015 “Housing and Hardship in the US”
Invited Lecture, Humboldt University: International Research Center Berlin, Germany
April 2015 “The Aura in Authenticity: Reproducing the ‘Real’ in a Chicago Gang”
Keynote Address for Conference: Punishing Bodies: Gendered Responses to the Carceral State
Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT
March 2015 “Contested and Contestable Histories: New Theories in Gang Research”
Invited Lecture, Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
March 2015 “A Renegade Dream Come True”
Invited Lecture, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy Tufts University, Somerville, MA
March 2015 The Modern Legacy of the 13th Amendment
Invited Lecture, Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI March 2015 “Ethnographies of the Gang in the American City”
Cityscapes Workshop
Invited Lecture, Columbia University New York, New York
Feb. 2015 “Generational Conflict as Gang Strife: The Long History of the Divine Knights Gang”
Invited Lecture, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
Brown University, Providence, RI Oct. 2014 “Aesthetics of Martyrdom”
Russell Sage Foundation Conference: “Deprivation in America”
Invited Lecture, New York, NY
Sept. 2014 “Urban Violence as a Matter of Educational Inequity”
Ford Fellows Annual Conference, Irvine, CA May 2014 “The Politics of Mass Incarceration”
For conference entitled: “Learning from Detroit”
Invited Lecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
April 2014 “Gentrifying Chicago: The Politics of Redevelopment in the Inner City”
Invited Lecture, Bennington College, Bennington, VT April 2014 “Contemporary Circuits of Violence”
For a conference entitled: “Diasporic Circuits Reconsidered:
Bringing Together the Post-Colonial ‘New World’ and Post- Apartheid South Africa”
Invited Lecture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA April 2014 “Re-framing Gang Violence”
American Ethnological Society Conference, Boston, MA April 2014 Discussant: “Thresholds of Recognition”
American Ethnological Society Conference, Boston, MA March 2014 “Making Room for Madness in the City of Scars”
Invited Lecture, Princeton University, Department of Anthropology Princeton, NJ
Feb. 2014 “Embodied Violence, Life Stories, Dreams: The Narrative Challenge”
For a conference entitled “Health and the City: Difference, Rights, Belonging”
Invited Lecture, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Feb. 2014 “The Underside of Injury: How to Dream like a Renegade”
Invited Lecture, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA April 2013 “Injury and Resilience in Chicago”
Invited Lecture, University of Pennsylvania Anthropology Colloquium
Philadelphia, PA
Nov. 2013 Organizer and Presenter: “Revisiting the Chicago School”
American Anthropological Association Annual Conference Invited Session, Chicago, IL
Nov. 2012 “Technologies of Representation: A Brief Reflection On Gang Violence”
American Anthropological Association Annual Conference San Francisco, CA
Nov. 2012 Chair: “Politics of the ‘Precariat’”
American Anthropological Association Annual Conference
San Francisco, CA Nov. 2012 “The Injury of Nostalgia”
Invited Lecture, Institute for Advanced Study Seminar Series Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
Oct. 2012 “Sources of Injury, Pleas for Protection, and the Black Urban Poor”
Invited Lecture, New Faculty Lunch at the Mahindra Humanities Center
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Sept. 2012 “The Will Power of Addiction”
Invited Participant, The Will: A SSHRC Workshop The University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
July 2012 “The Grind: Black Bodies and Inverted Perceptions of Fear”
54 International Congress of Americanists 2012, Vienna, Austria April 2012 “Intimate Struggle and the Injury of Development”
American Ethnological Society (AES) Spring Conference New York, New York
March 2012 “Foot Soldiers of the Gang:
Ethnographic Knowledge Production and Urban Dislocation”
Invited Lecture by Qualitative Social Science Conference Harvard University, Cambridge MA
March 2012 “New Problems in Urban Housing”
Invited Lecture by The Culture Workshop
Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA Nov. 2011 “Jon Burge’s Ghost”
American Anthropological Association Annual Conference Montreal, Quebec
Nov. 2011 “Wheelchair Politics: African Americans in the Disability Rights Community”
Invited Lecture by the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
May 2011 “In Debt: Forms of Reciprocity in a Chicago Street Gang”
DEBT: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Debt
Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities University of Cambridge, London, UK
April 2011 “The Everyday Politics of Dislocation”
Invited Lecture by The Center for African and African American Studies
Faculty Brown Bag
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Sept. 2011 “Disabling Violence as Debt”
Invited Lecture for “Anthropology Day,”
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Nov. 2010 “‘He Owes Me and Now I’m Cashin’ In’:
Disability, Violence, and Retribution in a Chicago Street Gang”
Invited Lecture for the Disability Studies Forum The University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN
May 2010 “Violence, Debt, the Transformative Potential of Qualia”
Invited Lecture for conference, entitled, Qualia: Anthropological Explorations in the Experience of Quality
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
April 2010 “Financial Crises and Gang Mobility: Dealing with Gentrification on Chicago’s Westside”
Invited Keynote for American Studies Day American University, Washington D.C.
April 2010 “Footwork, Foot Soldiers, and Protest Footage: Dilapidated Housing and the Rhythm of Dislocation”
Invited Lecture, the Department of African and African American Studies and the Department of Anthropology Lecture Series Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
March 2010 “Reconstructing the Image of Michael Jackson: Explorations of Body, Spirit, and Society”
Invited Lecture, the Department of Africana Studies Notre Dame University, South Bend, IN
March 2010 “The Crisis of Dislocation”
Semiotics Workshop
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Dec. 2009 “You Never Ever Hear about the Wheelchair: Violence, Debt, and Disability in a Chicago Street Gang”
Invited Presidential Session, “MAKING DAILY LIFE DEADLY:
The Militarization of Everyday Life, North and South”
American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, PA Nov. 2009 “‘As Soon as I Get Out Ima Cop Dem Jordans’: The Politics of
Juvenile Shoe-Talk”
*Invited Lecture, Williams College, Department of Africana Studies Williamstown, MA
Oct. 2009 “Queer Performances in Hip Hop”
Queer Studies Conference, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
May 2009 “‘My President’s Black, My Lambo’s Blue’: Black Youth and Post- Civil Rights Sentiment”
Invited Paper, The New Frontiers of Race Conference
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and the Journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
