Anne-Maria B. Makhulu

Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology

Anne-Maria Makhulu is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies and Core Faculty in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke University. Her research interests cover: Africa and more specifically South Africa, cities, space, globalization, political economy, neoliberalism, the anthropology of finance and corporations, as well as questions of aesthetics, including the literature of South Africa. Makhulu is co-editor of Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities (2010) and the author of Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home (2015). She is a contributor to Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a Neoliberal Age (2004), New Ethnographies of Neoliberalism (2010), author of articles in Anthropological Quarterly and PMLA, special issue guest editor for South Atlantic Quarterly (115(1)) and special theme section guest editor for Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (36(2)). A new project, South Africa After the Rainbow (in preparation), examines the relationship between race and mobility in postapartheid South Africa and has been supported with an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology
  • Associate Professor of African and African American Studies
  • Associate Professor in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies
  • Core Faculty in Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Contact Information

Education

  • B.A. Columbia University, 1994
  • M.A. The University of Chicago, 1996
  • Ph.D. The University of Chicago, 2003

Research Interests

  1. South African campus social movements
  2. Access to educational and other opportunities in South Africa
  3. Class and race mobility in South Africa
  4. The history of applied anthropology
  5. Anthropologists in the public and private sectors

Awards, Honors, and Distinctions

  • Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentoring. The Graduate School. 2022
  • Faculty Advancement Seed Grant. Office of Faculty Advancement. 2021
  • Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Grant . Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research. 2019
  • NEH Grant Fellowship for Project: “The New Financial Elite: Race, Mobility and Ressentiment After Apartheid”. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). 2017
  • Course Development Grant. Trinity College. 2017
  • Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research Summer Grant. Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research. 2016
  • Josiah Trent Memorial Foundation Grant. Trent Foundation. 2015
  • Vice-Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies Grant . Vice-Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. 2015
  • Social Sciences Division Funding. Trinity Arts & Sciences. 2014
  • Mellon Humanities Funding. Andrew Mellon Foundation. 2014
  • Africa Initiative Grant. Africa Initiative. 2013
  • Josiah Trent Memorial Foundation Grant. Josiah Trent Memorial Foundation. 2011
  • Provost Common Fund. Duke University. 2008
  • Duke University Center for International Studies Research Grant. Duke University. 2008
  • Duke University Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research Travel Grant. Duke University Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research. 2008
  • Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Fellowship. Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton. 2006
  • Duke University Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research Travel Grant. Duke University Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research. 2006
  • Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Research Fellowship. Princeton University. 2006
  • Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Grant. Princeton University. 2005
  • Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Grant. Princeton University. 2005
  • Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Grant. Princeton University. 2004
  • Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies Course Development Grant for “Rethinking Globalization” . Princeton University. 2004
  • Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Grant. Princeton University. 2004
  • Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Council on the Humanities, Princeton University. 2003
  • Harry Frank Guggenheim Dissertation Fellowship. University of Chicago. 2000
  • Josephine de Kármán Fellowship. University of Chicago. 2000
  • Spencer Foundation Mentor Grant. University of Chicago. 1998
  • Spencer Foundation Travel Grant. University of Chicago. 1996
  • Edith Heller Juda Fellowship. University of Chicago. 1995
  • Unendowed Fellowship. University of Chicago. 1994
  • Helena Rubinstein Scholarship for Women in Science. Columbia University. 1993

Courses Taught

  • RELIGION 503S: The Black Radical Tradition: COVID-19, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, and the Movement for Black Lives
  • POLSCI 589S: The Black Radical Tradition: COVID-19, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, and the Movement for Black Lives
  • ICS 504S: The Black Radical Tradition: COVID-19, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, and the Movement for Black Lives
  • GATE 580W: Global Academic Travel Experience
  • CULANTH 802S: Decolonizing Social Theory
  • CULANTH 801S: Decolonizing Social Theory
  • CULANTH 793: Individual Research in Cultural Anthropology
  • CULANTH 791: Special Readings
  • CULANTH 530S: Racial Capitalism: From 1492 to the Movement for Black Lives
  • CULANTH 503S: The Black Radical Tradition: COVID-19, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, and the Movement for Black Lives
  • CULANTH 293: Research Independent Study
  • CULANTH 291: Independent Study
  • CULANTH 185S: African Hashtag Activism
  • AAAS 503S: The Black Radical Tradition: COVID-19, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd, and the Movement for Black Lives
  • AAAS 185S: African Hashtag Activism

In the News

Representative Publications

  • Makhulu, A. -. M. Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home. Duke University Press, 2015.
  • Makhulu, A. M. “The "dialectics of toil": Reflections on the politics of space after apartheid.” Anthropological Quarterly 83, no. 3 (June 1, 2010): 551–80. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2010.0004.
  • Makhulu, A. -. M. “The Question of Freedom: Post-Emancipation South Africa in a Neoliberal Age.” In Ethnographies of Neoliberalism, edited by C. J. Greenhouse, 131–45. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
  • Makhulu, A. -. M. “The Search for Economic Sovereignty.” In Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities, edited by A. -. M. B. Makhulu, B. A. Buggenhagen, and S. Jackson, 28–47. University of California Press, 2010.
  • Makhulu, A. -. M., B. A. Buggenhagen, and S. Jackson. Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities. University of California Press, 2010.
  • Makhulu, A. -. M. “Poetic Justice: Xhosa Idioms and Moral Breach in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” In Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a Neoliberal Age, edited by B. Weiss, 26:229–61. Brill Press, 2004.