Jean Comaro

Jean Comaro is Professor of African and African

American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer
Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. She is an
expert on the eects of colonialism on people in Southern
Africa.[1] Until 2012, Jean was the Bernard E. & Ellen C.
Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology
and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and
Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Cape Town.[2]

2 Personal quotes

She received her B.A. in 1966 from the University of

Cape Town and her Ph.D. in 1974 from London School
of Economics. She has been a University faculty member
since 1978.

3 Publications

The fascinating thing is that anthropology is antihegemonic in many of the questions it asks, and is threatened in many places. But the ideas produced within anthropology are still generative far beyond the discipline.
Nov. 2008

1985 Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The

Culture and History of a South African People.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

In collaboration with her husband John Comaro, as well

as on her own, Comaro has written extensively on colonialism,and hegemony based on eldwork conducted in
southern Africa and Great Britain.

2007 Beyond the Politics of Bare Life: AIDS and

the Global Order. Public Culture, 19(1): 197-219.

Comaro also serves as a member of the Editorial Col- Joint Publications (with John Comaro):
lective of the journal Public Culture.
1991 Of Revelation and Revolution Vol I: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South
Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1992 Ethnography and the Historical Imagination.

Boulder: Westview Press.

Personal life

1997 Of Revelation and Revolution Vol II: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jean Comaro was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, shortly

after World War II. Her father, a Jewish South African
doctor, joined the British Army Medical Corps while
studying abroad to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. Her mother was a convert to Judaism, born to a
Lutheran German family that had emigrated to South
Africa in the late nineteenth century. Dr. Comaros parents returned to South Africa when she was ten months
old, settling in the highly segregated industrial town of
Port Elizabeth. While the family supported local political unrest, her father kept a low-prole due to his role
running a local clinic. Her mother was involved in community work, including running soup kitchens and nightschool, and working with the elderly Jewish community.

2000 Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a

Second Coming. Public Culture, 12(2): 291-343.
2006 Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (eds.)
University of Chicago Press.
2006 The Portraits of an Ethnographer as a Young
Man: The Photography of Isaac Schapera in Old
Botswana. Anthropology Today. 22(1):10-17.
2007 Picturing a Colonial Past: The African Photographs of Isaac Schapera. (eds. w/ D.A. James)
University of Chicago Press.
2009 Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago Studies in Practices
of Meaning), University Of Chicago Press (July 15,
2009)

In late 1960s, she and her husband, anthropologist John

Comaro moved to Great Britain to pursue a PhD in
anthropology.[3] Both Jean and John Comaro were faculty members at the University of Chicago between 1979
and 2012.[4]

2009 Dixit: Violencia y ley en la poscolonia: una reexin sobre las complicidades Norte-Sur, Buenos
Aires y Madrid, Katz Barpal Editores, ISBN 97884-96859-56-2 (En coedicin con el Centro de Cultura Contempornea de Barcelona)

For full interview, see 2008 interview with Kalman Applbaum.

1

5
2011 Twenty Years after Of Revelation and Revolution: An Interview with Jean Comaro, Social
Sciences and Missions (Leiden: Brill), vol.24(2-3),
pp. 148170
2012 Theory from the South: Or, How EuroAmerica is Evolving Toward Africa (The Radical
Imagination). [Paradigm Publishers].

References

[1] Archived December 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.

[2] Jean Comaro Public Culture. Publicculture.org. Retrieved 2015-12-29.
[3]
[4] Jean and John Comaro interviewed by Kalman Applbaum 15th November. Dspace.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved
2015-12-29.

External links
University of Chicago Faculty Bio

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1

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6.3

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