Jodi Skipper

A professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Dr. Jodi Skipper studies how Black pasts are represented in the present. Skipper's work understands how historic preservation projects play a role in imagining more sustainable and healthy futures for U.S. southern communities. She earned a B.A. in History from Grambling State University (LA), a M.A. in Anthropology from Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology, with a focus on African diaspora studies, from the University of Texas at Austin. Her book Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South (University of Iowa Press) tells the story of a southern academic navigating life and a career in landscapes that honor the Confederacy while silencing slavery. The book is based on her collaboration with the nationally recognized Behind the Big House program in Mississippi. You can learn more about that work at behindthebighouse.org. Skipper is also co-editor (with Michele Grigsby Coffey) of Navigating Souths: Transdisciplinary Explorations of a U.S. Region, fourteen original essays that articulate questions about the significances of the South as a theoretical and literal “home” base for social science and humanities researchers.