University of Chicago

Graduate Student, Anthropology

Other Affiliations: Brandeis University, Anthropology

PhD Candidate

University of Chicago

Thesis Title: Assimilation & Alterity: Negotiation of Space in a Borderland Region

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This paper explores how Alsatians living in a geopolitical borderland negotiate space and invoke personhood through regional language, cultural manifestations, rituals and extremist political ideologies.  The research is based upon fieldwork and interviews conducted between 2011-2012 in the villages of Thann, Colmar, Strasbourg and Beblenheim.  Each village represents disparate socioeconomic constraints that reveal how social ideologies are constructed and enacted within families, local communities, local industry, the Alsatian region and France.  One particular facet that is striking, yet seemingly paradoxical, is the pervasive sentiment of extremist right-wing factions in Alsace that manifests in Islamaphobia and anti-immigration policies.  Alsace has a long history of serving as a political pawn in which it was subordinate to nationalist policies, forced linguistic aphasia and cultural suppression that locals invoke when speaking of their regional history, which are invoked throughout villages and enacted in public performances used to construct collective memories.  Yet an overwhelming majority of the population in Alsace is supportive of policies that enact similar systems of symbolic and structural violence.  This paper addresses the history of Alsace, current challenges regional members experience, how they commodify their ethnicity for economic stability, public memory, political ideologies and the future of Alsatian politics linked to the Front National party in France.  The methodologies are drawn from fieldwork conducted during 2011 and continuing contact with members of the communities and villages I studied.  My fieldwork includes 5 formal interviews, 20 informal interviews and participant-observation.

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