Associate Professor and Chair
Dr. Johnson has a B.A. (1984) in Biology with honors in Environmental Studies from Williams College (Massachusetts), and a Ph.D. (1998) in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her research interests are environmental anthropology (environmental justice, biodiversity conservation, development, tourism and cultural identity), environmental history, race, gender, social theory. She focuses her research on Belize’s Afro-Caribbean populations, and in particular on questions of conservation, development, tourism and community in the rural Belizean Creole community of Crooked Tree. She has also written on the intersections of race and environment in the history of Belize, and has projects underway on environmental justice in the US-Mexico borderlands, gender and development in Crooked Tree, and the role of nature in Belizean transnational community. Melissa is on leave Fall 2007 to complete a book manuscript, Theory in Anthropology, which is under contract with Berg Publishers.
Melissa and her husband Elrick Bonner have two sons, Elrick Jr. and Adrian, who attend the Community Montessori School and play soccer for the Georgetown Soccer Association. The family travels to Belize as often as possible, where Elrick Sr. has cows and horses, and many more family members and friends. Melissa visits the Maine Coast as often as possible, where her family resides and where she spent many summers as a child.
Courses taught: Introduction to Anthropology; Anthropological Theory; Ethnographic Methods; Senior Seminar; Race, Class and Gender in the Caribbean; and Global Environmental Justice.
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