Dr. Jodi Skipper is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
Research Interests
Dr. Skipper's research interests include African diaspora anthropology, historic sites management, historical archaeology, museum and heritage studies, and southern studies. She more specifically explores how African American pasts are represented in the present.
Dr. Skipper is an applied anthropologist, who explores the representation of African American lives through material culture. Her theoretical approach draws on contextual emphases in public history, public archaeology, and cultural representations in museum studies. She established a foundation for intersecting these fields through her dissertation work on the St. Paul United Methodist Church, an historically African American church in the Dallas, Texas arts district. Dr. Skipper examined the church community’s prospects of preserving its historic building and historical legacy through two heritage projects; one in which archaeologists excavated a shotgun house site on the church property and a public history project in which she created an interpretive history exhibition on the church.
During her time at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Skipper extended her focus by investigating how African American historic sites interact with the production of heritage in tourism spaces through two new projects, the Behind the Big House program in Marshall County, Mississippi, and the Promiseland Historic Preservation project in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana.
Biography
Dr. Jodi Skipper received her B.A. in History from Grambling State University in 1998. It is there that she began to develop an interest in African diaspora archaeology, which she studied at Florida State University and the University of Texas at Austin. Through those institutions, she received a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology, with a focus on historical archaeology. Her M.A. thesis was a historical and archaeological analysis of one plantation-owning family in Leon County, Florida, and her dissertation investigated the application of public archaeology and other methods of historic preservation at the historic St. Paul United Methodist Church community in the Arts District of Dallas, Texas. As a graduate student, she worked for several private and federal cultural resource management institutions, including the National Park Service. After completing her dissertation, Dr. Skipper accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies. She joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi in 2011. In addition to teaching, she enjoys traveling to historic sites and attending food festivals.
Courses Taught
- Anth 101 Intro to Anthropology
- Anth 102 Intro to Archaeology and Biological Anthropology
- Anth 315/AAS 316 The African Diaspora
- Anth 415 Historical Archaeology
- S St 101 Intro to Southern Studies I
- S St 102 Intro to Southern Studies II
- S St 104 The South and Race
- S St 110 Slavery and the University
- S St 556 Heritage Tourism in the South
- S St 601 Southern Studies Graduate Seminar I
- S St 602 Southern Studies Graduate Seminar II
- Hon 101 Freshman Honors I
- Hon 102 Freshman Honors II
Education
B.A. History, Grambling State University (1998)
M.A. Anthropology, Florida State University (2002)
Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin (2010)
Recognitions
- Sanford and Susan Thomas Senior Professor Research Award in the Social Sciences, UM College of Liberal Arts, 2024
- Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, Whiting Foundation, 2017
- Diversity Innovator Award, University of Mississippi, 2020
- Excellence in Community Engagement Award, Overall Community Engagement Award, University of Mississippi, 2019
- Humanities Scholar Award, Mississippi Humanities Council, 2017
- Award of Merit to Preserve Marshall County and Holly Springs, Inc, Mississippi Historical Society, 2015