Tara Westmor is a joining Kenyon as a Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation/Teaching Fellow in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Fulbright Student Research Scholar (2024-2025) and anthropologist poet. Tara’s anthropology research examines the politics of poetic recitation in southern Vietnam: who recites, who listens, and what kinds of publics get made in the act of speaking a poem aloud? She has presented her research at numerous conferences in anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, creative writing and semiotics.
Areas of Expertise
Anthropology of creativity, Southeast Asia, (post) socialism
Education
2017 — Master of Fine Arts from New Mexico State University
2013 — Bachelor of Arts from University of Cincinnati
Courses Recently Taught
This course introduces students to the discipline that studies and compares cultures. Students learn about the main concepts used in anthropology and how anthropologists conduct research, while also discovering how people live in other times and places. They also learn about theories that provide frameworks for understanding and comparing cultures. Ethnographic descriptions of life in particular places give students factual materials with which to apply and critique such theories. Through this introduction to the study of culture in general, and an exposure to specific cultures, students inevitably come to re-examine some of the premises of their own culture. This foundation course is required for upper-level work in cultural anthropology courses. No prerequisite. Offered every semester.