Faith Warner, Ph.D.

Why anthropology?

"Two life experiences in particular contributed to my becoming a cultural anthropologist. First, I cannot remember when or why my fascination with Mexico and Central America first germinated, as it was something that developed when I was a small child, before I even entered school. But, the key event in my life was when I studied in Mexico City for a year as a Rotarian exchange student while in high school.

That year, my fascination matured into a lasting love for the peoples and cultures of Mexico. The second major experience that contributed to my choosing anthropology was my childhood exposure to a violent world, including Viet Nam, the Cold War, and later, the violence in Central America. Over the years, I have transformed my childhood anxieties over human violence into a research question and advocacy issue that still guides my scholarly ethos and actions: Under what conditions do humans behave with such violence toward one another and can such aggression be predicted and prevented?

I pursued this research question at Syracuse University where I gained my Masters and Doctorate degrees in Anthropology, with a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies. I first looked at how Salvadoran refugee women utilized the power of motherhood and the testimonio as a means of social protest against the atrocities of war.

Following that, I received a Fulbright Robles Garcia grant to study gender and ethnolinguistic differences in adaptation, traumatic stress, and social support networks in a Guatemalan refugee camp in Campeche, Mexico. There, I worked with Mayan peoples, including the Q’eqchi’, K’iche’, Mam, and K’anjobal.

Finally, my love for Mexico today is much more than a scholarly interest, as I am now mother to two bi-national Mexican-American sons and in effect have made anthropology much more than my occupation. Today, my daily life is a continuous cultural encounter and anthropology has become my lifestyle. It, therefore, gives me great satisfaction to introduce Bloomsburg University students to a culture that I value and identify with as much as my own."

Interests

Feminist and advocacy anthropology, narrative theory, ethnicity and transnationalism, medical anthropology, refugees, migrant farmworkers, Q'eqchi and K'iche' Maya and Mesoamerica.

Scholarship

August 2016 — Warner, Ph.D., professor of Anthropology, has been selected to serve a three year term on the U.S. Student Fulbright National Screening Committee for study in Mexico through the Institute of International Education (IIE), by invitation of the Institute’s Board of Trustees and CEO, Allan Goodman. Warner is a 1995 Fulbright awardee, having previously received a Fulbright Garcia-Robles award to conduct ethnographic research with Guatemalan Maya peoples in refugee camps in Mexico and she is a long-standing member of the Fulbright Organization. She also serves the IIE as an advisor for the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program and she is Representative of the East of the national executive council of Lambda Alpha National Collegiate Honor Society in Anthropology.

February 2015 — Warner, Ph.D., professor of anthropology, had two contributions published in Disasters in Field Research: Preparing for and Coping with Unexpected Events by Gillian Ice, Darna Dufour, and Nancy Stevens, by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2015. Warner’s contributions entitled Thank you Dengue and War, Vulnerability, and Common Ground address health, safety, and security challenges she encountered while conducting long-term participant observation with Q’eqchi’ and K’iche’ Maya communities in a United Nations refugee camp in southern Mexico.

November 2013 — Warner, Ph.D., co-published two newsletter articles in November, including Just Go to This Website: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Predicts that Jobs in Anthropology Will Increase by 21% by 2020 (with Gabrielle Vielhauer), and The Ideal Preparation for Admission to MA and PhD Programs in Applied Anthropology: A Roundtable Discussion with Graduate Faculty Members (with DeeAnne Wymer) in the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter.

November 2013 — Warner, Ph.D., published a research paper, Gender Differences in the Expression of Traumatic Stress in a Q’eqchi’ Refugee Community, in Gendered Perspectives on International Development Working Papers, #303, Center for Gender in Global Context, December, Michigan State University. The Center for Gender in Global Context is an interdisciplinary center in International Studies and Programs focused on gender, feminist, and women’s studies. Its affiliated faculty and students study how women and men from diverse racial, ethnic, national, and sexual backgrounds live in and engage with the world and how processes of global change affect gender relations locally, nationally, and internationally.

March 2013 — Warner, Ph.D., presented a paper, "An Inconvenient Anthropologist: Ethical Collisions in Advocacy, Activist, and Feminist Anthropology in Refugee Research," at the 73rd Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings in Denver, Colorado March 19 to 25.

March 2013 — Warner, Ph.D., she co-organized a roundtable on preparing for graduate school with representatives of the leading graduate programs in applied anthropology in the U.S.-Preparation for Admission to M.A. and Ph.D. Programs in Applied Anthropology: A Roundtable Discussion with Graduate Faculty Members. She also chaired a session entitled, Resolving Conflicts and Contradictions in Anthropological and Archaeological Research.

March 2013 — Alexa Rose, an anthropology major, teamed with Melanie Yodock, an anthropology graduate ’11, David Magolis, interim director of library services, and Warner, Ph.D., to research library ethnography at the Andruss Library. The four recently presented their research, "Anthropologists and Assessment in Academia: An Application of Library Ethnography," at the Society for Applied Anthropology International Conference in Baltimore. Andruss Library has since used some of the findings to make changes to improve its service to the community.

March 2013 — Julie Steffen, a December 2012 anthropology graduate, along with Warner, Ph.D., presented their research, “The Perceived Costs and Benefits of Fracking in Central Pennsylvania,” at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings in Denver. The ethnographic research presented in this poster documents perceptions of local residents towards the impact of fracking on the region’s environment, economy, laws, and culture. Central foci of the research include the disagreement over the risks associated with fracking, conflict over the distribution of its benefits, and the resulting community tensions over changes in socioeconomic relations, the social and natural environment, laws, policies, and regulations relating to the fracking boom.

The central goal of the research project was to document the often volatile and divisive attitudes of people who live within 30 miles of a fracking well in the Marcellus Shale Region in the vicinity of Williamsport in order to develop a clearer understanding of the degree to which community members perceive both the costs and benefits of fracking to themselves and their community at large.

September 2012 — Warner, Ph.D., was selected as a recipient of the Dean's Salute To Excellence Award as honored by Dean James Brown ... "Many faculty members in the College of Liberal Arts are excellent teacher-scholars who contribute greatly to the well-being of our students and the university community. By virtue of their teaching, scholarly/creative work, and service, campus culture is improved and the visibility and reputation of the university is enhanced nationally and internationally."

In 1998 Dean Hsien-Tung Liu established the Dean’s Salute to Excellence award to recognize distinction in the areas of teaching and professional responsibilities, scholarship, and service. Since then, the college has recognized a few select faculty members each year for their achievements, with selection based on performance reviews.

Warner recently completed her tenth post-tenure year. Her passion for teaching is effectively reflected in her student evaluations, which are exemplary, as well as in the observations of her chairperson and peers, who write that her “success is evident whether she is in front of over 200 students in a mass lecture introductory course, guiding anthropology majors through graduate and career preparatory upper level courses, or individually crafting research projects one-on-one with a single student.” Her commitment to mentoring and student success is evident throughout everything she does.

During the evaluation period she offered eight scholarly presentations and two additional posters in collaboration with students. Additionally she published three articles as well as a film on the discipline of anthropology. She is very active in service to her department and has served as interim director of the Frederick Douglass Initiative, as well as working with that organization in a variety of capacities. She has also been a productive member of the college’s Assessment Committee, and she has been asked to serve as chair of that group as well.

November 20111 — Warner, Ph.D., also presented “The Legacy of La Violencia on Maternal and Child Health for Guatemalan Refugees in Mexico and the United States: A Feminist Application of Johan Galtung's Violence Triangle” on the session Tidemarks and Legacies in the Anthropology of Violence, reviewed by the Society for Medical Anthropology at the 110th American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Montreal, QC, Canada Nov. 17. At the meetings, she also participated on the workshop, “Preparing Undergraduates to Practice Anthropology.”

October 2011 — Warner, Ph.D., published “A ‘First Fieldwork’ Firsthand Experience for an Introductory Cultural Anthropology Class” in Strategies in Teaching Anthropology. The volume was featured in the October 2011 Anthropology News of the American Anthropological Association: Integrated Strategies in Teaching Anthropology.

May 2010 — Warner, Ph.D., had her research on refugee women's health featured in the international development sector in ”Gendered Perspectives on International Development Resource Bulletin", Volume 24:2 published by the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen) at Michigan State University, the host center for the Women and International Development Program.

The bulletin highlighted Warner’s article from Medical Anthropology Quarterly, “Social Support and Distress among Q’eqchi’ Refugee Women in Maya Tecún, Mexico”. Also, two graduate schools selected the article for their journal club discussions, including the Medical Anthropology Journal Club at the University of Florida and the Medical Anthropology & Public Health Journal Club at Oregon State University. The clubs serve as forums for graduate students to discuss and critically evaluate recent literature deemed as influential in the fields of medical anthropology and public health. Winona Cochran, chair of the Psychology Department, collaborated on the project as a data analysis consultant.

Invited Presentation — Bloomsburg University Faculty-Mentored Student Research at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings. Invited Roundtable Session Conference Conventions: The Circulation of Knowledge at the AAA Meetings Society for Humanistic Anthropology American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans.

Poster — Hard Coal, Harsh Laws, and Hardened Hearts: Hispanic Immigration and Structural Violence in The Pennsylvania Coal Belt Region (with Liesl Driver and Kristin Fisher) American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans.

September 2009 — Warner, Ph.D., has an article, "Ethical Considerations for Digital Fieldwork: Cyberethnography and IRBs" published in the September 2009 volume of Anthropology News Special Edition "Codifying Ethics," the world's largest professional organization of anthropologists: "Anthropology News." The article addresses the need for development of ethical guidelines in doing online ethnographic research through a discussion of the relationship between anthropologists and IRBS.

Poster — Longitudinal Research on The Impoverishment Of Women in The United States: A Weakening Hegemony? (with Kristin Kelly) American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Invited Paper — Extending Empathy in Ethnography as Disciplinary Taboo. American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Invited Session: Society for Humanistic Anthropology.

November 2008 — Warner, Ph.D., presented a paper titled "We Are All Here for Love": Elite Mexican Immigrant Families and the Construction of Regional Identity in Tuxpan, Mexico at the 107th American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings in San Francisco, California on November 21, 2008. The session, Transnational Intimacies, addressed issues of love, marriage, identity, and migration in the context of global capitalism. The research is based on a larger ethnographic project conducted with Jesus Salas Elorza, languages and cultures, and alumni Sharon Cabana and Brandi Burlingame. Warner was also an invited participant on a special event sponsored by the General Anthropology Division and organized by Dr. Peter Brown of Emory University.

Paper — “We Are All Here for Love”: Elite Mexican Immigrant Families and the Construction of Regional Identity in Tuxpan, Mexico. American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, San Francisco, California.

June 2007 — Warner, Ph.D., published "Social Support and Distress among Q’eqchi’ Refugee Women in Maya Tecún, Mexico" in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.

Invited Paper — Cultural and Gender Differences in the Expression of Traumatic Stress in a Guatemalan Refugee Camp. American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.