A. Lynn Bolles

Ph.D. (1981) and M.A. (1978) Rutgers University; A.B. (1971) Syracuse University

Dr. A. Lynn Bolles joined the department in 1989, after serving for eight years as the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College. She was one of the founders of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Bowdoin College and the Institute of Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies. At Maryland, she is an affiliate faculty in Anthropology, African American Studies, American Studies, Comparative Literature and the Latin American Studies Center.

Her research focuses on women, organized labor, and gender relations in globalization particularly in the African Diaspora concentrating in the Caribbean, Latin America and the US. She has published several books on Caribbean women: We Paid Our Dues: Women Trade Union Leaders in the Caribbean (1996); Sister Jamaica: A Study of Women, Work and Households in Kingston (1996); In the Shadow of the Sun, co-authored with Deere et.al and My Mother Who Fathered me and Others: Gender and Kinship in the English-Speaking Caribbean (1988). Bolles’s contributions to Caribbean scholarship is exemplified by her chapters in all of the editions of Africana Studies, edited by Mario Acevedo and Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean, edited by Richard Hillman and Thomas D’Agostino (2009). Her work on women and tourism earned her recognition by UNESCO, Casa de las Americas, Cuba (2005) and appeared in The Gender of Globalization, edited by Nandini Gunewardena and Ann Kingsolver (2008), Sister Circle (2002) and Women’s Labor in the Global Economy (2007) both edited by Sharon Harley.

Dr. Bolles served as the Chair for the Africa and Africa in the Americas Committee (1992-93) and received the University Maryland Minority Faculty of the Year Award. She also served as a mentor in the Ronald McNair Fellows program. An active member of numerous professional associations, Dr. Bolles has served as the President of the Association of Black Anthropologists (1983-84); The Caribbean Studies Association (1997-98); the Association for Feminist Anthropology (2001-03) and the Society for the Anthropology of North America (2009-2011).

Major Areas of Research: Women of Africa and the African Diaspora Gender and Globalization Feminist ethnography