Elisha P. RenneAssociate Professor Center for Afroamerican and African Studies E-Mail: erenne@umich.edu |
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Recent Activities
Elisha P. Renne is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Renne earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from New York University in 1990. Her dissertation focussed on colonial law, marriage practices, and gender relations in southwestern Nigeria. This research formed the basis for her book, Cloth That Does Not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), which was a finalist for the 1996 Herskovits Award (African Studies Association). From 1991 to 1993, Renne was a post-doctoral fellow at Australia National University, Canberra, where she collaborated with demographers on a research project studying fertility change in southwestern Nigeria. She has also taught at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, as a Fulbright Scholar, and at Princeton University, where she was a Mellon Research Fellow, before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 1998. At Michigan, she has conducted graduate seminars on contemporary African societies, demographic anthropology, and African textiles and social history; and undergraduate courses on introductory anthropology, Africa and the African diaspora, childbirth and culture, and African women. Her areas of research interest include: African ethnology; medical anthropology; fertility and reproductive health; gender relations; the anthropology of development; religion and social change; and the anthropology of cloth.
Renne’s research in Nigeria focuses on her continuing interest in issues relating to medical anthropology, gender relations, and textiles. She is involved in several projects associated with the Michigan African Studies Initiative, including the organization of a workshop on African textiles/texts, participation in a symposium on women’s health in Nigeria, and contributions to the proposed African arts and leadership project. Her monograph, Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town, was published by the University of Edinburgh Press and University of Michigan Press in 2003. She is also the co-editor of the volumes, Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations and Population and Development Issues.
Renne’s most recent and on-going work includes a study of the international polio eradication initiative in Northern Nigeria, focusing on the historical, cultural, political context of this campaign. During the summer 2005, she received a Fulbright Senior Fellowship to work with Dr. Salihu Maiwada, Ahmadu Bello University, on the project, New Technologies of Machine-Embroidered Robe Production and Changing Gender Roles in Zaria, Nigeria. She is also continuing research, begun as a 2005-2006 fellow in the Michigan Institute of the Humanities, focusing on spiritual ties and spatial connections maintained through white garments use by members of Nigerian-based Cherubim & Seraphim churches in the United States.
Recent Publications
Perspectives on Polio and Immunization in Northern Nigeria. Social Science & Medicine 63(7):1857-69, 2006.
The Culture of Development in a Southwestern Nigerian Town. In: Developing Cultures: Case Studies, L. Harrison and P. Berger, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 43-62, 2006.
Childhood Memories and Contemporary Parenting in Ekiti, Nigeria. Africa 75(1):63-82, 2005.
Yoruba Religious Textiles: Essays in Honour of Cornelius Oyeleke Adepegba, E. Renne and B. Agbaje-Williams, eds. Ibadan: Book Builders, 2005.
“Let your garments always be white”: Expressions of the Past and Present in Yoruba Religious Textiles. In: African Religion and Social Change: Essays in Honor of John Peel, T. Falola, ed. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 139-63, 2005.
Dressing in the Stuff of Dreams: Sacred Dress and Religious Authority in Southwestern Nigeria. C. Stewart, ed. Dreaming 14 (2-3):120-35, 2004.
From Khaki to Agbada: Dress and Political Transition in Nigeria. In: Fashioning Nations: Clothing, Politics, and African Identities in the 20 th Century, J. Allman, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 125-43, 2004.
Gender Roles and Women’s Status: What They Mean to Hausa Muslim Women in Northern Nigeria. In: Qualitative Demography: Categories and Contexts in Population Studies. S. Szreter, A. Dharmalingam, and H. Sholkamy, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 276-94, 2004.
Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press and Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, for the Intl African Institute, 2003.
Changing Assessments of Abortion in a Northern Nigerian Town. In: Abortion in a Changing World, A. Basu, ed. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 119-38, 2003.
Fundamentals of Fertility: Cosmology and Conversion in a Southwestern Nigerian Town, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8(3):551-69, 2002.
“Cleaning the Inside” and the Regulation of Menstruation in Southwestern Nigeria. In: Regulating Menstruation, E. van de Walle and E. Renne, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 187-201, 2001.
Twinship in an Ekiti Yoruba Town. Ethnology 40(1): 63-78, 2001.
Cloth and Conversion: Yoruba Textiles and Ecclesiatical Dress. In: Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-Cultural Perspective, L. Arthur, ed. Oxford: Berg, pp. 7-24. 2000.
Nigeria’s “Demographic Delusion” and the 1991 Census Exercise in a Southwestern Nigerian Town. In: Population and Development Issues, J.A. Ebigbola and E. Renne, eds. Ibadan: African BookBuilders Ltd, pp. 303-320. 2000.
The Politics of the 1996 Cerebrospinal Meningitis Epidemic in Nigeria. Africa 68(1):118-134 (co-authored with C.L. Ejembi and H.A. Adamu). 1998.
Postinor Use Among Young Women in Southwestern Nigeria: A Research Note. Reproductive Health Matters 6(11):107-114. 1998.
Local and Institutional Interpretations of IUDs in Southwestern Nigeria. Social Science & Medicine 44(8):1141-1148. 1997.
“Traditional Modernity” and the Economics of Handwoven Cloth Production in Southwestern Nigeria. Economic Development and Cultural Change 45(4):773-792. 1997.
The Meaning of Contraceptive Choice and Constraint for Hausa Women in a Northern Nigerian Town. Anthropology & Medicine 4(2):159-175. 1997.
Perceptions of Population Policy, Development, and Family Planning in Northern Nigeria. Studies in Family Planning 27(3):127-136. 1996.
The Pregnancy That Doesn't Stay: The Practice and Perception of Abortion by Ekiti Yoruba Women. Social Science and Medicine 42(4):483-494. 1996.
