Margaret Bender
Margaret Bender (Ph.D., University of Chicago). Margaret Bender received her A.B. degree in English from Cornell University, her A.M. in the social sciences from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in Anthropology also from the University of Chicago. She has studied the relationship between language and culture in a variety of contexts—from political rhetoric in Iran to family literacy education in Chicago. Bender believes strongly that the study of language is essential to our understanding of cultures, persons, and events. Her recent book, Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah’s Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life, explored the religious, social and political implications of reading and writing in the Cherokee language. Bender’s research and teaching interests also include educational anthropology, gender studies, and Native American studies. She is currently working on a comparison of attitudes toward and practices related to fatherhood and masculinity in two Oklahoma Native American communities, and on linguistic analyses of Cherokee medicinal and religious texts. Bender teaches in Wake Forest’s Linguistics Program as well as in the Department of Anthropology.[2000]
Dr. Bender is a member, of both the Advisory Board and the Curriculum Committee of the Culturally-Based Native Health Program, a joint initiative on the part of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Western Carolina University, and Wake Forest to provide culturally-appropriate background and training to health care practitioners working with Native Americans. She is also designing and co-teaching the Cherokee Culture and History course that will be part of the Culturally-based Health Certificate being offered through the program.
Dr. Bender leads a camping trip with students each year at the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Cherokee, NC for the Annual Cherokee Indian Fair in October.
If interested, email Dr. Bender for details.
View Pictures from the 2008 trip
Recent Publications:
"Speaking Difference to Power: The Importance of Linguistic Sovereignty" (co-authored with Thomas Belt) in
Foundations of First Peoples' Sovereignty (link to PeterLang.com)
"Indexicality, voice, and context in the distribution of Cherokee scripts." in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Vol. 192 (2008)
Link to article in Ebscohost (requires WFU login)
"Cherokees Prior to 1838" in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 6 (2007) (link to UNC Press)
"Framing the Anomalous: Stoneclad, Sequoyah, and Cherokee Ethnoliteracy." In New Perspectives on Native North America (2006) (link to Nebraska Press)
Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life (2002) (link to UNC Press)
Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life (2002) (link to Amazon.com)
Linguistic Diversity in the South: Changing Codes, Practices, and Ideology (Southern Anthropological Society Proceedings, 37) (2004) (link to Amazon.com)
Upcoming Publications
"Visibility, Authenticity and Insiderness in Cherokee Language Ideologies" in Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country (2008) (link to University of Arizona Press)
Contact:
Postal Mail:
Margaret Bender
Anthropology Department
PO Box 7807
Winston-Salem, NC 27109
Phone: 336.758.5326
Email: benderm@wfu.edu
