Karen McCarthy Brown (August 12, 1942 – March 4, 2015)[1] was an anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of religion.
Until her retirement in 2009 due to illness, McCarthy Brown was a Professor of Anthropology at Drew University.
At Drew University, McCarthy Brown was the first woman in the Theological School to receive tenure and to achieve the rank of full professor.
[4] Her dissertation was titled "The Veve of Haitian Vodou: A Structural Analysis of Visual Imagery.
...Actually, given Alourdes's intuitive powers, it is doubtful that I ever hid myself from her, but she had always been respectful and had never before addressed me as directly as she did that afternoon in the spring of 1981.
[9] Karen McCarthy Brown's participant observer-informant relationship with Mama Lola gradually progressed into a strong friendship.
"[11] Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, a biography of Marie Thérèse Alourdes Macena Champagne Lovinski, is arguably McCarthy Brown's most important contribution to the field of anthropology.
The book explores and renders moot dichotomies of urban vs. rural, academic vs. illiterate, and developed vs. underdeveloped that unsuccessfully seek to oversimplify encounters between the West and "The Other.
"[11] Furthermore, McCarthy Brown portrays the complex influences that affect Haitian women's lives in general, and the personal experiences of Alourdes and her family, in particular.
[11] McCarthy Brown is aware of her own role in Alourde's life as ethnographer and friend, and makes her own influence, potential misunderstandings, and "Otherness" refreshingly transparent.
[5] Karen McCarthy Brown created and directed the Drew Newark Project, funded by the Ford Foundation.
This was a ten-year-long religion mapping project with minority students from Drew University in Newark, New Jersey.
[13] McCarthy Brown has written about the political murals that were created in Haiti in response to Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return in 1994.
[16] McCarthy Brown first became involved in feminism in 1970, the year that she started as a doctoral student at Temple University.
She cites Simone de Beauvoir as a very formative feminist author for her, especially relating to her description of woman as "other.
"[3] In my own work I have tried to uncover the positive dimensions of this otherness, as many members of marginalized groups have redefined negative labels.
And so, along with increased social consciousness, my discovery of feminism marked the beginning of an ongoing conversation with myself as "other."
I think of this as a conversation between my socially created self (the one that is familiar, public, recognized and rewarded) and my "other"-the real me or the potential me.
The apparent confusion created by offering real and potential selves as equivalents is one I have no intention of resolving.
In fact it is a bit of confusion I find particularly helpful in avoiding a feminist version of positivism.
[9] In 1993, the president of the People's Republic of Benin, Nicephore Soglo, invited Mama Lola, her daughter Maggie, and Karen McCarthy Brown to an international gathering of Vodou practitioners.
[12] In 1998, Brown presented a lecture on Vodou at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Karen McCarthy Brown was creating a compilation of her works on religion for Duke University Press before her retirement due to illness in 2009.
In Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture, edited by Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, Margaret R. Miles, 123-41.
"Afro-Caribbean Spirituality: A Haitian Case Study," in Healing and Restoring: Medicine and Health in the World's Religious Traditions, edited by Lawrence Sullivan.
Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Berkeley: University of California Press.
"Staying Grounded in a High-Rise Building: Ecological Dissonance and Ritual Accommodation in Haitian Vodou."