Audrey Smedley, Professor Emeritus (Ph.D., University of Victoria-Manchester, 1967)....

Contact Information

Specialty Areas

Anthropology, social anthropology, kinship

Joint Appointment: African-American Studies Program

Biographical Sketch

Audrey Smedley received her BA and MA in history and anthropology from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester, England, based on field research in northern Nigeria. She has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in social anthropology, African societies and cultures, the history of anthropology, and anthropological theory. Based in large part on her research in the history of anthropology, she introduced a new course in 1978 on the origin and evolution of the idea of "race." Her book on this subject, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, won an Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in 1994. Her research interests include the history and spread of the elements of race ideology, comparative slavery, human ecological adaptation, and the roles of women in patrilineal societies. She is presently doing research and writing about the analytic components of patrilineal systems in Africa.

Dr. Smedley taught at the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, Oakland University, Tufts University, and the State University of New York at Binghamton before coming to Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Smedley retired and was appointed Professor Emeritus in 2002.