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Faculty and Staff Profiles

Irina Carlota Silber, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies

School/Division

Division of Social Science

Department

Anthropology

Office

25 Broadway 7-45

p: (212) 925-6625 x259

f: (212) 925-0963

e: isilber@ccny.cuny.edu

  • Profile

    Lotti Silber’s work explores postwar processes in one of El Salvador's former warzones and a region known for its peasant revolutionary participation. She documents what she terms the entangled aftermaths of war and displacement, aftermaths that have produced postwar deception and disillusionment.  Her book, Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador (2011) unmasks how community members are asked contradictorily and in different contexts to relinquish their identities as “revolutionaries” and to develop a new sense of themselves as productive yet marginal postwar citizens via the same rubric of “participation” that fueled their revolutionary action. Specifically, she traces the lives of the rank and file members of this historic struggle for justice and reconstruction, following community members along their journey from revolutionary activists to postwar development recipients and ambivalent grassroots actors, to in many cases now undocumented migrants. It is this most recent shift to migration, only under the "transition to democracy" that she finds most compelling and that she theorizes as one of obligation.

    Her interest in displacements inspires a new research project on Salvadoran migration to Europe that focuses on Salvadorans’ experiences of incorporation, assimilation, or exclusion in the Spanish national and regional context where debates on unauthorized or undocumented migration that overwhelm everyday life in the U.S. context do not have this saliency.

    However, a second major project lies at the intersection of science studies, medical anthropology, disability studies, and childhood studies. The Texture of Illness, is a multi-sited ethnographic study of childhood genetic difference that through an unpacking of quality of life issues, seeks to create new spaces for care and access to citizenship rights.

    Before joining the faculty at the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Silber received several postdoctoral fellowships that included a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Institute on Violence and Survival (UVA), and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. She has also received many research and writing fellowships including the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

    While at CCNY she has also received institutional support through the PSC-CUNY awards program and the Faculty Fellowship Publication Program.


  • Education

    Ph.D., New York University
    B.A. George Washington University

  • Courses Taught

    Anthropology of Health & Healing; Anthropology of Gender; Guns, Drugs, and Babies: Crossing Borders; Ethnographic Research Methods; Language and Society; Cross Cultural Perspectives; Social Science Core I; Race and Gender in the Americas (Graduate)

  • Research Interests

    Lotti Silber’s interests include the Anthropology of Central America, Latino studies, transnationalism, gender, postwar societies, and social movements. Her new work engages the fields of medical anthropology, disability studies, childhood studies, feminist theory and practice, and continues with her long-term interest in engaged research and public anthropology.  

  • Publications

    Silber’s book on postwar El Salvador is included in the Rutgers University Press series on Genocide, Political  Violence, and Human Rights:  

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2011. Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador. Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights Series. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/acatalog/Everyday_Revolutionaries.html

    Her work has also been published in scholarly journals and peer-reviewed volumes. Articles and chapters include:

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2007. “Local Capacity Building in ‘Dysfunctional’ Times: Internationals, Revolutionaries and Activism in Postwar El Salvador.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 35/3&4:163-183.

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2007. “Survivor Testimonies, Holocaust Memoirs: Violence in Latin America” In Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas. J. Gerson and D. Wolf, eds. Pp. 176-184. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2007. “Antropología, Adolescencia, Trauma y Resiliencia” In Adolescencia y Resiliencia. M. Munist, N. Suárez Ojeda, D. Krauskopf, and Tomás Silber, eds. Pp. 199-212. Buenos Aires, Argentina: PAIDOS.  

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2006. “It’s A Hard Place to Be A Revolutionary Woman” In Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy and Activism. A. Adjani and V. Sanford, eds. Pp. 189-211. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2004. “Mothers/Fighters/Citizens: Violence and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador.” Gender & History 16/3:561-587.

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2004. “Not Revolutionary Enough?: Community Rebuilding in Postwar Chalatenango.” In Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Society and Community in El Salvador. Aldo Lauria-Santiago and Leigh Binford, eds. Pp. 166-186. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2004. “Commemorating the Past in Postwar El Salvador.” In Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space. Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Knauer, eds. Pp. 211-231. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Silber, Irina Carlota. 2004. “Adolescencia Perdida: Posguerra en El Salvador.” In La Familia: Un Espacio de Encuentro y Crecimiento para Todos. Enrique Dulanto Gutierrez, ed. Pp. 587-594. Mexico: Academia Mexicana de Pediatria/ETM.


     

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