Erin L. Durban

Erin L. Durban is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, affiliated with American Studies; Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies; and the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. They also serve as Faculty Director of UMN Critical Disability Studies.

Durban is currently working on their second book manuscript, "Enabling Ethnography: Crafting Anti-Ableist Fieldwork Methods." The traditional model of ethnographic fieldwork relies on hypermobile researchers negotiating their informants’ immobilities, a residue of the interrelated white, colonial, masculinist, and ableist design of anthropology (for more, read Durban's "Anthropology and Ableism" article). Enabling Ethnography argues that a greater diversity of researcher bodyminds enhances ethnographic inquiry and analysis for interdisciplinary scholarship. Developed from two collaborative research projects—one an experiment in anti-ableist research design about universities and racial inequality (more information below), the other a collaborative oral history project with Professor Sumi Colligan interviewing disabled anthropologists—this project additionally makes a significant methodological contribution in terms of thinking through the details of disability accessibility and collective access in ethnographic fieldwork.

Durban’s first book, The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti (University of Illinois Press 2022), was awarded the National Women’s Studies Association–UIP First Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT+ Studies. It focuses on the gender and sexual politics of French colonialism and American imperialism in Haiti. The Sexual Politics of Empire chronicles contests between two transnational social movements in Haiti—evangelical Christianity and LGBTQI human rights—and Haitian mobilizations of antihomophobic politics.

Durban is the former managing editor of Feminist Formations (the NWSA Journal) and has published articles and reviews in American Anthropologist, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Feminist Formations, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Transgender Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Haitian Studies, American Ethnologist, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, The Feminist Wire, and Anthropology News. Durban co-edited the "Trans* Ecologies" issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly and a special issue of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory titled “Nou Mach Ansanm (We Walk Together): Queer Haitian Performance and Affiliation” with Dasha A. Chapman and Mario LaMothe. 

Durban has been working on an experimental ethnographic and archival research project since 2020 focused on collective access for researchers. "Professorville: The Racial History and Legacy of a University of Minnesota Neighborhood" is a collaborative project with Professor Miranda Joseph (GWSS) and more than two dozen undergraduate and graduate students at UMN. The project is interdisciplinary study of the university that considers the legacy of building an all-white faculty neighborhood on the UMN St. Paul campus in the 1930s.