Assistant Curator of Historical and Contemporary Archaeology; Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
she/her
About
Affiliations: U-M Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS)
Research Interests: Colonialism, political violence, collective memory, heritage, race and indigeneity, time/temporality, materiality, feminist and community-centric research methods, praxis and politics in anthropological archaeology, hemispheric approaches to the study of the Americas
Dr. Fryer teaches and writes on colonialism and political violence; research methods, praxis, and politics in historical archaeology and anthropology; and, museums, cultural heritage, and collective memory. Her research agenda focuses broadly on the durabilities of colonialism and other forms of political violence in the Americas. Employing methods and theories from across anthropology and adjacent fields, she explores how such violence, the things and places it generates, and the memories that result from its experience yield collective notions of heritage and sociopolitical consciousness across time. She has conducted archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork across the globe but her principal field research takes place in Quintana Roo, Mexico where she is a longtime member of the Tihosuco Heritage Preservation and Community Development Project—a community-based heritage initiative anchored by an interest in the history and present-day relevance of a 19th century conflict called the Maya Social War (or Caste War of Yucatan).
After receiving her PhD in Anthropology in 2019, Dr. Fryer held a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University where she was also a lecturer in Anthropology and the Humanities Council. Recently, she co-edited collections on feminist approaches to archaeological heritage practice, reckoning with violence, and the archaeology of coloniality in the Maya Lowlands. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Things of War: Conflict and Heritage on Mexico’s Maya Frontier.
Selected Publications
PDFs of these essays can be downloaded by clicking their respective links in the CV section on Dr. Fryer’s personal webpage
2021 Fryer, Tiffany C., et al. “As the Statues Fall: An (Abridged) Conversation about Monuments and the Power of Memory. Current Anthropology 62 (3): 374-384.
2021 Fryer, Tiffany C., and Kasey Diserens Morgan. “Heritage Activism in Quintana Roo, Mexico: Assembling New Futures through an Umbrella Heritage Practice.” In Trowels in the Trenches: Archaeology as Social Activism, edited by Christopher P. Barton. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 81-107.
2020 Fryer, Tiffany C. “Reflecting on Positionality: Archaeological Heritage Praxis in Quintana Roo, Mexico.” AP3A 31: 26-40.
2020 Fryer, Tiffany C., and Teresa P. Raczek. “Introduction: Toward an Engaged Feminist Heritage Praxis.” AP3A 31: 7-25.
2017 Cain, Tiffany C., and Richard M. Leventhal. “Questioning the Status of Land as Commodity in Maya Quintana Roo and Belize.” In The Value of Things: Commodities in the Maya Region, edited by Jennifer P. Mathews and Thomas H. Guderjan. University of Arizona Press, 173-192.
