Kesha Fikes - Doctor of Anthropology & Perceptual Education Practitioner

Portrait de Kesha Fikes

Kesha Fikes

Doctor of Anthropology & Perceptual Education Practitioner

Bio

Kesha Fikes (Ph.D.,) is a sociocultural anthropologist who dedicates her time to the study and practice of somatic phenomena from the Danis Bois Method.  She is in private practice as a DBM practitioner in Silicon Valley in California (USA).  When Fikes worked as a professor anthropology she addressed ways that laws and institutions impact perceptions of self and other in everyday life; her current somatic practice mirrors this very process.  She now observes, through touch and at tissue and gestural levels, how the stresses of interpersonal, social and familial expectations can inhibit self-awareness and self-expression, and thus connection with others.  Also, as the anthropologist’s task is to take nothing for granted in understanding how and why cultural forms take shape in certain ways, so too does Fikes’ approach to somatic practice move us to dissect and query embodied habits that bring meaning to our past trajectories and inform our present and potential futures.  She specializes in facilitating awareness of physiological and behavioral patterns that are expressed via pain, stress, anxiety, depression, and especially auto-immune symptoms.  Fikes is interested in the ways that touch can bridge ‘sensing into one’s potentiality’ (in an existential sense) and ‘sensing into safety’ (biophysical/neurochemical regulation).  She partners with psychotherapists to deliver the best care possible for her diverse clientele.  Fikes held the position of Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago before becoming a somatic therapist.  She is the creator of the Center for Sensorial Bodywork & Movement Therapy in the Silicon area (Los Gatos) in California.

Formation

  • 2013   Diplôme Universitaire – Somatic-Psychoeducation.  L’école supérieure de somato-psychopédagogie –Paris, France & Universidade Fernando Pessoa – Porto, Portugal.  (2009-2013).
  • 2000   Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, UCLA
  • 1995   MA, Sociocultural & Linguistic Anthropology, UCLA
  • 1992    BA, International Relations/Development Studies (major) & Portuguese-Brazilian Literature (minor), UC Davis

Domaine d'expertise et de recherche

  • Cultivating safety – how to facilitate sensing into the globality of the fascial body a safe experience for patients/clients suffering from extreme/hyper states of anxiety.
  • Cultivating relationship between the processes of physical rehabilitation and self-inquiry, within the therapeutic encounter

Principales publications et communications

Published books and manuscripts

  • 2009   Managing African Portugal: The Citizen-Migrant Distinction.  Duke U Press. 
  • 2000  Santiaguense Cape Verdean Women in Portugal: Labor Rights, Citizenship and Diasporic Transformation.  Doctoral Dissertation, U of California – Los Angeles.

Peer reviewed articles

  • 2008        “Discipline and Diasporic Governmentality: On the Gendered Limits of Wage-labor in Portugal,” in Feminist Review, Vol 90.  
  • 2005    “Ri(gh)tes of Intimacy at Doca Pesca: Race versus Racism at a Fish Market in Portugal.”  The DuBois Review, 2:2.  Harvard U Press.  
  • 2002    “African Presence in Former Soviet Spaces.”  Co-written with Alaina Lemon. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:497-524.
  • 2002    “Traveling Blackness: Thoughts on the Ethnography of Race and Spatial Mobility.”  Transforming Anthropology 11(1):47-48.
  • 1998    “Domesticity in Black and White: Assessing Badia Cape Verdean Challenges to Portuguese Ideals of Black Womanhood.”  Transforming Anthropology 7(2):5-19.

Invited articles in edited volumes and journals

  • 2010    “Miscegenation Interrupted.” Africa in Portuguese, Portuguese in Africa, Isabel Gould Ferreira & Pedro Pereira, Eds. Notre Dame U Press.
  • 2010    “Interpreting Middle Development Status in Cape Verde.”  Transition 103.  Indiana University Press.
  • 2006    “Emigration and the Spatial Production of Difference from Cape Verde,” in Globalization and Race (Kamari Clarke & Deborah Thomas, Eds.).  Duke U Press.
  • 2005    “The Cape Verdean Woman Worker and Portuguese Civil Society,” in Revista: Revista de Estudos Cabo-verdianos, Praia: Universidade de Cabo Verde.  Number 3, November.

Unpublished works

  • n.d.    “Retail Sociality in Cape Verde: Politics of Civility in Supermarkets”.  Article length manuscript.

Lire la suite

Reprints

  • 2007    “Emigration and the Spatial Production of Difference from Cape Verde,” in Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic.  Nancy Naro, et.al.  NY, NY: Palgrave.

Book review

  • 2010    Vale de Almeida, Miguel.  2004.  An Earth-Colored Sea: Race, Culture and the Politics of Identity in the Post-Colonial Portuguese-Speaking World (Berghahn) Etnográfica, (ISCTE: University of Lisbon).
  • 2007    West, Harry G. 2005.  Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique  (Westview).  Transforming Anthropology.

Presentations / conferences

Conference Organization

  • April 2009    Lusofonia and Anthropology: The Place of Race in Contemporary Lusophone Studies. University of Chicago.

Invited Talks

  • June 2015    Touch in the Therapeutic Encounter: Situating the Danis Bois Method in the Field of Somatic Practice.  Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara – Department of Somatic Studies.
  • Mar 2015    Documenting Embodied Knowledge.  UPenn – Visual and Performative Studies Conference, Department of Anthropology.
  • Mar 2010    Retail Sociality in Cape Verde: Politics of Civility in Supermarkets.  CUNY.
  • Mar 2010    Retail Sociality in Cape Verde: Politics of Civility in Supermarkets.  University of Pennsylvania.
  • Oct 2009    Emigration and Privatization in Cape Verde.  Stanford.
  • Sept 2009    Imigração em contexto global.  Congresso da Associação de Portuguesa de Antropologia. Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon.  
  • April 2009    “Post-Racial” Living in EU Portugal.  Africana Studies Conference.  Vassar College.
  • Feb 2009    Managing African Portugal.  German Studies.  U Mass, Amherst.
  • Oct 2008    Writing Citizen-Migrant Relationality: A Methodological Approach to the Study of Inequality.  Social Anthropology, the University of Barcelona.
  • Oct 2008    Regulating the Labor Market: The Domestic Worker and the Impossibilities of Personal Injury Insurance. Social Anthropology, the University of Barcelona.
  • Sept 2008    Writing Citizen-Migrant Relationality: A Methodological Approach to the Study of Inequality.  Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon.
  • Sept 2008    Regulating the Labor Market: The Domestic Worker and the Impossibilities of Personal Injury Insurance in Cape Verde.  Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon.
  • Apr 2008    Managing African Portugal.  Portuguese Studies, University of Notre Dame.
  • Mar 2008    Grocery Shopping In Cape Verde.  Anthropology, Cornell University.
  • Mar 2007    Managing African Portugal.  Anthropology, UC Irvine.
  • Apr 2006    Practicing Inclusion: The Temporality of Abject Citizenship in EU Portugal.  Semiotics Workshop – University of Chicago.
  • Nov 2005    Writing ‘Race’ in the Ethnography of Diaspora.  Diasporic Hegemonies Conference.  Duke University.
  • Oct 2005    Practicing Inclusion: The Temporality of Abject Citizenship in EU Portugal. Anthropology of Europe Workshop – University of Chicago.
  • Mar 2005    Emigration and the Spatial Production of Difference from Cape Verde. Lusophone Atlantic Studies Conference.  King’s College, London.
  • Mar 2005    Race, Gender and the Spatial Production of Difference.  Women’s Studies, Duke University.
  • Dec 2004    Post-Lusotropicalism and the Question of Cape Verde. Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon.   
  • Nov 2003    Emigration and the Transnational Production of Difference from Cape Verde.  Ethnohistory Seminar.  University of Minnesota.
  • Oct 2003    Emigration and the Transnational Production of Difference from Cape Verde.  Ethnohistory Seminar.  University of Pennsylvania.
  • Nov 2001    The Spatial Mobility Industry: Emigration and Transnational Production of Local Difference in Cape Verde. University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology.
  • Oct 2001    The Spatial Mobility Industry: Emigration and Transnational Production of Local Difference in Cape Verde. UCLA – Cultural Studies in the Diaspora Project – The Third World Order Series.
  • April 2001    Observing Trans-Spatial Racial Memory among Cape Verdean Peixeiras and Their PALOP Clientele.  Brown University, Portuguese Studies.

Conference Papers

  • Nov 2008    Brodkin on Labor as Politics.  Paper presentation.  SF – AAA meetings
  • Nov 2007    Managing African Portugal.  Paper presentation.  Washington, DC – AAA meetings.
  • Nov 2002    Surveillance, State Power and Civilian Status in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts.  Panel co-organized with Brenda Chalfin.  New Orleans AAA meetings.
  • Nov 2002    Reconfiguring Portuguese-African Space through Migrant Labor Bureaucracy.  Paper submitted for New Orleans AAA meetings.
  • Nov 2001    Sex and Empire: A Critical Overview of Lusophone Colonialism and the Science of Racial Democracy Theorization.  Submitted panel co-organized with Cristiana Bastos (University of Lisbon) for Washington D.C. meetings – AAA meetings.
  • Nov 2001     Post-Emancipation Portuguese Africa and the Problem of Black Male Sexuality in Lisbon: Moving Beyond the Mulata in Analyses of Lusotropical Ideology.  Paper submitted for Washington D.C. meetings – AAA meetings.
  • Nov 2000    Women and Race Politics in Democratic Portugal.  Paper presented at the Portuguese Studies Conference. UC Berkeley.    
  • Nov 2000    Anthropological Fieldwork in Democratic Portugal.  Organized panel.  SF – AAA meetings.
  • Nov 1999    A Imaginação Geopolitica da Peixeira Santiaguense.  Associação Portuguesa de Antropologia.  Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Nov 1999    A Construção Histórica da Identidade “Badiu” em Cabo Verde.  Associação Portuguesa de Antropologia.  Lisbon, Portugal.
  • March 1999    Diasporic Consciousness Among Transnational, “Badiu” Cape Verdeans.  Franz Boas Seminar.  Columbia University.  NY, NY.
  • Nov 1997     Beyond Resistance: Public Culture as Social Action.  Panel co-organized with Damani Partridge (Berkeley). Washington, D.C. – AAA meetings.
  • Nov 1997     Domestic Labor and Cultural Activism Among Badia Cape Verdean Women in Portugal.  Paper presentation.  Washington, D.C. – AAA meetings.

Research

  • Summer 2008    Praia, Cape Verde.  Research on privatization, sociality/social intimacy.
  • Spr-Sum 2007     Praia, Cape Verde. Research on labor policy and the privatization of public industry.
  • Summer 2005    Praia, Cape Verde.  Archival Research on colonial migrant labor practices.
  • Spr’02-Sp’03    Lisbon, Portugal.  Archival research on Portuguese colonial migrant labor practices.
  • Jan-Feb 2003    Praia, Cape Verde.  Identified migrant-labor documents at the National Archives.
  • Spr-Sum 2001    Lisbon, Portugal.  Archival research on Portuguese colonial migrant labor practices.
  • Summer 2000    Lisbon, Portugal.  Archival research on Portuguese colonial migrant labor practices.
  • Spr­Sum 1998     Lisbon, Portugal. Dissertation research on Cape Verdean immigrant women involved in Portugal's fish vending economy.
  • Wtr-Spr 1998     Praia, Cape Verde.  Dissertation Research on Santiaguense market women in Cape Verde.
  • Sum-Fall 1997     Lisbon, Portugal.  Dissertation research on Cape Verdean immigrant women involved in Portugal's fish vending economy.
  • Summer 1996     Lisbon, Portugal.  Dissertation Research. Research on Cape Verdean immigrant women involved in Portugal's fish vending economy.
  • Summer 1995    Lisbon, Portugal.  Dissertation Research. Research on Cape Verdean immigrant women involved in Portugal's fish vending economy.

Parcours académique

  • 2002-2010        Assistant Professor of Anthropology & the Graduate Division of Social Sciences, University of Chicago
  • 2007-2010        Faculty Affiliate, Graduate Program in Social Sciences, University of Cape Verde – Praia, West Africa
  • 2004-2005        MacArthur Foundation – Grant development consultant – Globalization and Migration – Chicago, IL                  
  • 1999-2002        Assistant Professor of Anthropology & African Studies, University of Florida – Gainesville, FL
  • 1999-2002        Co-Director, African Diaspora Studies Program.  Anthropology, University of Florida – Gainesville, FL

Prix et reconnaissances

  • 2010-11      Fulbright – Brazil, Lectureship.  University of São Paulo, Campinas.  Declined Offer.
  • 2007           Social Science Research Council/ACLS Fellowship (Spring-Summer 2007) – Praia, Cape Verde, West Africa.
  • 2006-07      Franke Humanities Institute Fellowship, University of Chicago. 
  • 2005           Center for the Study of Race, Culture and Politics Research Grant, University of Chicago.
  • 2004           Division of Letters and Sciences Faculty Enhancement Award, University of Chicago.
  • 2002-03      Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS), the University of Lisbon – Visiting Scholar.  Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship.
  • 2001           Wenner-Gren – Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship in Anthropology – Lisbon, Portugal.
  • 2000           College of Letters and Sciences Faculty Research Grant, the University of Florida. 
  • 2000           Center for African Studies Research Grant, the University of Florida.
  • 1997-98      Wenner-Gren Doctoral Research Grant in Anthropology – Lisbon, Portugal & Praia, Cape Verde, West Africa.

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