Rate My Professor Jennifer Hamilton

Jennifer Hamilton serves as Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at Bates College, having joined the institution in 2022. As a sociocultural anthropologist, her interdisciplinary research and teaching focus on feminist science and technology studies, medical and legal anthropology, ethnography, and the politics of indigeneity. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from Rice University and previously held the position of Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Anthropology at Hampshire College. Hamilton authored the book Indigeneity in the Courtroom (Routledge, 2009), which explores law, culture, and the production of difference in indigenous rights cases. She is currently revising her second book manuscript, Settler Science and the Politics of Indigeneity. Her publications also include 'Reindeer and Woolly Mammoths: The Imperial Transit of Frozen Meat from the North American Arctic' (2021), 'Critical Perspectives on Whiteness and Technoscience: An Introduction' (2018), 'What Indians and Indians Can Teach Us about Colonization: Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Epistemological Imperialism and the Politics of Difference' (Feminist Studies, 2017), and contributions to PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review such as 'Resettling Musqueam Park' (2008).

Prior to her appointment at Bates College, Hamilton directed the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center from 2017 to 2020, served as President of Hampshire College’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors in 2018-2019, and was a member of the Advisory Circle for the Native American Indigenous Studies Mellon Grant through the Five College Consortium from 2020 to 2022. At Bates, she teaches courses such as 'Race and Gender in Biomedicine,' which examines conceptualizations of race, gender, sex, and sexuality in Western science and the creation of global health disparities through colonialism and imperialism, and 'Introduction to Anthropology.' She also coordinates the General Education Concentration in Culture and Meaning (C026) for Asian Studies and has participated in programs like the Technos International Week in Japan.