Lee Baker

Lee D. Baker is the Mrs. A. Hehmeyer Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Professor of African & African American Studies at Duke University. He earned a B.S. from Portland State University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Temple University in 1994. Since joining Duke, Baker has advanced through various roles, becoming Professor of Cultural Anthropology in 2010 and Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies in 2014. He served as Dean of Academic Affairs from 2008 to 2016, Chair of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, and currently holds the position of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education since 2025. Baker has been a resident fellow at several distinguished institutions, including Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Johns Hopkins’s Institute for Global Studies, the University of Ghana-Legon, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Humanities Center. His research interests center on the history of anthropology, sociolinguistics, race, and democracy.

Baker has made significant contributions through his scholarship, authoring key books such as From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (University of California Press, 1998), Life in America: Identity and Everyday Experience (Blackwell Publishing, 2003), and Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture (Duke University Press, 2010). His extensive publication record includes articles like “The Gamble and the Game: Reflections on Writing From Savage to Negro” in Transforming Anthropology (2023), “The Racist Anti-Racism of American Anthropology” in Transforming Anthropology (2021), and “W. E. B. Du Bois and American Anthropology” (2022), as well as chapters on topics including Franz Boas and racial politics. Among his honors are the Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Teaching Award, the Society for the Anthropology of North America’s Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America (2013), the International Society for the Anthropology of North America’s Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America (2012), Duke Presidential Service Award (2023), National Humanities Center Fellowship (2003), American Philosophical Society Library Resident Fellowship (1998), and Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (1998).

Professional Email: ldbaker@duke.edu