Renowned anthropologist Deborah Poole dies at 73

Deborah Poole, professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and renowned political, legal, environmental, and visual anthropologist, died Jan. 3 in Brooklyn, New York. She was 73.

Image caption: Deborah Poole

Poole's research in Peru and Mexico yielded vital contributions to understanding the domains of language, affect, and practice through which racial ideology, violence, and law shape life in modern Latin America.

In her five books and numerous articles, Poole wrote about, among other topics, her historical and ethnographic studies of politics and the state in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and of her fieldwork on regional government in Peru. Her works also covered violence, politics, and memory in Latin America.

The most recent book Poole edited, A Companion to Latin American Anthropology (2008), serves as a defining reference volume on Latin America, introducing English-language readers to the debates, traditions, and sensibilities that have shaped the study of the region. Previously, with Veena Das, professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology, she co-edited Anthropology in the Margins of the State (2004), which explored the form and reach of the modern state and how they change under the pressure of globalization. Her 1997 Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean World examined photographs and engravings from European, Peruvian, and U.S. archives to explore the role visual images and technologies have played in shaping modern understandings of race.

Das and Poole were colleagues at The New School before both made their way to Hopkins.

"Her touch of defiance, determination, and love of students saw us through many difficult moments in the lives of these institutions. She made my own move to The New School and to Hopkins so full of joy and excitement," said Das, who added that she will always cherish the book they edited together. "Her enormous contribution to bringing the work of scholars in Latin America and Brazil to English readers did much to bring theory from other places into North American universities."

A warm and supportive presence in her department, Poole was widely known for the generosity of spirit that characterized both her scholarship and her mentorship.

Naveeda Khan, professor in the department, first knew Poole as a teacher at the New School, and then as mentor and friend at Hopkins, where Poole nurtured Khan's interest in visual analysis. The pair co-taught two courses, one on the figure of the "bandit" in films from Mexico and India, and the other on anthropology's relationship to photography.

"Both were really excuses to learn from Debbie how not just to appreciate but also to study images. Even now, I find myself in conversation with her when looking at photographs at a museum somewhere," Khan said. "Like many to whom she gave so generously of herself, I carry Debbie—her incisive comments and many witticisms—within me, and hope to for a lifetime."

Poole came to Johns Hopkins in 2002 after serving as faculty in The New School's Department of Anthropology since 1988. From 2005 to 2009, she directed the Krieger School's Program in Latin American Studies, and from 2015 to 2017, she chaired the Department of Anthropology. She was named emerita in 2021.

Poole earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1974 and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign in 1984. She held two fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1998-99 and 2011-12); an NEH Independent Research Fellowship in 2005-06; and an NSF Research Grant in 2010-12. In 1998, she served as visiting professor in the doctoral program for anthropology and history at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima, Peru. In 2014, she was Alberto Flores Galindo Chair at the Facultad Ciencias Sociales, Pontificia Universidad Catolica, also in Lima.