Irma McClaurin
Associate Vice President for System Academic Administration
Contact: 612-624-2798 or imcclaur@umn.edu
Irma McClaurin is a 30-year veteran activist-scholar, administrator, and teacher. As a writer, she is committed to scholarship and communications that reach beyond the academy to engage multiple publics, and her research is concerned with the social construction of inequality.
Prior to joining the administration of the University of Minnesota, Dr. McClaurin was Program Officer in Education and Scholarship at the Ford Foundation, where she oversaw a portfolio in support of scholarship and programs that deepen outstanding of issues related to race/ethnicity, class, gender and identity, and promote the advancement of public knowledge. Prior to Ford, Dr. McClaurin was Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida, and coordinator of the Zora Neale Hurston Diaspora Research Project. In 2004, she was appointed the Mott Distinguished Professor of Women’s Studies at Bennett College for Women where she launched the annual Africana Women’s Studies and Womanist Religious Studies Summit, and from 2002-2004, she served as Deputy Provost at Fisk University.
Dr. McClaurin spent her sabbatical as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Diplomacy Fellow in the Office of Policy Development and Coordination at USAID in 2000-2001. She holds a BA in American Studies (Grinnell College, 1973) and has advanced degrees in English (MFA, 1976) and Anthropology (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MA, 1987 and PhD, 1993).
A “born-again anthropologist,” her current research is entitled “Zora Neale Hurston: In the Shadow of Anthropology.” From 1997-2004, McClaurin was Editor of Transforming Anthropology, the journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists. She is the author of Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America (Rutgers 2001 [1996]) and the Editor of Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics (Rutgers 2001), selected a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2003.
An avid writer, Dr. McClaurin has published three books of poetry and her poems have appeared in over 16 magazines and anthologies. Her latest efforts to reach multiple publics are the publication of two books for middle school children from Marshall Cavendish: The Future of Black America and The Civil Rights Movement in “The Drama of African American History” series [2007]. She is also a frequent speaker and has appeared on National Public Radio.
Download PDF: Irma McClaurin CV
Photo: Tom Foley