Lauren Deal

Lauren Deal is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Brown University, where she is also affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist working at the intersections of expressive culture, race, and colonialism. Her research  in the Southern Cone of South America (Argentina and Chile) is concerned with multimodal forms of identity formation and contestation within colonial systems and the racial ideologies they engender. Her dissertation and first book project, Descolonizate: Whiteness, Cultural Appropriation, and (De)Coloniality in Argentina, follows participants in intercultural language and music programs to consider how non-indigenous (white and mestizo) Argentines appropriate Andean Indigenous language and music in political and cultural projects of decolonization. Her next project will explore racialized nationalism and colonialism in the context of processes of “Chilenización” in Northern Chile.

Lauren became involved in the Pandemic Journaling Project in Fall 2020. She is interested in the power of language and personal narratives in the construction of multiple histories of the pandemic.