About the Director and Author
Dr. Sharon Elaine Hutchinson is currently Professor Emerita of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also the Director of South Sudan Cultural Productions LLC, a Madison-based publishing company she founded in 2023.
Her research relationship with, and scholarly commitment to the people of South Sudan—and especially, the Nei ti Naath or Nuer cultural and linguistic communities—now extends back in time for almost a half-century. For a summary of professional positions she has held and scholarly research publications she has authored, see below.
POSITIONS HELD:
Director, South Sudan Cultural Productions, LLC, 2023-present.
Adjunct Full Professor of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, 2013-2015
Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011-present
Full Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2002-2011
Director, African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007-2009
US State Dept. Monitor, Civilian Protection Monitoring Team-Sudan, 12/2002- 4/2003
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997-2002
The Leach/Royal Anthropological Institute Fellow, University of Manchester, UK, 1992-1993
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990-1997
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University, 1988-1990
RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS:
Book
Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War and the State. The original version of this book was published by the University of California Press from 1996 through 2022. The expanded 2023 edition published by South Sudan Cultural Productions, LLC. includes a new “Epilogue” in the Nuer language.
Articles and Chapters
“Changing Concepts of Incest among the Nuer.” American Ethnologist 12:4 (1985): 625-641.
“Rising Divorce among the Nuer, 1936-1983.” Man 25(1990): 393-411.
“Relations Between the Sexes among the Nuer: 1930.” Africa 50:4 (1980): 371-388.
“War through the Eyes of the Dispossessed: Three Stories of Survival.” Disasters 15:2 (1991): 166-171.
“Dangerous to Eat: Rethinking Pollution States among the Nuer of Sudan.” Africa 62:4 (1992): 490-504.
“The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer, 1930-1983.” American Ethnologist 19:2 (1992): 294-316.
“Conclusion” In First Find Your Child a Good Mother: The Construction of Self in Two African Communities. Paul Riesman, deceased author (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 196-223. (Written to complete an unfinished book manuscript by the late Africanist anthropologist Paul Riesman and published for him posthumously.)
“On The Nuer Conquest” (Hutchinson’s critique of The Nuer Conquest, a book by Raymond Kelly) Current Anthropology 35:5 (December 1994): 643-647.
“Death, Memory and the Politics of Legitimation: Nuer Experiences of the Continuing Sudanese Civil War.” In Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power. Richard Werbner, editor (New York & London: Zed Books, 1998), pp. 58-71.
“Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War and the Militarization of Nuer and Dinka Ethnic Identities.” (Co-authored with Jok Madut Jok) African Studies Review 42:2 (1999): 125-145.
“Nuer Ethnicity Militarized.” Anthropology Today 16:3 (2000): 6-13. (This article was also republished in 2002 as part of an edited volume, see below)
“Substance and Identity: The Changing Material Bases of ‘Relatedness’ among the Sudanese Nuer.” In Cultures of Relatedness. Janet Carsten, editor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 55-72.
“Una guerra nella guerra: la violenza enica nel sud Sudan dopo il 1991.” Afriche e Orienti 2 (2001): 10-17.
“A Curse from God? Political and Religious Dimensions of the Post-1991 Rise of Ethnic Violence in South Sudan.” Journal of Modern African Studies 39:2 (2001): 307-331.
“Pace e sconcerto: iniziative di riconciliazione nel Sudan meridionale. In I signori della Guerra: Stati e micropolitica dei conflitti. M. Cristina Ercolessi, editor (Napoli, Italy: L’Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2002), pp. 241-270.
“Nuer Ethnicity Militarized.” (Republication of a 2000 article included in Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique. Joan Vincent, editor (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002), pp. 39-52.
“Gendered Violence and the Militarization of Ethnicity: A Case Study from South Sudan.” (Co-authored with Jok Madut Jok.) In Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa. Richard Werbner, editor (New York & London: Zed Books, 2002) pp. 84-108.
“Spiritual Fragments of an Unfinished War.” In Religion and African Civil Wars. N. Kastfeld, ed. (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2005), pp. 28-53.
“Food Itself is Fighting with Us:” A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Sudan’s Unresolved Civil War on South Sudanese Civilian Populations Living in the North and the South.” In Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Post-Colonial Africa. Vigdis Broch-Due, editor (New York & London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 131-152.
“Perilous Outcomes: International Monitoring and the Perpetuation of Violence in Sudan.” In Genocide: Truth, Memory and Representation. Kevin L. O’Neill & Alex Hinton, eds. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 54-79.
“Peace and Puzzlement: Grassroots Peace Initiatives between the Nuer and Dinka of South Sudan.” In Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-Eastern Africa: Sudan, Uganda and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands. Volume 3. Gunther Schlee and M.Watson, eds. (New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 49-72.
“The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer, 1930-83.” In Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history and representation (second edition). Roy Richard Grinder, Stephen C. Lubkemann and Christopher B. Steiner, eds. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 151-165.
“Uncertain Ethics: Researching War in Sudan.” In Researching Violence in Africa: Ethical and Methodological Challenges. John Pottier, Laura Hammond & Christopher Cramer, editors. (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2011), pp. 79-93.
“A Guide to the Lou Nuer of Jonglei State” (unpublished manuscript) March 2012: 1-40
"Violence, legitimacy, and prophecy: Nuer struggles with uncertainty in South Sudan." (Co-authored with Naomi R. Pendle.) American Ethnologist, 42:3 (August 2015): 415-430.
This article was published in conjunction with a follow-up “interview” which appeared in the August 2015 Newsletter of the American Anthropological Association, under the title: “Two Anthropologists Look Beyond Diplomacy for a Peace Framework for South Sudan.”