B.A. University of Richmond; American Studies, Music Performance

M.A., Ph.D. Tulane University; Anthropology

Joyce Bennett is an anthropologist whose research and teaching focus on sociocultural and sociolinguistic issues in Central and North America. She mostly focuses on the Kaqchikel Maya-speaking population of the Western highlands of Guatemala, but she also collaborates with ethnolinguistic groups throughout Guatemala and with Indigenous and other marginalized peoples in North America. She is an advocate of community engaged learning and regularly connects her courses to local communities. Professor Bennett is an avid supporter of multi-method and cross-disciplinary approaches. She firmly believes that learning and scholarship must be connected to the people and places academics study through mutual collaboration and respect.

Her current research focuses on Maya women in Guatemala and their attempts to protect their traditional weavings through intellectual property rights. She is the recipient of a Fulbright U.S. Scholars award in 2022-2023 and an Engaged Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, also in 2022-2023, which supports that work. She was the Central American Visiting Scholar at the David D. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University in the 2019-2020 academic year.

Professor Bennett publishes at the intersections of language revitalization, feminism, social justice, and political economy. Her articles appear in Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, International Journal of Women’s Studies, Maya America, and more. Professor Bennett’s first book, Good Maya Women: Migration, Clothing, and Language Revitalization in Highland Guatemala (University of Alabama Press, 2022), analyzes how indigenous women’s migration contributes to women’s empowerment in their home communities in Guatemala. Analyzing the life histories of migrant women exposes how women’s migration is the result of structural violence and how women subvert that violence, returning home to revitalize their indigenous Kaqchikel language and clothing. As women engage in revitalization work on a daily basis, they seek to earn the title of “good” women in their home communities. Using affect theory to analyze moments when women earn the title of “good” women highlights how women’s experiences of their activism gives them strength, even in a context where women’s activism continues to marginalize them in the broader Guatemalan context. Her book offers an analysis of neoliberal economic forces as more complex and perhaps even hopeful than traditional analyses. The ethnography promotes an understanding of Maya women’s lives and work outside of developmentalist, Westernized notions of empowerment and allows for a more nuanced scholarly analysis and representation of Maya women.

Courses Taught:

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Indigenous Women’s Social Movements in Latin America

Culture and Interpretation

Language Death and Revitalization

Publications:

February 2027. Kemtzij: Weaving Reciprocal Indigenous Ontologies in Kaqchikel Maya Arts. Amherst College Press. Edited with Tiffany D. Creegan-Miller.

“Arts, Textiles, Identity, Intellectual Property in Central America.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Ed. Mark Aldenderfer. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

2025. “Mobile Maya Women and Materiality: Connecting Modern Migration and Material Records. In Moving Maya: Circulation en Espaces Mayas de 250 APR. J-C À Nos Jours, Juliette Danfakha and Clarissa Cagnato eds. Paris, France: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre. 57-76.

2023. Bennett, Joyce and Kimberly Sanchez. “Antiracist Praxis in Community Engagement: A Partnership Rubric.” International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement 11 (1).

2022. Good Maya Women: Migration, Clothing, and Language Revitalization in Highland Guatemala. University of Alabama Press.

2020. “Mothering through Language: Gender, Class, and Education in Language Revitalization among Kaqchikel Maya Women in Guatemala.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 30(2) 196-212. ��

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2020. Bennett, Joyce and Ambrocia Cuma. “Maya-americanos en casa: Los efectos de la migración de Guatemala a los EEUU en la región Kaqchikel.” Maya America. 2:1, Article 20.

2020. Bennett, Joyce, Mike Doyle, and Margie Giacalone (CC ’18). “Community-Engaged Learning for Immigration Justice: Building Solidarity through Praxis.” Teaching and Learning Anthropology Journal 3 (2) 28-46. https://doi.org/10.5070/T33246957

2019. “Comadre Work: Grassroots Feminism in a Kaqchikel Maya Town.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 20 (6) 60-74.

2017. “I became more Maya”: International Kaqchikel Maya migration in Central America. Universitas Psycológica 16 (5): 1-13.

2015. “Xujal runa’öj: The Cultural and Linguistic Consequences of Kaqchikel Maya migration to the US.”Ni sombras ni proscritos: Indigenous Presence in the Latina/o Community, Label Me Latino.

2015. “Traje’s future: gendered paths in Guatemala.” Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal 2(1): 67-89.

2014. ““Puro Kaqchikel:” The discourse surrounding language standardization in highland Guatemala.” Fleur de Ling: Tulane University Working Papers. 1: 95-106.

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Recent Presentations:

2026������ Soft bellies: using qualia to understand aging versus ethnic marker change among Kaqchikel Maya women in Guatemala. Association for Anthropology, Gerontology, and the Life Course. UMass Amherst, May 9, 2026.

2025������ Writing in the Shadows of Ghosts: A Case for Changing Tenure and Promotion Standards to Support Writing with and for Anthropological Collaborators. American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, LA. November 17.

2025������ Migración maya Kaqchikel a Estados Unidos…..y de vuelta: Cuentos de migración como supervivencia. Ethnicidades mayas multisituadas entre estadounidos y mexico. PUIC-Universidad Auntónoma de Mexico. October 9, 2025. México City, Mexico.

2025������ Feminist Futures in the Maya World. World Anthropology Union; Antigua, Guatemala. November 8, 2025. Chair and Moderator.

2024������ Collaboration through Curriculum: How an Anthropology of Tourism Class is Supporting Grassroots Indigenous Women’s Activism in Guatemala. With Alex Coughlin; Jonathan Dayan; Dennis DeLaney; Kristen Hummer; Hope Johnston; Svet Kasem-Beg; Alexander Kowal; Andrew Kupovich; Julieta Moreira Reyes; Bridget O’Keefe; and Sarah Smith. Northeastern Anthropological Association Meetings; Providence, RI. April 13.

2024������ From Weaving to Wellbeing: Maya Women’s Quest for a Dignified Life. Institute of

Mesoamerican Studies, University of Albany. March 8, 2024.

2024������ Competencia Multicultural en la Investigación. Teóricas de la terapia familiar, Programa Maestría en Psicología, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. Guatemala City, Guatemala. January 31, 2024.

I am the Charles A. Dana Professor of Politics at �ֲ���ý College as well as an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. For academic year 2026-27, I am also a Visiting Research Scholar at the American Bar Foundation where I am conducting research and writing on public accommodations laws and conflicts among free speech, freedom of religious exercise, and non-discrimination laws.

My research and teaching focus on American political development, constitutional law, and social movements, particularly LGBTQ+ socio-political and legal mobilization. In 2018 I was honored to receive from �ֲ���ý the Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

I have authored four books. My most recent book is (NYU Press June 2021), co-authored with Timothy Lyle of Iona College. In this multidisciplinary exploration of public health policy, popular culture, and law, Timothy and I detail how politicians, policymakers, judges, media leaders, and even some within LGBTQ+ communities have used the concept of dignity to shame and disempower members of those communities. We show how dignity—and the subsequent chase to be defined by its terms—became a tool of the state and the marketplace thereby limiting its more radical potential.

My first book, (Cambridge University Press 2001), evaluates how the distinct political institutional environments of the United States and Great Britain affected the development, strategies, and goals of the LGBTQ+ rights movements in each country.

My second book, (Cambridge University Press 2011), is a cross-institutional analysis that examines how changing understandings over time of loyal opposition has influenced both political party development and elected branch relations with the federal judiciary.

My third book, ��(NYU Press 2016), utilizes fundamental concepts in the field of American Political Development, particularly the notion of a fragmented polity and the partiality of political change, to evaluate how and why inequalities for gay and lesbian citizens persist in the United States even as formal rules mandating equal treatment are put into effect.

I have also co-edited–with Stephen Skowronek (Yale political science) and Bruce Ackerman (Yale Law School)— ��(Yale University Press 2016) which evaluates a century’s worth of progressive legal, political, and constitutional reform to consider its resilience or exhaustion and to propose alternative formulations that might advance the cause of democratic renewal. This book was the culmination of on Progressivism that I co-organized at Yale in the Fall of 2013.

My articles have been published in Studies in American Political Development, Perspectives on Politics, Constitutional Studies, and Law & Social Inquiry.

My research has been supported by grants from and fellowships with

• �ֲ���ý Faculty Development Fund
• National Science Foundation
• American Bar Foundation
• Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund of the Yale Law School
• Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University
• Yale University Center for the Study of American Politics
• Yale University Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies

Courses I Teach

• The Least Dangerous Branch? Grappling with Judicial Power in the U.S. (FYS 522)
• US Political Institutions and Processes (PLTC 115)
• Constitutional Law I: Balance of Powers (PLTC 216)
• Constitutional Law II: Rights and Identities (PLTC 282/GSS 282)
• Queer Power: Political Sociology of Sexuality Movements (PLTC 238/SOC 238/GSS 238)
• US Presidency: Development and Problems (PLTC 319)
• Problems and Progress in U.S. Political Development (PLTC 329)
• Politics of Judicial Power (PLTC 351)
• Designing Your �ֲ���ý Experience: Part I (EXDS 202)
• Designing Your �ֲ���ý Experience: Part II (EXDS 203)

Upcoming Research Leave

• Academic Year 2026-2027