WHat Does an Umbrella Do for The Rain? On the Efficacy and Limitations of Resistance

Signithia Fordham is a public intellectual and cultural anthropologist at the University of Rochester, where she also was the Susan B. Anthony Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies (2001-2006) in the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies. She is the author of the ethnographies Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity and Success at Capital High (1996) and Downed by Friendly Fire: Black Girls, White Girls and Female Competition at Underground Railroad High (forthcoming). Her research and essays have appeared in public media, including Education Week, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The London Times, and academic journals such as Transforming Anthropology: The Official Journal of the Association of Black Anthropology, Urban Review, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Teachers College Record, and Harvard Educational Review. Her current research, and the subject of her forthcoming book, focuses on female competition, bullying, and aggression. Her recent work chronicles the ambiguous, female-specific route to academic achievement at a suburban high school (Fordham, 2013).