DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Biography

LaShandra Sullivan is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on relations with land and landscapes, racialized and gendered labor, queer politics, and property. Much of this work centers on collaborations with activists who contest historical and ongoing oppression through myriad forms of protest—both formal and  informal, spectacular and quotidian. Sullivan’s current research centers on ethnographic and archival research in Mississippi and Brazil. She studies practices of land holding and relations to property in her home state of Mississippi, as well as LGBTQ+ activism in the state. She also conducts ethnographic research with Black and LGBTQ+ activists in Rio de Janeiro. She published a book in 2023 based on prior fieldwork with Indigenous land activists in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil titled Unsettling Agribusiness: Indigenous Protests and Land Conflict in Brazil.

Prof. Sullivan is not accepting new graduate students at this time.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Book

2023     Unsettling Agribusiness: Indigenous Protests and Land Conflict in Brazil. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Edited Journal Issues

2025  “Property and the Matter of Belonging,” Co-Editors LaShandra Sullivan, Meghan Morris, Gregory Duff Morton, and Lee Cabatingan. PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 48(1).

2017     “Afro-Brazilian Citizenship and the Politics of History", Co-Editors Merle Bowen and Sean Mitchell. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 10(2).

Articles   

2025     “Spirit Owners, Ethno-Racial Critique, and Indigenous Land Struggle in Brazil,” PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review  48(1).

2025   “Property and the Matter of Belonging,” Co-Authors LaShandra Sullivan, Meghan Morris, Gregory Duff Morton, and Lee Cabatingan.  Introduction to Special Section of PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 48(1).

2022     “Segurando a Onda: Resiliência negra e LGBTI+ feminismo em meio à virada reacionária no Rio de Janeiro,” In Democracia Precária: Etnografias de Esperança, Desespero, e Resistência no Brasil. Edited by Benjamin Junge, Alvaro Jarrin, Lucia Cantero, and Sean T. Mitchell. Porto Alegre: Editora Zouk.

2021     “The Overseen and Unseen: Agribusiness Plantations and Indigenous Land Struggle in Brazil,” American Anthropologist 123(1):82-95.

2021     “Holding the Wave: Black LGBTI+ Feminist Resilience Amidst the Reactionary Turn in Rio de Janeiro,” In Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil after the Pink Tide. Edited by Benjamin Junge, Alvaro Jarrin, Lucia Cantero, and Sean T. Mitchell. Newark: Rutgers University Press.

2020     “Re-Thinking the State in Africa Through Gabon’s Aesthetics of Governance,” Social  Dynamics: a Journal of African Studies 46(1):104-131.

2017     “Black Invisibility on a Brazilian ‘Frontier’: Land and Identity in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil,” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 10(2): 131-142.

2013     “Identity, Territory, and Land Conflict in Brazil,” Development and Change 44(2): 451-471.

2013     “Identity, Territory, and Land Conflict in Brazil” in Governing the Global Land Grab: The Role of the State in the Rush for Land, Edited by Wendy Wolford, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones, and Ben White, London: Wiley.