Erica L. Williams

Erica L. Williams is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Spelman College. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Anthropology and Africana Studies from New York University. Her first book, Sex Tourism in Bahia: Ambiguous Entanglements (2013), won the NWSA/University of Illinois First Book Prize. She co-edited two books: The Second Generation of African American Pioneers in Anthropology (2018) and Speechifying: The Words and Legacy of Johnnetta Betsch Cole (2023), and has published several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.  She is currently working on two book projects: an ethnography called Fighting for a Good Life: Black Feminist Activism in Bahia and a creative non-fiction/ memoir (Take Flight: A Memoir of Race, Identity, and Travel). She is an Associate Editor of Transforming Anthropology, the journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA). Winner of the 2013 Vulcan Materials Company Teaching Excellence Award, she teaches anthropology courses on gender and sexuality, ethnographic methods, anthropological theory, and race and identity in Latin America. She has served as Co-Director of study abroad programs in Salvador, Brazil; Lisbon, Portugal; and Barcelona, Spain. At Spelman College, she has served on the Tenure and Promotion Committee, the Council of Chairs, the Faculty Council, the Curriculum Committee, and the Institutional Review Board. She is also the past Secretary and Member-at-Large of both the National Women’s Studies Association and the Association for Feminist Anthropology.