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Dr. Kathryn A. Kozaitis

Dr. Kozaitis was born and raised in the sea-side village, Thisvi, located within historic Thebes of Greece.  She was introduced to American society and culture as a non-English speaking seventh grader at a public, underfunded school in Detroit, Michigan.  Her flight to Ann Arbor for graduate studies at the University of Michigan marked the onset of her chosen life as a social scientist and an educator.  She is passionate about dance, theater, opera, film, jazz, fine dining, and swimming.  The organizing principles of her life are truth, compassion, and justice.  Beyond anthropology, she reads philosophy, literature, and psychology, and her most active pursuit is contemplation.

Courses Taught:

Upper Division/Graduate
• Anthropological Theory
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Ethnographic Analysis
• Social Organization
• Senior Seminar in Anthropology
• Anthropological Theory and Praxis
• Graduate Seminar in Applied Anthropology
• Graduate Seminar in Anthropology:  Globalization, Human Diversity, and Multiculturalism

Lower-Division
• Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• Introduction to Four-field Anthropology
• FLC, The Human Race: Biology, Society, and Culture

Research and Teaching Areas of Interest:

• Sociocultural Theory and Praxis (political economy; human agency; social reform)
• Ethnography (focus:  urban processes, populations, and problems)
• Applied Anthropology (focus:  health, education, and welfare)
• Social Organization and Cultural Change (focus:  complex societies; global-local articulations, Identity Politics) 
• Global Migration, Relocation, and Adaptation (focus: settlement patters, socioeconomic integration)
• Ethnicity, race, class (focus: cultural organization and community development)
• North America, Mediterranean Europe

 

 - Dr. Kozaitis' host family during her researh among Gypsies in Athens, Greece

Prof. Kozaitis investigates global-local articulations, particularly the processes by which economically, politically, and socially subordinated groups use culture to construct security, community, identity, and meaning. She has conducted field research on race, ethnicity, and identity construction among the Roma (Gypsies) in Athens, Greece (1987-1989), and on ethnicity, class, gender, and age among Greek immigrants in Chicago, IL (1983-1985). Her work as an urban applied anthropologist focuses on employment, health, and educational disparities among racialized populations in the United States, and identity politics among gays and lesbians in North America (since 1977).

In the last decade, she has been engaged in NSF funded initiatives to improve science and math education among teachers in Atlanta's low-income school district. As the ethnographer in the Elementary Science Education Partners (ESEP) project during 1996-2003 she designed and implemented Participatory Reform, a research and development model that examines institutional policies, organizational practices, and professional partnerships through culture, equity, and agency as the reference points for analysis, and sustainable planned change. Presently she is a researcher in Partnerships for Reform in Science and Mathematics (PRISM); she studies the process by which PRISM constructs a Participatory Reward Structure that is changing policy, structural relations, and cultural practices in higher education by engaging scientists and mathematicians of the University System of Georgia to improve the literacy of science and math among teachers and students in grades K-16 (primary, secondary, and post-secondary education) in the state of Georgia. 

Presently, Dr. Kozaitis conducts ethnographic research in Thessaloniki, Greece.  She works with self-identified "katheaftou Ellines" ("Greeks" in the full meaning of the word), and new, post 1990s immigrants from the Balkans, including Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Poland, and Russia who have settled in neighborhoods in the city, and in surrounding coastal towns and home to Asia Minor refugees who settled in the peripheries of Thessaloniki following the exchange of Christian and Muslim populations between Greece and Turkey in 1923.  She examines constructions, negotiations, and accommodations by Greek hosts of foreigners, and practices of contrdictory perceptions of immigrants as an asset in the economic development of Greece, but a threat to its imagined and desired cultural homogeneity.  Dr. Kozaitis will present preliminary research on this topic at this year's meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 2009, to be held in Philadelphia.  This study was funded in part by the Center for Hellenic Studies, Georgia State University.

Dr. Kozaitis is consultant to human service organizations on health, education, and welfare that serve underrepresented populations in urban settings.

Selected Publications:

2008.  Educational Reform in Science and Mathematics:  An Anthropological Perspective.  Practicing Anthropology 30:2 Spring.

2007.  On Being Different: Diversity and Multiculturalism in the North American Mainstream, McGraw Hill. (3rd edition) (Co-authored with Conrad Phillip Kottak).

2002. Embrace of Shelter:  Cultural Hybridism Among the Roma of Athens, Greece.  Ethnologia.   Ethnological Society of Greece, Athens, Greece.

2001. Ethnicity:  Consciousness, Status, and Agency in the World System.  In Latino Workers In the Contemporary South, edited by A. D. Murphy, C. Blanchard, and J. A. Hill.  Athens:  The University of Georgia Press.

2000.  Anthropology in Late Modernity:  Inquiry, Pedagogy, and Service.   Prague Studies in Sociocultural Anthropology 1:3-14.

2000. Anthropology in Education:  Pushing the Frontiers of Social Reform.  In   Applying Anthropology, edited by P. J. Brown and A.  Podolefsky.   MayfieldPublishing Company.

2000.  Anthropological Influence on Urban Educational Reform.  Practicing Anthropology  22:4.

2000. The Rise of Anthropological Praxis.  In The Unity of Theory and Practice in Anthropology:  Rebuilding a Fractured Synthesis, edited by C. E. Hill and M. L. Baba.  American Anthropological Association.

1997.  "Foreigners Among Foreigners:"  Social Organization among the Roma of Athens, Greece.  Urban Anthropology 26:2.

1997.  Partners in Reform:  "What’s Culture Got to Do With It?"  Urban Anthropology 26:1.

 

 

Related Links


Student Quotes

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology:

“This class would not have been quite as moving without Dr. Kozaitis.  She motivated me to think and provoked a lot of new ideas and thoughts for me.  Definitely my favorite class and professor at Georgia State.”

"Dr. Kozaitis was the first instructor I have had at Georgia State that showed an interest and concern for each individual student.  She set up an appointment with me on her own accord, so that she could talk to me about my grades, progress, and goals in this course.  She has a true passion to teach, and for others to learn."

"I thought this class was extremely in-depth and difficult for an intro level undergraduate class…I thought this course was stimulating, and I loved how Dr. Kozaitis emphasized learning and actually getting something more out of the course than a grade."

“I might have learned the most I have learned in my college career in this class…at least about life…understanding life, people, and myself.  Dr. Kozaitis deserves an award!"

Anthropological Theory and Praxis:

“Kozaitis is one of the most inspiring professor's I've ever had. I like how she meets with each student to establish goals for just them. She is really devoted to each student. This approach should be used in EVERY graduate class. If I'd taken this class my first semester of grad school, I'd have had a much better experience.”

“In this seminar I learned: 1. Anthropologists study people and can use their critical perspective to expose inequality and injustice. 2. In community centered praxis, anthropologists form a partnership with the target group to create an intervention grounded in theory. 3. Intervention has intended and unintended outcomes. 4. To understand culture, anthropologists examine: history, political economy, structure, and agency. 5. Practice theory states that although traditions are passed down from generation to generation, the meanings behind them can change. People are agents and participate in social history through every day practices. 6. Epistemology is how we know what we know. 7. Social problems are context dependent. 8. Archaeology is not just a pile of rocks. Material culture belongs to descendant populations. Treating artifacts with scientific respect is not enough. 9. Grounded Theory generates knowledge from data collection. 10. In order to gain trust, anthropologists must feel empathy for the disempowered groups they work with. 11. Academic professors are not cloistered. Praxis research combines theory and practice.”

Senior Seminar in Anthropology:

“Senior Seminar was absolutely fantastic.  I think it is a pity that such a course does not exist in other majors, because it consolidates so well what one has learned in one’s major coursework.”

“You did an outstanding job of guiding us while also allowing us to have control over our own research, and it was extremely rewarding to watch my personal research come together in an academically sound project. The fact that you divided the research into stages (research, annotated bibliography, outline, writing, etc.) made the work seem more manageable, and it also demonstrated the importance of each individual component. Most importantly, you allowed us to choose topics that really interested us rather than specifying what type of anthropology we had to use, and the panel presentations at the end of the semester were wonderful practice for a future in academia. I had presented at conferences prior to the Senior Seminar class, but I feel more confident about future presentations thanks to the experience you provided."

"While everything I have mentioned above was extremely important in shaping my experience with the class, the most important thing Senior Seminar did was enable me to determine who I am as an anthropologist and what I want to do with the training I have received. When I began my anthropology program four years ago I had only a general idea of what I eventually wanted to do with it, and even during the course of the intervening years it has often been difficult to determine what kind of anthropology I wanted to pursue. Your class enabled me to learn not only what I want to do and why but also to determine what I did not want to spend my life working on. Your course helped me to identify my passion within the field and hone in on my area of interest, and it is because of these revelations that I am approaching graduate school with such certainty, clarity, and excitement.”