Meet Dr. Barnes
Director, Associate Professor AFAM & Anthropology
Dr. Riché J. Daniel Barnes is a sociocultural anthropologist whose specializations are at the intersection of black feminist theories, work and family policy, and African Diasporic raced, gendered, and classed identity formation. Her work focuses ethnographically on the U.S. South, its connection to the Caribbean, and the west coast of Africa. She also explores the complexities of urban living. She is an award-winning teacher and scholar, having won the 2019 AAA/Oxford University Press Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology award.
She is the author of Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood, and Community (2015), winner of the 2017 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association. She is currently completing projects that expand on her conceptual framework, Black Strategic Mothering, and apply the concept to understanding how Black mothers navigate school choice and its impact on perinatal health outcomes.
Barnes is the President of the Association of Black Anthropologists. Barnes completed her B.A. magna cum laude in Political Science at Spelman College, her M.S. in Urban Studies from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Emory University.
