Anthropology professor awarded 2021-22 Career Development Chair

Dr. Andrew Newman has been named a 2021-22 Wayne State University Career Development Chair, a competitive award presented by the Office of the Provost. The honor provides funding and course releases to support his upcoming book, which examines the role of anthropologists in 19th-century Parisian ethnographic "shows."

Newman’s research focuses on the Jardin d'Acclimatation, an urban space in Paris that functioned as a landscape garden, public attraction, zoo and center for scientific research. Beginning in 1877, the garden hosted exhibitions featuring Indigenous people in degrading roles, reinforcing racial hierarchies. These ethnographic expositions ran for 30 years and were widely attended by the public and international scientific community. Leading anthropologists of the time, such as Paul Broca and Adolphe Bloch, provided scientific justification for these displays, helping to shape early anthropology.

Newman’s book will explore the rise and fall of these exhibitions, public reactions and the lives of those featured in them. He will also analyze how visual culture contributed to the development of racial categories and the formation of anthropology as a discipline. While scientific racism has been rejected in modern anthropology, Newman’s work will examine how its visual legacy persists.

His previous publications include "Landscape of Discontent: Urban Sustainability in Immigrant Paris" (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) and "A People's Atlas of Detroit" (Wayne State University Press, 2020).