Amanda Minks

Amanda Minks is Associate Professor in the University of Oklahoma Honors College and is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology and with the programs in Native American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies at OU.  She earned a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University in 2006, with research specializations in music-language relations and language socialization.  Her courses focus on music, language, and cultural politics in the Americas.  She also teaches a course with a global focus on intellectual property and cultural heritage.Dr. Minks has conducted ethnographic research on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua for over ten years.  She has examined the aesthetics and politics of play among Miskitu children living on Corn Island in her monograph Voices of Play: Miskitu Children's Speech and Song on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (University of Arizona Press, 2013).  She has also written about Miskitu music and community media in Bilwi, in the northern autonomous region of the Atlantic coast.  Most recently, she has been studying inter-American cultural policies of the mid-20th century and their impact on discourses of development in the U.S. and in Latin America.Dr. Minks has received grants and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Institute of International Education, among others.  Her past publications include articles in the journals Pragmatics, Language and Communication, Ethnomusicology, Yearbook for Traditional Music, and Wani, as well as chapters in several edited volumes.Her book, Voices of Play: Miskitu Children's Speech and Song on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, is now available from the University of Arizona Press.