Pessar, Patricia R.

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Chicago, Ph. D., 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Office—P.O. Box 208236, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8236. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and author of nonfiction. Yale University, New Haven, CT, adjunct professor of American studies and anthropology.

WRITINGS:

Kinship Relations of Production in the Migration Process: The Case of Dominican Emigration to the United States, New York University (New York, NY), 1982.

(Editor) When Borders Don't Divide: Labor Migration and Refugee Movements in the Americas, Center for Migration Studies (New York, NY), 1988.

Fronteras permeables: Migración laboral y movimientos de refugiados en América, Planeta (Buenos Aires, Argentina), 1991.

(With Sherri Grasmuck) Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.

A Visa for a Dream: Dominicans in the United States, Allyn and Bacon (Boston, MA), 1995.

(Editor) Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration, Center for Migration Studies (New York, NY), 1997.

From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Patricia R. Pessar is an adjunct professor of American studies and anthropology at Yale University. Pessar's writing largely focuses on the Caribbean, especially the Dominican Republic. After her first book, Kinship Relations of Production in the Migration Process: The Case of Dominican Emigration to the United States, Pessar expanded her research, editing the anthology When Borders Don't Divide: Labor Migration and Refugee Movements in the Americas. This collection of essays questions the myths and misunderstandings that shroud immigration throughout the Americas. As is the case throughout Pessar's work, it gives a nuanced view of the social, economic, and political realities of the flow of people across borders.

In her next two books, Pessar returns to examining the interaction of the Dominican Republic and the United States. In a review for the Journal of American Ethnic History, Nina Glick Schiller praised Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration, which Pessar wrote with Sherri Grasmuck, for its rigorously detailed methodology and its success in dispelling popular myths about Dominican migration to the United States. According to Schiller, Pessar and Grasmuck "contribute to the growing investigation of migration on the level of the household by making a fine-grained analysis of the class and gender contradictions that lie within and between the households of Dominican migrants." Pessar followed Between Two Islands with A Visa for a Dream: Dominicans in the United States. Written for publisher Allyn & Bacon's "New Immigrants" series, this book gives a detailed look into the lives of Dominican migrants in the United States. Pessar discusses the largely economic motivations for (often temporary) migration, and tracks the difficulties migrants face in forming their new transnational ethnic identities. Elliott Robert Barkan, writing about this and other books in the series for the Journal of American Ethnic History, noted that "while the writing and the personal anecdotes certainly make each a most appealing work to assign students, their value goes well beyond that, for all address a number of important issues pertaining to contemporary immigrant experiences; all are quite current with their data; and all provide substantive examples and first hand commentaries by those struggling to adapt to America."

Pessar's second anthology, Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration, examines the complex relationship Caribbean migrants in the United States maintain with their home countries. Reviewer Frances Henry, writing for the Journal of American Ethnic History, called Caribbean Circuits "an ambitious attempt to reconceptualize the return migration of Caribbean people back to their countries of origin." Although Henry felt the book was too narrowly focused on U.S.-Caribbean migration (ignoring migration between the Caribbean and Europe or Canada) and that it was "misleading to title the book Caribbean Circuits when virtually only the Hispanic Caribbean is featured," she nonetheless concluded that the book "add[s] to the rather small literature on the migration processes of Caribbean people…. With its emphasis on theoretical reformulations, [it] should stimulate new perspectives on this process."

Pessar's next book, From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture, is based on Pessar's twenty-five years of research and firsthand observation of a rural Brazilian millenarian community. Millenarian religious movements center around a single charismatic leader, focus on the eminent thousand-year golden age that will follow the return of Jesus Christ, and often come into violent conflict with Brazilian authorities. Pessar contrasts the withdrawn, secretive community she first visited in 1973 to the modernized community of 1998, comfortably integrated with the larger Brazilian culture. According to Alida C. Metcalf, writing for Church History, "this is a fascinating story of one millenarian movement and its transformation into a living, changing, rural community set against the tableau of past-millenarian movements in the Brazilian northeast."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, June 1, 1997, Nina Glick Schiller, review of A Visa for a Dream: Dominicans in the United States, p. 404; June 1, 1998, Samuel Martinez, review of Caribbean Circuits: New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration, p. 545.

American Ethnologist, November 1, 1994, Mary Strong, review of Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration, p. 1098; February 1, 1999, Colleen G. O'Neal, review of A Visa for a Dream, p. 221.

American Historical Review, April 1, 2005, R. Andrew Chesnut, review of From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular Culture, p. 526.

American Journal of Sociology, July 1, 1992, Douglas T. Gurak, review of Between Two Islands, p. 210.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, July 1, 2005, Todd Diacon, review of From Fanatics to Folk, p. 117.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 1, 1992, I. Infante, review of Between Two Islands, p. 1608; December 1, 2004, R.M. Delson, review of From Fanatics to Folk, p. 718.

Church History, December 1, 2007, Alida C. Metcalf, review of From Fanatics to Folk, p. 879.

Contemporary Sociology, July 1, 1992, Silvia Pedraza, review of Between Two Islands, p. 491; May 1, 1997, Jan Lin, review of A Visa for a Dream, p. 351.

Hispanic American Historical Review, August 1, 2007, Cliff Welch, review of From Fanatics to Folk, p. 609.

Identities, April 1, 1999, Caroline B. Brettell, "New Immigrants in America: Contributions to Ethnography and Theory," p. 603.

Journal of American Ethnic History, March 22, 1991, Gerald E. Poyo, review of When Borders Don't Divide, p. 88; September 22, 1994, Nina Glick Schiller, review of Between Two Islands, p. 101; March 22, 1998, Elliott Robert Barkan, review of A Visa for a Dream, p. 94; June 22, 1998, Frances Henry, review of Caribbean Circuits, p. 120.

Journal of Latin American Anthropology, September 22, 2004, Robin E. Sheriff, review of From Fanatics to Folk, p. 473.

Journal of Religion, April 1, 2005, Paul Christopher Johnson, review of From Fanatics to Folk, p. 362.

ONLINE

Center for Migration Studies Library Web site,http://cmsny.library.net/ (July 10, 2007), overview of When Borders Don't Divide: Labor Migration and Refugee Movements in the Americas.

Yale American Studies Program Web site,http://www.yale.edu/amstud/ (July 9, 2007), profile of author.