Email: hlyons@uwaterloo.ca
Background
Harriet Lyons, Professor Emerita and winner (2004) of a University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ Distinguished Teacher Award, is a sociocultural anthropologist who is interested in symbolic systems in the broadest sense. She has done work on Jewish mysticism, joking and ritual insult, mass communications, and the ways in which anthropologists' own collective representations concerning sex and gender have influenced the way they have interpreted the sex and gender systems of others.
She received her BA from Barnard College in New York City and her M. Litt. and D. Phil. from Oxford University. She has taught at Kent State University, the University of Massachusetts, Smith College, and Wilfrid Laurier University, before coming to the University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ in 1991 as Director of Women's Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology.Ìý Dr. Lyons retired in 2010 and is currently an Adjunct Professor in the department.
Along with her husband Andrew Lyons, she conducted fieldwork in Benin City, Nigeria. The title of their project wasÌýThe Impact of Mass Communications: Case Study of a Nigerian City. The study explored the ways in which the media, especially television, are incorporated into the cultural understandings of the inhabitants of a contemporary African city. The project combined the theories and methods of symbolic anthropology, urban anthropology, cultural studies and the sociology of mass communications.
Publications
2007 - Genital Cutting: The Past and Present of a Polythetic Category.ÌýÌýAfrica Today, Volume 53, Number 4 (Summer) 3-17.
2006 - Lyons, Andrew and Harriet D. Lyons, eds. Special Issue on the New Anthropology of Sexuality, with an Introduction by the editors. Anthropologica Vol.48, no.2.
2005Ìý - Gross, Claudia, Harriet D. Lyons, Dorothy A.Ìý Counts, eds.ÌýA Polymath Anthropologist: Essays in Honour of Ann Chowning.ÌýSpecial Issue ofÌýResearch in Anthropology and Linguistics, a fully refereed monograph series published by The Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.
2004 - [with Andrew Lyons]ÌýIrregular Connections: The History of Anthropology and Sexuality.ÌýUniversity of Nebraska Press.
2003 - Mass media in Contemporary Urban Life: Benin City, Nigeria.Ìý Reprinted in Television: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, ed. Toby Miller.Ìý Routledge University Press.
2002 - Don't Let Them Know You Care.Ìý In Women in the Canadian Academic Tundra, El Hannah, L. Paul and S. Verthamany-Globus, eds., pp. 181-195.Ìý New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transactions Publishers.
1999 - [with Andrew Lyons] The Notion of Personal and the Cult of Personality: Reflections on Television in Nigeria and North America. In Surviving the Twentieth Century: Social Philosophy from the Frankfurt School to the Columbia Faculty seminars, Judith T. Marcus, ed., pp. 181-195. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transactions Publishers.
1999 -Ìý. Electronic Document.Re/ProductionsÌýIssue 2.
1997 - [with Andrew Lyons] Savages, Infants and the Sexuality of Others: Countertransference in Malinowski and Mead, Serial Symposium on Countertransference in the December 1997ÌýCommon Knowledge.
1996 - Sex, Race & Nature: Anthropology and Primitive Sexuality. InÌýRace and Other Misadventures: Essays in Honour of Ashely Montagu in his Ninetieth Year,Ìýedited by Larry Reynolds and Leonard Lieberman. Dix Hills, NY, General Hall.
1995 - [with Leonard Lieberman and Andrew Lyons] An Interview with Ashley Montagu.ÌýCurrent Anthropology36(5):835-844.
1994 - Presences and Absences in Edward Said'sÌýCulture and Imperialism.ÌýCanadian Journal of African Studies28(1):101-105.
1993 - [with Andrew Lyons] A Sweet Hope of Glory in My Soul. InÌýThe Beaver Bites Back, Frank Manning and David Flaherty, eds., pp. 881-903. McGill/Queens University Press.
1993 - Is Marriage the Culprit? InÌýGender Basics, Anne Minas, ed. Belmont California: Wadsworth.
1991 - [With Andrew Lyons] Religion and the Mass Media in Nigeria. InÌýReligion and Society in Nigeria, Jacob K. Olupona (ed.), pp. 97-128. Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum.
1991 - [With Andrew Lyons] Voices of Enchantment: Discourses of Religion in the Media, Benin City, Nigeria.ÌýThe Committee on Visual Anthropology Review, Fall 1990, pp. 16-20.
1990 - Mass Media in Contemporary Urban Life: Benin City, Nigeria.ÌýVisual Anthropology, Vol. 3, pp. 411-428.
1991 - Nigerian Television and the Problems of Urban African Women. InÌýCulture and Development in Africa, S. Arnold and E. Nitecki, (eds.). New Jersey: Africa World Press.
1989 - [Co-edited with Audrey Wipper] Special Issue on Women in Africa,ÌýThe Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1988, No. 3.
1987 - [With Andrew Lyons] Magical Medicine on Television: Benin City, Nigeria.ÌýJournal of Ritual StudiesÌý1:1, pp. 103-135.
1986 - [With Andrew Lyons] Savage Sexuality and Secular Morality: Malinowski, Ellis, Russell.ÌýCanadian Journal of AnthropologyÌý5:1, pp. 51-64.
1985 - [With Andrew Lyons] Return of the Ikoi-Koi: Manifestations of Liminality on Nigerian Television. InÌýA Canadian Tribute to Victor W. Turner. Paul Bouissac (ed.). Anthropologica (N.S.) 27:1-2, pp. 55-78.
1984 - The Uses of Ritual in Sembène's Xala.ÌýThe Canadian Journal of African Studies, Fall 1984, pp. 319-328.
1983 - [With Andrew Lyons] A Race or Not a Race: the Question of Jewish Identity in the Year of the First Universal Races Congress. InÌýSocial History and Ethnicity. J. Maier and C. Waxman (eds.). New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, pp. 499-518.
1981 - Anthropologists, Moralities, and Relativities: the Problem of Genital Mutilations.ÌýThe Canadian Review of Sociology and AnthropologyÌý18:4, pp. 499-518.