Charles D. Piot | Scholars@Duke

Charles D. Piot
Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Charlie Piot, Peter Lange Faculty Director of DukeEngage and Professor of Cultural Anthropology & African and African American Studies, does research on the political economy and history of rural West Africa. His first book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999), attempted to re-theorize a classic out-of-the-way place as within the modern and global. His next book, Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War (2010), explored shifts in Togolese political culture during the 1990s, a time when the NGOs and charismatic churches took over the biopolitical, reorganizing social and political life in the absence of the state. His most recent book, The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles (2019), is about Togolese who apply for and attempt to game the US Diversity Visa Lottery. He has begun research focusing on the return of Togolese from the diaspora to West Africa.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2011
Professor of African and African American Studies, African & African American Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2011
Bass Fellow, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2006

Contact Information

210 Friedl Building, Durham, NC 27708
Box 90091, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Durham, NC 27708-0091
charles.piot@duke.edu (919) 681-3264
http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/CA/faculty/charles.piot

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., University of Virginia 1986
- M.A., University of Virginia 1982
- B.A., Princeton University 1973
Duke Appointment History
- Professor in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2017 - 2020
- Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2017
- Chair of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2014 - 2017
- Associate Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2009 - 2014
- Interim Chair in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2012
- Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2000 - 2010
- Associate Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies, African & African American Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2010
- Associate Professor in Women's Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2005 - 2008
- Interim Director of the Program in African and African-American Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University 2006 - 2008
- Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University 2000 - 2005
- Assistant Professor of African and African-American Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University 1997 - 2000
- Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1997 - 2000
- Assistant Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1995 - 1997
- Visiting Assistant Professor, Cultural Anthropology, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1993 - 1995
Recognition
In the News
- DEC 5, 2019 Duke Global
  
  Atlantics: Faculty Study the Movement of MIgrants Between Africa and Europe
- JUN 27, 2019 Duke University Press
  
  Charles Piot on the Man Who Fixes Immigration Dreams in Rural Togo
- MAR 25, 2019
  
  Spring Books: Adventures in Artificial Intelligence, Peruvian Guerrillas, Snow Leopards and More
- JUN 21, 2017 Kenan Institute for Ethics
  
  Charles Piot: What is Ethical Development in Todays Globalized World?
- DEC 3, 2015
  
  Counting the Impact of Duke Civic Engagement
- MAR 12, 2015
  
  International Summit Explores Global Service Learning
- FEB 19, 2014
  
  Cultural Anthropology Journal Goes Open Access
- FEB 3, 2014
  
  Expanding Duke's Presence in Africa
Awards & Honors
- Graduate Student Mentoring Award. Unknown. December 2012
- Teaching evaluations in top 5% of Duke undergraduate instructors. Unknown. December 2010
Expertise
Global Scholarship
- Expertise
  - Africa (Continent)
  - Togo (Country)
- Research
  - Togo (Country)
- Teaching
  - Togo (Country)
Research
Selected Grants
- Doctoral Dissertation Research: Securing Youth: Humanitarian Futures in Post-Conflict Uganda awarded by National Science Foundation 2018 - 2019
- Doctoral Dissertation Research: Piety in Progress: Video Filmmaking and Religious Encounter in Benin awarded by National Science Foundation 2014 - 2016
- Doctoral Dissertation Research: Producing Urban Futures in Post-Genocide Kigali awarded by National Science Foundation 2013 - 2015
- Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Raiding Sovereignty in Central Africa awarded by National Science Foundation 2009 - 2011
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Books
  - Piot, Charles. The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2019.
    Open Access Copy
  - Piot, C. Nostalgia For the Future: West Africa After the Cold War. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
  - Piot, C. Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. University of Chicago Press, 1999.
- Academic Articles
  - Allison, A., D. Boyer, and C. Piot. “FINANCING OPEN ACCESS: Introducing Friends of Cultural Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 2 (May 1, 2016): 159–61. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca31.2.01.
    Full Text
  - Allison, A., and C. Piot. “Editing the times.” Cultural Anthropology 30, no. 4 (January 1, 2015): 525–30. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca30.4.01.
    Full Text
  - Allison, A., and C. Piot. “Editors' note on "neoliberal futures".” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 1 (February 1, 2014): 3–7. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.1.02.
    Full Text
  - Alison, A., and C. Piot. “Editors' introduction: Open access.” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 2 (January 1, 2014): 201–2. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.2.01.
    Full Text
  - Allison, A., and C. Piot. “Editors' farewell.” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 4 (January 1, 2014): 599–601. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.4.01.
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  - Harms, E., S. Hussain, S. Newell, C. Piot, L. Schein, S. Shneiderman, T. S. Turner, and J. Zhang. “Remote and edgy: New takes on old anthropological themes.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 361–81. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau4.1.020.
    Full Text
  - Allison, A., and C. Piot. “Editors' note.” Cultural Anthropology 28, no. 3 (August 1, 2013): 369–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/cuan.12009.
    Full Text
  - Allison, Anne, and Charles Piot. “Untitled.” Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 2 (May 2012): 191–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01139.x.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Allison, A., and C. Piot. “Editors' notes.” Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 1 (February 1, 2012): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01123.x.
    Full Text
  - Allison, Anne, and Charles Piot. “Untitled.” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 4 (November 2011): 511–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01109.x.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Allison, Anne, and Charles Piot. “INTRODUCTION.” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 2 (May 2011): 157–157. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01092.x.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Allison, A., and C. Piot. “New Editors' Greeting.” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 1 (February 1, 2011): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01077.x.
    Full Text
  - Piot, C. “The 'Right' To Be Trafficked.” Indiana Journal of Global Studies 18, no. 1 (2010): 1–12.
  - Geschiere, P., M. Goheen, and C. Piot. “Introduction: Marginal gains revisited.” African Studies Review 50, no. 2 (December 1, 2007): 37–41. https://doi.org/10.1353/arw.2007.0093.
    Full Text
  - Piot, Charles. “KC's World.” Transforming Anthropology 15, no. 2 (October 2007): 158–66. https://doi.org/10.1525/tran.2007.15.2.158.
    Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Piot, C. “Jeux de frontières : La Loterie des Cartes Vertes au Togo.” Politique Africaine 101 (2006): 171–80.
  - Piot, C. “Asylum and Culture: Comments on Khanna and Noll.” Texas International Law Journal 41, no. 3 (2006): 503–6.
  - Piot, C. “An African Postcolony in the Age of Empire.” Antropologi [Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society] 29, no. 1 (2004): 20–27.
  - Piot, C. “Heat on the Street: Video Violence in American Teen Culture.” Journal of Postcolonial Studies 6, no. 3 (2003): 351–65.
  - Piot, C. “Des cosmopolites dans la brousse.” Les Temps Modernes 57, no. 620–21 (2002): 240–60.
  - Piot, C. “Expectations of modernity myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt.” Anthropological Quarterly 74, no. 2 (April 2001): 89–90. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2001.0019.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Piot, C. “Réponse Aux Critiques.” Politique Africaine 82 (2001): 206–10.
  - Piot, C. “Of Hybridity, Modernity and their Malcontents: Reflections on John and Jean Comaroff’s "Of Revelation and Revolution".” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 2 3 (2001): 112–18.
  - Piot, C. “Editorial: "Of Revelation and Revolution".” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 3 (2001): 1–4.
  - Piot, C. “Atlantic Aporias: Africa and Gilroy's Black Atlantic.” South Atlantic Quarterly 100, no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 155–70. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-100-1-155.
    Full Text
  - Piot, C. “The mask of anarchy: the destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6, no. 4 (December 2000): 745–46.
    Link to Item
  - Piot, C. “The modernity of witchcraft: Politics and the occult in postcolonial Africa.” American Ethnologist 26, no. 1 (February 1999): 247–48. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1999.26.1.247.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Piot, C. “Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history, and representation.” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (September 1998): 812–13. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.812.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Piot, C. “Of slaves and the gift: Kabre sale of kin during the era of the slave trade.” Journal of African History 37, no. 1 (1996): 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700034782.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Piot, Charles D. “Secrecy, Ambiguity, and the Everyday in Kabre Culture.” American Anthropologist 95, no. 2 (June 1993): 353–70. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1993.95.2.02a00050.
    Full Text
  - Piot, C. “Wealth production, ritual consumption, and center/periphery relations in a West African regional system.” American Ethnologist 19, no. 1 (February 1992): 34–52. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1992.19.1.02a00030.
    Full Text
  - Piot, C. “Of Persons and Things: Some Reflections on African Spheres of Exchange.” Man 26, no. 3 (September 1991): 405–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2803875.
    Full Text Link to Item
  - Tambiah, Stanley. “"Comment" on "Bridewealth and Dowry Revisited: The position of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa and North India".” Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 430–31.
  - Piot, C. “Fathers and Sons: Domestic Production, Conflict and Social Forms Among the Kabre.” Research in Economic Anthropology 10 (1988): 269–85.
  - Geentz, Clifford. “Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology.” Journal of Speech Quarterly 71 (1985): 390–92.
- Book Sections
  - Piot, C. “Pentecostal and Development Imaginaries in West Africa.” In Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa, edited by Dena Freeman. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012.
  - Piot, C. “Border Practices.” In Hard Work, Hard Times: Ethnographies of Volatility and African Being-in-the-World, edited by B. Buggenhagen, S. Jackson, and A. -. M. Makhulu. University of California Press, 2010.
  - Piot, C., and J. L. Amselle. “Ethnicity: Western Africa.” In New Encyclopedia of Africa, 2:342–44, 2007.
  - Piot, C. “Representing Africa in the Kasinga Asylum Case.” In Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives, edited by R. Abusharaf. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
  - Piot, C. “Togolese Cartographies: Re-mapping Space in a post-Cold War City.” In Crisis and Creativity: Exploring the Wealth of the African Neighborhood, edited by P. Konings and D. Foeken. Leiden: Brill Press, 2006.
  - Piot, C. “Fractal Figurations: Homologies and Hierarchies inKabre Culture.” In On the Order of ’Chaos’: Social Anthropology and the Science of Chaos, edited by M. Mosko and F. Damon. Blackwell, 2005.
Teaching & Mentoring
Recent Courses
- AAAS 211: Anthropology of Money 2021
- AAAS 496: Distinction Program Sequence 2021
- CULANTH 291: Independent Study 2021
- CULANTH 293: Research Independent Study 2021
- CULANTH 350: Anthropology of Money 2021
- CULANTH 791: Special Readings 2021
- CULANTH 793: Individual Research in Cultural Anthropology 2021
- CULANTH 890: Advanced Selected Topics 2021
- ECON 309: Anthropology of Money 2021
- ICS 328: Anthropology of Money 2021
- PUBPOL 306: Anthropology of Money 2021
- AAAS 103: Introduction to African Studies (DS3 or DS4) 2020
- AAAS 495: Distinction Program Sequence 2020
- CULANTH 105: Introduction to African Studies (DS3 or DS4) 2020
- CULANTH 291: Independent Study 2020
- CULANTH 293: Research Independent Study 2020
- CULANTH 791: Special Readings 2020
- CULANTH 793: Individual Research in Cultural Anthropology 2020
- HISTORY 129: Introduction to African Studies (DS3 or DS4) 2020
- ICS 110: Introduction to African Studies (DS3 or DS4) 2020
- POLSCI 108: Introduction to African Studies (DS3 or DS4) 2020
- AAAS 211: Anthropology of Money 2019
- AAAS 307: Development and Africa 2019
- CULANTH 291: Independent Study 2019
- CULANTH 293: Research Independent Study 2019
- CULANTH 307: Development and Africa 2019
- CULANTH 350: Anthropology of Money 2019
- CULANTH 791: Special Readings 2019
- CULANTH 793: Individual Research in Cultural Anthropology 2019
- ECON 309: Anthropology of Money 2019
- ICS 308: Development and Africa 2019
- ICS 328: Anthropology of Money 2019
- PUBPOL 207: Development and Africa 2019
- PUBPOL 306: Anthropology of Money 2019
Scholarly, Clinical, & Service Activities
Presentations & Appearances
Outreach & Engaged Scholarship
- DukeEngage Program Leader . Enhancing youth culture and stemming youth flight in remote areas. June 2017 - August 2017 2017
- Instructor. DukeEngage in Togo. 2013 2013
Service to the Profession
- Financial Futures. November 25, 2011 2011
- Writing Culture @ 25. November 25, 2011 2011
- SSRC Selection Committee. 2009 - 2011 2009 - 2011

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Education, Training, & Certifications

Duke Appointment History

In the News

Awards & Honors

Global Scholarship

Expertise

Research

Teaching

Selected Grants

Selected Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Recent Courses

Presentations & Appearances

Outreach & Engaged Scholarship

Service to the Profession