Susan Terrio

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Susan Terrio, associate professor of French and cultural anthropology at Georgetown University, focuses on the politics of memory, history, and national identity in Western Europe and France. Her first book, Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate (University of California Press, 2000), examines ways in which craft producers, training models, commodities, and work identities interact with national and transnational forces, moving beyond production to consider exchange and consumption and contributing to a growing literature on aesthetics, taste, and commoditization in late capitalism.

At the Radcliffe Institute, Terrio will begin a manuscript based on ethnographic and archival research conducted at the Paris Palace of Justice. Her project considers dominant ideas and shifting approaches to the treatment of troubled youth at the largest and most influential French juvenile court. In the 1990s, there was a shift to accountability, restitution, and retribution as public attention centered on a “new” delinquency associated with Muslim youth of North and West African ancestry. This book considers the role of race and ethnicity in a legal system that represents itself as color blind and a champion of universal human rights.

Terrio received her BA from Colby College and an MA in French studies and PhD in cultural anthropology from New York University. She is the recipient of research grants from the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the Chateaubriand Fellowship as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Humanities Center.