Rate My Professor Anne Goldberg

Dr. Anne J. Goldberg is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at Hendrix College, where she has served since 2005. She earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1991, M.A. from Arizona State University in 1999, and Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 2005. Prior to her academic career, she worked for the National Park Service conducting archaeological surveys in the Southwest. Goldberg has held several leadership roles, including Cynthia Cook Sandefur Odyssey Associate Professor of Anthropology, Charles Prentiss Hough Odyssey Professorship from 2018 to 2021, Associate Director of the Odyssey Program from 2016 to 2019, and Undergraduate Research Coordinator. She received a Spencer Foundation fellowship during graduate school and was named President's Medalist in 2025 for excellence in teaching. Her career emphasizes applied anthropology, interdisciplinary collaboration, and student engagement, significantly growing the anthropology program from one student to nearly 50 majors through Odyssey projects, international trips to Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, and the Southwest, and sponsorship of over 60 student-initiated research initiatives.

Goldberg's research focuses on borderlands, particularly the United States-Mexico border, anthropology of education and identity, place and identity formation, and globalization's impacts. She has conducted fieldwork in high schools and middle schools along the border and collaborated on proposing National Heritage Areas in the U.S. Southwest, consulting with diverse stakeholders. Since 2006, she has co-led the Rural Women and Globalization Project with photographer Maxine Payne, documenting older rural women's lives through oral history and photography in sites including San Luis, Costa Rica; Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora; Bagamoyo, Tanzania; Vinh Linh, Vietnam; and rural Arkansas. Recent work includes Blue Zones research with psychologist Jennifer Peszka on sleep, work attitudes, and friendships' roles in longevity, as well as studies on social connections among older Arkansans during COVID-19. Key publications include 'Company Town, Border Town, Small Town: Transforming Place and Identities on the United States-Mexico Border' (Journal of the Southwest, 2006), 'Art and Oral History: Applying Anthropology in Rural Costa Rica' with Maxine Payne (Practicing Anthropology, 2011), and contributions to Gathering Hopewell (2005). Her applied work extends to research with homeless individuals on housing strategies and facilitation of campus discussions on race, immigration, and sexual assault.