John M. Coggeshall – An American anthropologist in Prague ****************************************************************************************** * John M. Coggeshall – An American anthropologist in Prague ****************************************************************************************** John M. Coggeshall is a professor of anthropology at Clemson University [ URL "https://www cbshs/departments/sociology/"] in South Carolina. As a cultural anthropologist, Coggeshall career researching American regional ethnic and social groups. He is the author of a semin the ‘80s examining gender roles in prison, and – most recently – an oral history called Li Carolina: An African American Appalachian Community. Coggeshall was a visiting professor a University in the fall semester of 2019. John M. Coggeshall taught two courses at the Department of Ethnology at the Faculty of Soc in the fall semester - a welcome addition to the team at CU with extensive experience in f US. But Coggeshall was no stranger to the Czech capital: he first visited Prague in the mi interest of getting to know Czech colleagues in 1995, he walked into the Department of Eth street and by chance met Dr. Leoš Šatava, a specialist in European ethnic groups; the two and have been in touch ever since. More than 20 years later, Coggeshall saw coming back to opportunity and challenge: first, arrangements had to be made for someone to look after hi house in the US. Then, he focussed on the needs of students he would soon be teaching. I talked to professors here as well as a number of Czech students at Clemson University an that students here might be a little hesitant about speaking English. Both courses I was g were discussion-based and I wanted the students to be comfortable. I made sure I wouldn’t them all the time in writing and speaking. By-and-large, I think everything went very well anthropological theories class, for example, students were very engaged and their speaking actually really good. I was very happy with how they responded. Coggeshall has been teaching for more than 30 years; he himself studied to be an anthropol 1970s and ‘80s, when new directions and focus in the field proved inspirational and even p taught by Dr. Charlotte Frisbie, he recalls, stood above the rest: the kind of course all students hope for and, when they luck out, never forget. It was called Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective. I think this was perhaps the single mos I took, at either the graduate or undergraduate level. It opened me up to a lot of new ide feminism. Other classes, such as introductory courses into anthropology were important whe my studies, but this one was revolutionary. This was it for me. Traditionally, cultural anthropologists immerse or embed themselves in foreign cultures, u relying heavily on participant observation. In the 1970s and ‘80s more and more field rese study smaller groups “at home”. Coggeshall was fascinated by local communities in differen homeland United States that in the past had been largely overlooked or ignored. I have always studied ethnic and regional groups and what I always find is that there are approaches to life in different American communities. How we can understand different appr and present them in a way that does them justice and also enhances connections between peo excites me as an anthropologist. What is hugely important is finding the differences that among different groups of people yet at the same time link us together as human beings. Th for cultural anthropologists is to study ordinary people in ordinary times and places; but years as a field researcher that the stories that people have to tell are extraordinary. One of the groups Coggeshall studied in the 1980s were inmates in medium-security prisons. hadn’t set out to study them at all. It was something of a happy accident. It was a coincidence. I was hitting the jobs market and I needed teaching experience. I no asking for instructors who would be interested in teaching university-level courses at men Illinois where I was doing my dissertation. I thought I could try it. The idea was that pr remedial high school courses, what they call a GED (General Education Development), and th courses so that once inmates would be released they could find better jobs and hopefully s life. It was a popular program in the 1970s but later phased out by the government as bein crime”. But at the time I think it was fairly successful. While teaching, Coggeshall says he eventually began taking notes and interviewing guards a students themselves before or after class just to get a better sense of “what life in pris The atmosphere in the classroom was positive, the building where he taught, modern and new generally well-behaved. There was a guard in the facility but not in the classroom itself Coggeshall was alone with 15 inmates at a time. He smiles when he tells the story of one t building lost power and the lights went out. At the head of the class, he exclaimed “Alrig move!”. Remembering the moment, he laughs: “They all thought that was the funniest thing t heard”. Such moments are humorous but in the context of prison using one’s authority to set clear rules was important. Enforcing them was something Coggeshall learned to do early on. That is kind of the first thing you learn in prison: to set boundaries and try not to back fairly successfully. If I hadn’t, the inmates themselves later admitted, they would have c and would have tried to manipulate me. It’s not an uncommon behaviour but the consequences greater in prison than elsewhere. Because his students were well-behaved, Coggeshall says he initially thought most were in collar crime or crimes like auto theft; but soon he learned that there were inmates in his in prison for murder. One of the most diligent students was an African American who, it tu serving multiple back-to-back sentences for racially-motivated murder after coming back fr War. He had served but had gotten involved in drugs and was thrown out of the army. Back i gotten involved in a gang and, Coggeshall learned from microfilm archives, had attacked a Chicago, resulting in multiple killings. Despite having turned a new page in prison, this would never be getting out. The anthropologist spent three semesters teaching inmates before he felt he had had enough bars. But the information he had gathered, combined with some interviews done by an inmate student), provided the basis for “‘Ladies’ behind bars: a liminal gender as cultural mirro in Anthropology Today (since reprinted in The Best of Anthropology Today, ed. by J. Bentha Routledge, 2002). The article explored gender in prison, essentially how some inmates were emasculated or fo female gender roles that were to no small degree a distortion and caricature of behaviour relationships in the outside world. The article pointed to aspects of power, intimidation, and abuse but also, importantly, inmates’ responses, from acquiescence or acceptance to re of survival strategies, some successful, some less so, all within the gender framework. In jail had little to do with one’s biological sex but was determined by one’s standing (or l the overall power structure among inmates. The article, which is a powerful read even 30 y take shape mainly after Coggeshall was approached by a colleague. I was at a conference and Pam Frese was putting together a session on gender. She asked me Americans I was doing my dissertation on at the time but I said the material I had gathere was suitable. It’s complex and when it comes to the fluidity of gender, there might be mul involved in prison: but there is a dominant/submissive relationship. Men’s prisons see a lot of sexual violence and rape, at least they did in the ‘80s when I I am positive [being subjugated to a female gender role] is not inevitable for a prisoner: muscle on, or gain power through education or legal means, or if there is something you ca ways to avoid it. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but those who are considered weak, who fa for themselves, who have elements of femininity, are picked on and effectively are “select The article gained a certain “notoriety” and Coggeshall says after publication he received expand his research in a book, but in the end he declined. He says he didn’t want to becom anthropologist who studied state prisons; he had many other ideas he wanted to explore. At he readily admits the article remains one of his best-known and there’s no question it was for many, including Czech anthropologist and CU graduate Alena Lochmannová who met Coggesh stay. She herself spent hundreds of hours interviewing inmates in prisons in the Czech Rep own dissertation on prison tattooing (you can look forward to an upcoming interview with L iForum). The prison paper was getting a lot of attention but my dissertation was about German Ameri Illinois. What was really interesting for me is how one ethnic group differentiated from a as the stereotypes they often faced and traditions that really distinguished us from them. always been interested in regional groups and in South Carolina. Early on, I figured out t to be a top anthropologist I needed to specialize, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted generalist. For me, that meant studying different groups besides inmates. Being a generali different subjects made me happy. One of Coggeshall’s most recent publications is Liberia, South Carolina: An African Americ Community (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). It is a fascinating oral history tha another project, initially. I was given a project another researcher turned down and the aim was to document the lives assumption was white people of Irish-Scottish descent – who lived in mountain areas and wh displaced due to a hydroelectric dam. The valley they had lived in before was now under wa interviews and what was fascinating was the way they talked about land. I grew up in the Midwestern United States and land is considered property with a value att you buy or sell and it’s not an integral part of who you are. But these people spoke about integral part of their families. Their land had been in their families for five or six gen told stories about it, land became a part of their identity and it was a part of who they lose that land had meant they had lost a part of themselves. And I thought that would make subject for a book. Doing research, the ethnologist came across the name of Liberia Road on a map – an unusual such a vicinity. The southern Appalachians pride themselves on a Scots-Irish, maybe some German, but basica American settlements and here was this African place name in the middle of what is often s a traditionally “white” space. So I drove up there and happened to meet a woman who turned matriarch of this Liberian community. So I set my mountain book aside temporarily and began to study a community of African Amer descended from slaves who had been on the very same land before the American Civil War. Wh freed and given land in exchange for their labour, many of them stayed. A few descendants onto the land ever since, despite there being plenty of forces over the decades prior to d The matriarch, Mable Clarke, was really involved in the project and the proceeds from the going to the local church. Studying even a tiny community like that at Liberia Road, counting just a few houses and p immensely valuable says the anthropologist, providing a new thread which inevitably challe complemented more traditional and dominant narratives. Hearing their side of the story was important and it was fascinating to plug that into the Carolina and even American history in general. For me, their community is a microcosm of a half of the American story and it’s important to hear their side because that is heard far white versions of history. For me it was a life-changing experience. Meeting with John M. Coggeshall in the same office he walked in off the street in 1995 mus curious for the anthropologist; certainly Charles University is proud to have had him as a from Clemson for at least a few months. If Coggeshall sounds almost wistful that his stay has drawn to an end it is because he could probably envision staying a little longer. Next We really enjoyed it. My wife, Cathy, now retired after also teaching at Clemson, took fou while we were here and is a lot better at Czech than I am. We love travelling and differen we really loved being in Prague. We both talked about it before I took this job as there w temporarily had to leave behind, but we decided that it would be an adventure and that it it. I loved our time here and getting to know my colleagues, my students, the culture and come back in a second! John M. Coggeshall is a professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropo Illinois University-Carbondale. His interests and activities centre on American regional a American Appalachian Community (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Carolina Piedmo in The Best of Anthropology Today, (Routledge, 2002).