Sinah Theres Kloß

I'm a social and cultural anthropologist, acting as a visiting professor of Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn, Germany. My main research areas are the anthropology of reproduction, medical anthropology, anthropology of religion; sensory anthropology; body politics and embodiment; New Materialism and material feminist theory; transnational migration; and Postcolonial and Southern theory. My regional focus is on the Caribbean, especially Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad.

News

Special Issue @ Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies

"Indentured Bodies / Embodiments of Indenture" (with Jennifer Leetsch), Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies 4(2) (open access at Pluto Journals)

New Article @ Material Religion

Tattoos and Sonic Imitation: Mantras, Body Tuning and Tattooing as Sounding

Material Religion 21(2), published online in December 2024. DOI 10.1080/17432200.2024.2418221

Visiting Professorship @ Uni Bonn

Winter Term 2024/25

During the winter term, you can find me at the Department of Anthropology of the Americas as Visiting Professor (Vertretungsprofessorin) of Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn
October 1, 2024 - March 31, 2025

Book Series Editor @ Brill

"The Early Americas: History and Culture"

Series Editors: Mariana Françozo, Sinah Kloß, Nicholas Laluk, Genner Llanes-Ortiz

and Karoline Noack

Talk @ ifeas, Uni Mainz

"Marks of Devotion: Tattoos as Means of Subordination and Emancipation among Caribbean Hindu Women"

Institutskolloquium ifeas (Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien)

University of Mainz

January 14, 2025, 6-8pm

Book Chapter

Kloß, Sinah T. (2025): "Beyond Subordination versus Emancipation: Caribbean Godna (Tattoos) as Means of Recreating Social Relations and Affective Bonds", In: Control, Coercion, and Constraint: The Role of Religion in Overcoming and Creating Structures of Dependency, edited by Wolfram Kinzig and Barbara Loose, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 205-224. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111380575-011

Talk @ Lecture Series

"Othered Ethnography: The Influence of Intersectional Identities, Gendered Challenges and ‘Tropes of Hardship’ on Ethnographic Research",

Lecture Series Engaged Anthropology: Reimagining Social Transformation in Collaborative Anthropological Research

December 3, 2024; 12-2pm

Global Heritage Lab, University of Bonn

Talk @ Conference "Embodied Histories" -

"Sensitive and Permeable Bodies: Hair, Ritual Shaving and Birth in Hindu Suriname"

"Embodied Histories: Cultural History of, in, and through the Human Body"
16th Annual Conference of the International Society for Cultural History
University of Potsdam
September 5, 2024

Talk @ Workshop "Gendered Bodies"

"Durchlässige Körper: Ethnologische Annäherungen an körperliche Grenzen und Materialisierungsprozesse während Schwangerschaft und Geburt"

Vernetzungstreffen Medical Humanities

University of Siegen

July 5, 2024; 11:00-12:00

Book Chapter

“Tattooed Dependencies: Sensory Memory, Structural Violence and Narratives of Suffering among Caribbean Hindu Women,” In: Narratives of Dependency (eds. E. Brüggen and M. Gymnich), Berlin: De Gruyter, 347-365. DOI: 10.1515/9783111381824-016 (open access)

Latest BookS

Edited Volume "Transforming Spirit Bodies: Materialization and Embodied Dependencies in South America" (with L. Muders and T. Tagliati), forthcoming April 2025

Edited Volume

New York: Routledge (Routledge Studies in Cultural History).

About the book

Edited Volume.

Paderborn: Brill | Fink.

About the book

Download Book

Book Series

The Early Americas: History and Culture

Series Editors: Mariana Françozo, Sinah Kloß, Nicholas Laluk, Genner Llanes-Ortiz

and Karoline Noack

@ Brill

"The indigenous cultures of North, Middle and South America, including the Caribbean, have a diverse and fascinating history, reaching from the early pre-colonial past until the present. Modern multidisciplinary research investigates many social, political, economic and religious aspects, such as the population movements, the original development of agriculture, sedentary communities, chiefdoms and early states, the effects of mobility and exchange, the forms, functions and meanings of writing systems and visual art, the indigenous knowledge, technology and organisation as well as cosmovision, rituals, biology and medicine, but also the process of European colonization, which caused major destruction as well as complex intercultural dynamics and synergies. Given the importance of cultural continuity in the present, this series pays further attention to living traditions and oral literature, as well as to the present-day issues of cultural values and indigenous rights."