Dr. Jana Fortier is a cultural anthropologist and author. After receiving a Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fortier taught as an associate professor at Southwest Minnesota State University (1996-2003) and received tenure in 2002. Fortier currently lectures at University of California San Diego and Mesa College in San Diego. She also does consulting research for cultural resource management firms. Fortier was a Fulbright scholar in Nepal in 1989-90 and in India in 2004-05. Her scholarship has also been supported by three Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research awards (1990, 1997, 2000), a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (2001), and a National Endowment for the Arts award which supported her as the public folklorist for the City of San Diego, Commission for Arts and Culture in 2003-04.
Published works
edit2009 “The Ethnography of South Asian Foragers” Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 38.
2009 Kings of the Forest: The Cultural Resilience of Himalayan Hunter-Gatherers. University of Hawaii Press.
2005 “San Diego Folklife” in Encyclopedia of American Folklore. Simon Bronner, Editor. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
2004 “City of San Diego: Program Report” In American Folklore Society Public Programs Bulletin 21:25-27. Bowling Green, KY: Univ. of Western Kentucky Programs in Folk Studies.
2004 “Without The Forest, There Is No Life.” Annual Editions: Anthropology 04/05. McGraw Hill, pp. 61-65. (Originally in The World & I, 2002 17(9):190-201)
2003 “Reflections on Raute Identity.” Studies in Nepalese History and Society 8(2):317-348.
2002 “The Arts of Deception: Verbal Performances by the Raute of Nepal.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (formerly Man ) 8(2):233-57.
2001 “Sharing, Hoarding, and Theft: Exchange and Resistance in Forager-Farmer Relations.” Ethnology 40(3): 193-211. See <www.pitt.edu/~ethnolog/abstracts.htm>
2000 “Monkey's Thigh Is The Shaman's Meat: Ideologies Of Sharing Among The Raute Of Western Nepal.” Senri Ethnological Series 53: 113-47.
Consulting Reports:
edit2008 TEA21 Rural Roadside Inventory: Native American Consultation and Ethnographic Study in Caltrans District 7, County Of Los Angeles. Los Angeles: California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). 120 pp.
2006 TEA21 Rural Roadside Inventory: Native American Consultation And Ethnographic Study Along Highway 94. Sacramento: California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). 48pp.
2004 Assessing the Needs of San Diego’s Folk and Traditional Artists. City of San Diego, Commission for Arts and Culture. 112 pp.