Dr. Elsa Davidson, associate professor, received a PhD from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her research interests include processes of aspiration formation and social reproduction among youth from diverse class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, and shifting expectations of success and definitions of the normal and pathological in childhood. Her current research explores this theme in relation to emergent norms and pedagogies in the United States focused on social and emotional skill development and difference in childhood. Her course offerings include Cultural Anthropology, Multicultural America, Anthropological Theory, and the Anthropology of Childhood and Youth.

 

Dr. Davidson is the author of The Burdens of Aspiration: Schools, Youth, and Success in the Divided Social Worlds of Silicon Valley (New York University Press, 2011) and publishes in both geography and anthropology journals.