Aziza Bayou

Graduate Lecturer

Anthropology: Economic anthropology, culture and political economy, labor unions, identities and inequalities, gendered division of labor, ethnographic methods, anthropology of work, anthropology of religion, New Orleans and Caribbean region.

Current Research

My dissertation research utilizes mixed ethnographic methods and a critical political economic methodological approach to analyze and historicize the context and work of the Fairfax Workers Coalition, a grassroots labor union of Fairfax County government workers, seeking to shed light on the challenges and contradictions faced by modern American laborers.

Selected Publications

Forthcoming Anthropology Textbook: Connections: Developing an Anthropological Perspective. (SAGE)

"Race/Ethnicity and Wealth in the United States" in the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd edition. Edited by George Ritzer, Chris Rojek, and J. Michael Ryan.

"James Edward Blackwell" in Fifty Scholars in Black Social Thought (Routledge 2024). Edited by Marie C. Jipguep-Akhtar & Nazneen Khan.

Master's Thesis: "United for the City: Multiethnic First Grace United Methodist Church in Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans"

Grants and Fellowships

Fellow in the 2024 Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) Summer Seminar with David Harvey

2024-2025 and 2025-2026 Mercatus Center Graduate Scholar

Courses Taught

ANTH 114: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (online and face-to-face sections)

ANTH 313: Myth, Magic, Mind

ANTH 330: Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean

ANTH 331: Refugees in the Contemporary World

ANTH 490: Theory, Methods, and Issues II

CULT 325: Globalization and Culture (Spring 2026)

Education

Current PhD candidate in Cultural Studies

M.A. in Anthropology from Colorado State University

B.A. in Anthropology from George Mason University (summa cum laude)

Recent Presentations

American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting Presentation: "Class Conflicts and Dignity in Labor: A Public Sector Union's Struggle to Represent Government Employees" (Fall 2025)

Markets and Society Conference Presentation: Analyzing the Structural Marginalization of Commodified Feminized Caregiving Labor in the Contemporary U.S. and Evaluating Programmatic Responses (Fall 2025)