University of Florida
http://www.latam.ufl.edu/safa
Remembering Helen Safa
Dr. Safa joined the faculty of the University of Florida in 1980 as the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (1980-85). She was a core faculty member of the Center and the Department of Anthropology until her retirement in 1997.
Dr. Safa was President of LASA from 1983-85, and also served on the Executive Committee several times. Among her initiatives as LASA President was the first formal academic exchange program between US and Cuban scholars, funded by a grant from The Ford Foundation. She was also instrumental in the founding and growth of the Gender and Feminist Studies Section, which helped transform LASA from a largely North American male organization in the l960s and early 1970s into the more diverse organization it is today. She served on the editorial board of the Latin American Research Review, among other journals.
Dr. Safa began her career as a Latinamericanist in Puerto Rico, where she subsequently pursued research for her masters’ thesis and doctoral dissertation. Her doctoral studies at Columbia were partially funded by a scholarship from the University of Puerto Rico. Considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of urban anthropology, her early research resulted in The Urban Poor of Puerto Rico (1974).
Her continued interest in the Caribbean is reflected in UF’s Caribbean Migration Program, which in the l980s brought students and faculty from the Caribbean to the University; and a fellowship program on Afro-American identity and cultural diversity which culminated in a major conference and a special issue of the journal Latin American Perspectives (1998) on Race and National Identity in the Americas.
Throughout her career, Dr. Safa pursued an interest in the causes and consequences of inequality, focusing on class issues in her early work on poverty and urbanization, moving to gender in the l970s and l980s, and in her work incorporating race.
The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization in the Caribbean (1995) compared women industrial workers in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Her interest in the social impact of women’s paid labor force participation was reflected in her earlier co-edited publications with June Nash, Sex and Class in Latin America (1976) and Women and Change in Latin America (1986), while her participation in the international women’s movement contributed to another co-edited publication with Eleanor Leacock entitled Women’s Work (1986).
In addition to her books, Dr. Safa published over 60 articles and book chapters on issues of poverty and urbanization, migration, gender and development, social movements, mestizaje, and family structure. Dr. Safa was honored as a founder of Puerto Rican anthropology by the Puerto Rican Association of Anthropology and the American Ethnology Society. She received the 2003 Conrad Arensberg award from the Society for the Anthropology of Work of the American Anthropological Association. At UF, the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research awarded her its 2006 Uppity Woman Award.
In 2007, Safa was presented the Kalman Silvert award of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) at its International Congress in Montreal. The Silvert award recognizes senior members of the profession who have made distinguished lifetime contributions to the study of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is worth noting that Safa was only the third women to receive the award.
If you would like to honor Dr. Safa’s legacy, please consider contributing to the Safa Graduate Student Travel Endowment: https://www.uff.ufl.edu/OnlineGiving/FundDetail.asp?FundCode=013515
Dr. Safa established the endowment to support graduate students’ travel to present their work at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress and other Latin American Studies-related professional meetings.
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