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Shannon Lee Dawdy is an American anthropologist, historian, and archaeologist. She is a professor at the University of Chicago and a MacArthur Fellow.

Dawdy holds a PhD in anthropology and history and an MA in history from the University of Michigan, an MA in anthropology from the College of William and Mary and a BA in anthropology from Reed College.^[1]

Dawdy is 'Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College' at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the Americas, with a special focus on New Orleans, from the colonial period to the post-Katrina present.^[2] Her research has focused on the history of capitalism and informal economies (including piracy)^[3] urban landscapes, human-object relations, and temporality (how people shape and experience the past, present, and future).^[4] Her newest work examines rapidly changing death practices in the U.S., resulting in both a film (I Like Dirt. with co-director Daniel Zox) and a book, American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-first Century (October 2021, Princeton). She writes for both academic and general audiences.^[5]

In 2010, Dawdy was named a MacArthur Fellow.^[6] She has also received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.^[1]

Dawdy, Shannon Lee (2021). American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-first Century. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691210643.

Dawdy, Shannon Lee (2016). Patina: A Profane Archaeology. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226351193.

Dawdy, Shannon Lee (2008). Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226138411.