K. Gibel Mevorach

Katya Gibel Mevorach holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. She received her B.A. and M.A. in African Studies from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Gibel Mevorach is a Professor in Anthropology and American Studies at Grinnell College.

Baccalaureate 2017: Professor Katya Gibel Mevorach, Anthropology & American Studies

Katya Gibel Mevorach, Teaching About Antisemitism in the Era of Amnesia, Erasure, and Omissions (Oxford, UK 2019)

Professor Gibel Mevorach is author, under name, Katya Gibel Azoulay of Black, Jewish and Interracial: It's Not the Color of Your Skin but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity (Duke University Press, 1997). With multiple published chapters, journals in which her articles, review essays and position papers have appeared include American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Biography, Cultural Studies, Developing World Bioethics, Identities, Research in African Literatures, Noga (Israeli Feminist Journal), The Forward and The Jerusalem Post (Israel). Gibel Mevorach has dual American - Israeli citizenship. She moved to Israel in 1970 after graduating from The Brearley School in New York, returning two decades later to pursue doctoral studies at Duke University. In 1996 she was invited to join Grinnell College as a Scholar-in-Residence during the Spring Semester, eventually becoming the first Black faculty to be promoted to the rank of Professor in 2010.

Gibel Mevorach drafted and served as Chair of the Africana Studies Concentration (AFR) from 1996-2000 and between 2002 and 2005, she was appointed to the Grinnell College's Diversity Steering Committee. In 2003, she helped initiate the transition of Africana Studies into an expanded American Studies Concentration (AMS), which she chaired between 2004 and 2005 and again between 2015-19. As an invited speaker around the country and abroad, she lectures on topics of identities and social science categories, “race,” antisemitism and the legacy of racism in the curriculum - including diversity in Higher Education - as well as race-thinking in the fields of biology and medical research and health care. 

In 2023, Professor Gibel Mevorach and her colleague Professor L. Gregg-Jolly (Biology) along with P. Lostroh ’94 (Associate Professor, Molecular Biology) from Colorado College, were awarded a prestigious workshop grant of $20,000 from the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges (AALAC). Recognizes their outstanding work, this workshop enables them to host a workshop titled “Unteaching Racism: Understanding and Handling Misuse of Racial Categories,” which aims to provide faculty members with a comprehensive understanding of the historical context, deployment, and impact of racial categories. By examining how these categories have been misused to perpetuate racist ideologies, the workshop seeks to empower faculty to challenge and dismantle these harmful practices. Links to some of her lectures are embedded in Gibel Mevorach’s CV on the sidebar.