Laurel A. Monnig
Author
After receiving a BA in Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati, Laurel Monnig went on to get her MA in Cultural Anthropology. Her Master’s Thesis is entitled, “Becoming ‘Racially Aware:’ How Taiwanese Students Learn About Race in the US.” It was after completing her master’s thesis that she became increasingly interested in how US racial ideologies and other ideologies of power may impact cultures and peoples around the world.
During her PhD program at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Monnig’s interests took shape through her work on Guam. She conducted ethnographic fieldwork and research on Guam, investigating how Chamorros negotiate and deal with US colonialism, militarization, and racial ideologies, especially in the form of decolonization activism. While conducting research, she also became a mother; her first child, Emery, was born in 2000 on Guam. Her Doctoral Dissertation is entitled, “’Proving Chamorro:’ Indigenous Narratives of Race, Identity, and Decolonization in Guam” (2007).
Various other publications have resulted from her work on Guam, including a co-authored piece with Dr. Keith Camacho (University of California Los Angeles) entitled “Uncomfortable Fatigues: Chamorro Soldiers, Gendered Identities, and the Question of Decolonization in Guam,” in Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific (2010), edited by Setsu Shigematsu and Keith L. Camacho. She graduated with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois in 2008. She continues this research, but has taken it in new directions. She is now a professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.