Catherine Lutz
Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of International Studies
Professor of Anthropology
Professor Lutz is the author or co-author of many books and articles on a range of issues, including security and militarization, gender violence, education, and transportation. Writing and speaking widely in a variety of media, she has also consulted with civil society organizations as well as with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the government of Guam. She is past president of the American Ethnological Society and was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Radcliffe Fellow.
Professor Lutz's research has focused on the transformations of war, as well as on peacekeeping and gender, military basing and anti-basing social movements, photographic representations of the world of nations, and car cultures and political economy.
She is currently leading a large interdisciplinary project on the human, social, and financial costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Costs of War project has brought together over 45 scholars and practitioners from across the social sciences with expertise in these areas, and their research output is available at costsofwar.org.
Re-Examining Global Policy Agendas via Interactive, South-Initiated North-South Dialogues
Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peacekeeping
The Brightest Will Rise, and Other Errors. Cultural Anthropology Fieldsites, no. February 2018, 02/01/2018, Peer Reviewed, Published.
Bureaucratic Weaponry and the Production of Ignorance in Military Operations on Guam. Current Anthropology, vol. 60, no. S19, 12/01/2018, Peer Reviewed, Published.
War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New York: New York University Press, in press (edited with Andrea Mazzarino).
The Politics and Aesthetics of Military Maps. In Securing Spaces. Setha Low and Mark Maguire, eds. New York: New York University Press, 2018, in press.
Roboeducation. In Robo-Humans: How Algorithms are Remaking Social Life, Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, in press (with Anne Fernandez).
Afterword: Producing States of Security. Anthropological Theory, 2017, 17 (3): 421-25.
What Matters. Cultural Anthropology, 2017, 32 (2): 181-191.
Schooled: Ordinary, Extraordinary Teaching in an Age of Change (with Anne Fernandez). New York: Teachers College Press, 2015.
The U.S. Car Colossus and the Production of Inequality. American Ethnologist, 2014, 41 (2): 232-45.
The War in Afghanistan Might Not Be Effective -- But For Some, It's Profitable. Pacific Standard, September 6, 2017.
How Did Guam Become a Target of North Korean Missiles? Common Dreams, August 18, 2017.
Trump’s Budget Puts Lives at Risk. US News and World Report, May 23, 2017, with William Hartung.
Donald Trump and US Foreign Policy. Okinawa Times, November 14, 2016.
What the People of the United States Need to Know about their Bases in Okinawa. Ryukyu Shimpo, March 15, 2015.
US Reconstruction Aid for Afghanistan is Focused on Weapons; Much is Siphoned Off by Corruption. Global Post, February 13, 2015.
Review of Ian Morris, “War: What is it Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots.” San Francisco Chronicle, July 14, 2014.
September 29, 2021 Business Insider
Cathy Lutz provided commentary in this article on the state of the war in Afghanistan: "This chapter in Afghanistan will not be over even after the last Afghan who remembers a family member who died in the war is dead, or until the last US veteran with a war wound takes her last disability payment somewhere in early 2100."
September 27, 2021 Wall Street Journal
This piece includes commentary from Catherine Lutz, co-founder of the Costs of War Project.
September 27, 2021 Providence Journal
In this article, co-authors Cathy Lutz and Stephanie Savell discuss the human costs of post-9/11 wars.
September 10, 2021 The Public's Radio
In this piece, Cathy Lutz discusses the "unteaching" involved in teaching about 9/11.
September 2, 2021 News from Brown
This piece features an interview with Costs of War co-directors Cathy Lutz and Stephanie Savell on a new report ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
August 4, 2021 Halifax Examiner
Cathy Lutz offered commentary on the culture of the automobile and its effect on daily life, including the politics around bicycle infrastructure.
April 20, 2021 Common Dreams
This article cites the new report released by the Costs of War project on Afghanistan.