Professor of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Biography
Cory was a founding and core member of GRASAC since its inception in 2005. Contributing her expertise on textiles, beadwork and leatherwork, she was a team member on collaborative research trips to England, Scotland, Toronto and France. She also organized collaborative research trips to NMAI, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Cranbrook Institute and the Missouri History Museum. In 2008, Cory and her students wrote the first instructions protocols for data entry in the GKS. In 2009, Cory worked closely with Heidi Bohaker and Ideéclic to design the Projects Module in the new Drupal-based GKS. That year she also initiated community consultations and training workshops at Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa and the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation. The feedback from these workshops helped inform the subsequent GKS4, which includes the Language Module. In 2015, Cory and her students were instrumental in testing the GKS4, resulting in the article with Alex Taitt, Mary Ann Corbiere and Alan Corbiere, “Towards Language in Action: Agency-Oriented Application of the GRASAC Database for Anishinaabe Language Revitalization” (2016). That same year, Cory stepped down from the GRASAC Steering Committee to pursue other research priorities.
Cory is Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). Her research interests are diverse and interdisciplinary. One area focuses on Anishinaabe clothing in colonial and contemporary contexts. Another branch of that research investigates colonial tropes and indigenous agency in visual representations of Anishinaabe peoples. In recent years, Cory has been involved more actively in curating museum exhibits in collaboration with students and community organizations. Most notably in 2018, she co-curated “Birdman Rising: Conversations Beyond Colonialism” with Onondaga photographer, Jeff Thomas. Currently, her interests have returned to the physical and digital curation of the historic photographs and papers of her grandparents who were educational missionaries in West China, 1921-1951. Another facet of this project examines vernacular cross-stitch textiles collected by Cory’s grandmother and her contemporaries in West China, which are found in public and private collections around the world.