{"id":1050,"date":"2023-04-07T11:21:57","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T18:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anthro.wsu.edu\/newsletter\/?page_id=1050"},"modified":"2025-06-23T17:03:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T00:03:06","slug":"2023-in-memoriam-dr-jeannette-mageo","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/anthro.wsu.edu\/newsletter\/2023-in-memoriam-dr-jeannette-mageo\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 – Remembering Jeannette Mageo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Remembering Jeannette Mageo<\/h1>\n\n\n
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It is with sadness that we share the news that Professor Jeannette Mageo passed away on February 12, 2023. A rigorous and prolific academic, her commitment to scholarship was both admirable and inspirational. Jeannette made invaluable contributions in the anthropology of dreaming, psychological anthropology, historical anthropology, and the anthropology of Samoa. Her research on dreams brought a robust and unique lens to the study of self, power and inequality, storytelling and narratives, and human subjectivity. Colleagues have described her prolific work as \u201cadvancing both theory and method\u201d and addressing \u201cissues of great urgency to anthropology,\u201d but also as \u201cpowerful,\u201d \u201cthought-provoking,\u201d and \u201coftentimes dazzling.\u201d Indeed, her 2022 book The Mimetic Nature of Dream Mentation: American Selves in Re-formation <\/em>(Palgrave) was recently awarded The Boyer Prize, recognized by the Society of Psychological Anthropology for its contributions to psychoanalytic anthropology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Mageo joined the faculty at WSU in 1993 after completing her PhD at UC Santa Cruz in 1979. Previously, she held positions at institutions including UC San Diego, University of Hawai\u2019i, and American Samoa Community College. Here at WSU, her sought-after course \u201cSelf in Culture\u201d brought the insights of her work to Pullman and Global campus students. The course focused on the development of the self within cultural context, alongside dream analysis methods which taught the students lived application of these theories of personhood. Jeannette supervised many current and past graduate students, including eight completed MAs and PhDs; her students have gone on to hold positions inside and outside of academia. As former chair and senator in WSU\u2019s Faculty Senate, she amplified faculty voices and sought  transparency in institutional decisions. Jeannette was an incredible asset to the department of anthropology, as a scholar, mentor, colleague, and friend. She will be missed and will live on through the work of all to whom she is beloved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read more about Jeannett\u2019s influential career, see her faculty page<\/a> and this short list of her recent and well-known works:<\/p>\n\n\n\n