Sara Busdiecker holds a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Africana Studies Program. She defended her dissertation in 2006. Entitled, " We Are Bolivians Too: The Experience and Meaning of Blackness in Bolivia ," it examines the contemporary culture and identity of Bolivia 's small and overlooked black population, descended from enslaved Africans. More broadly, it deals with the experiences and meanings associated with blackness and race within Bolivia's overwhelmingly indigenous/ mestizo socio-cultural landscape and the roles of three intervening forces in these meanings and experiences, these being: a dominant Indian/ mestizo -centric paradigm for organizing difference and Bolivian national identity; expressive culture and its public performance and discursive life; and the nature and circulation of political, scholarly, and popular representations of blacks and race within Bolivia . The dissertation was based largely on two years of research and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Bolivia 's capital city, La Paz, and in a small rural Afro-Bolivian community in the Yungas region. Busdiecker plans to continue her research in Bolivia well into the future.