Kate Fischer

I’m a cultural anthropologist by training, and I also teach classes in women and gender studies. I earned my Ph.D. in anthropology from CU Boulder. My research focuses on the specialty coffee industry, specifically how ideas about quality and value are determined and shared. My dissertation research focused on Costa Rican national identity as a place of exception, an identity that has been challenged both by the decline of coffee production and the decline of the social welfare state. I currently work with small coffee producers in Honduras and teach classes on sustainability and post-harvest processing within the coffee industry. My classes at CU focus on Latin America, social justice, gender, migration, violence, and representation. I also lead a Global Seminar called Tourism and Belonging in Costa Rica, where we spend three weeks in June traveling around the country, participating in different tourist activities (like white-water rafting, snorkeling, and going to a sloth sanctuary) and living with a host family in a small town.