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Charlie D. Thompson, Jr. is Emeritus Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. He is co-director, with Mike Wiley, the America’s Hallowed Ground project.
Thompson holds a Ph.D. in religion and culture from UNC-Chapel Hill, with concentrations in cultural studies and Latin American studies. He also holds an M.S. degree in Agricultural Education from NC A&T State University. His particular interests include farmworkers, immigration, agriculture, Appalachian Studies, sacred places, and pilgrimage.
He is a singer/songwriter, oral historian, ethnographer, documentary filmmaker, and collaborative community organizer. A former fulltime farmer, and currently an heirloom apple orchardist and gardener, Thompson is devoted to work on improving our food and farming systems.
Thompson is author or editor of seven books, including Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land, Border Odyssey: Traveling the US/Mexico Divide (2015), Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World, and, with Melinda Wiggins, The Human Cost of Food: Farmworker Lives, Labor, and Advocacy.
Thompson is also the producer/director of seven documentary films, including Rock Castle Home, Homeplace Under Fire, Border Crossing 101, Faces of Time, Brother Towns/ Pueblos Hermanos (2010), We Shall Not Be Moved (2008), and The Guestworker (2007).
Thompson is currently at work on a book for the University of Illinois Press about American land tenure and loss.