November 20, 2024

Prazak has taught at Bennington since 1996 and retires in the spring of 2025.

“Mirka is a long-standing faculty member in Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Bennington, and she is widely respected within the College and beyond for her achievements as an intellectual, teacher, and advisor,” said Thomas A. Leddy-Cecere, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Pedagogy and Advising and Faculty Member in Sociolinguistics at Bennington and a member of the VAAS trustees. “Induction as a VAAS fellow is a fitting recognition following her distinguished nearly 30-year service on the Vermont academic scene.”

The VAAS recognizes a selection of individuals annually who have made outstanding contributions to the arts, humanities, sciences, or education in Vermont, or whose work in these fields has made a significant impact in Vermont. VAAS Fellows have accrued significant and longstanding accomplishments and are considered to be exemplary within their professions.  

“Fellows are renowned artists and scientists who reside in Vermont and have achieved lifetime acclaim for their work,” said Kevin K. Fleming, chair of the Department of Psychology at Norwich University and current VAAS president. “Mirka met all our criteria for her lifetime achievements, and we are very proud to induct Mirka as a Fellow of our Academy.” 

While Prazak specializes in economic development and cultural change in East Africa and uses multidisciplinary research strategies to address globalization, inequality, culturally-based ways of knowing, gender-based violence, and politics of the body, she is simultaneously dedicated to her role as a Vermont academic. Her recent course offerings include Encountering the Abenaki Nation and Studying Place by Metes and Bounds, which explores the ecology, history, and culture of Bennington over 250 years and takes as its frame the traditional New England land parceling system of "metes and bounds." 

“She takes seriously her responsibility to educate Bennington students about the people and places of the state in which they reside,” said Leddy-Cecere. 

Prazak’s work has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been conducted under the auspices of Yale University, the Australian National University, University of Nairobi, and Bennington College.

Her monograph Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting was published from Ohio University Press in 2016. She has contributed chapters to African Families at the Turn of the 21st Century and Africa Today: A Multi-Disciplinary Snapshot of the Continent in 1995, and published extensively in academic journals including Africa Today, African Studies Review, Journal of African Cultural Studies, The Anthropology of Work Review, and the Journal of African Studies. 

During her acceptance, Prazak said, “It’s a great honor for me to be here with you today…. Being elected to this body signals to me the recognition of worthiness of my academic trajectory,” she said. “I appreciate that more than you can imagine.” 

Prazak was born in the Czech Republic and educated there and in Pakistan, the United States, and Australia. She has taught at Yale University, Australian National University, the University of Nairobi, Williams College, and the Community College of Vermont. She received her bachelor’s from Smith College and her MPhil. and PhD from Yale University. She did postdoctoral study at Australian National University. 

Bennington College faculty were fundamental in the founding and development of the VAAS. Lucien Hanks, an anthropology faculty member from Bennington, founded the VAAS in 1965. The organization has been inducting fellows of the academy since 1975. The Academy went on to recognize many former Bennington faculty members as fellows, including Pat Adams, Ben Belitt, Louis Calabro, William Dixon, Gunnar Schonbeck, and Sally Sugarman, among others. 

The other 2024 VAAS fellows are climatologist Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, archaeologist and historic preservationist Scott McLaughlin, and mathematician Roger Cooke. All new fellows were formally inducted at the VAAS luncheon on Saturday, November 2, at Windjammer Restaurant in South Burlington.