Cathy Small

Cathy A. Small, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She and her spouse reside in Flagstaff, Arizona where she writes, and offers free Buddhist meditation talks and classes to community members as well as inmates at the county jail.

She is author of two editions of “Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs” (Cornell U. Press) chronicling an epoch multi-generation story of international migration, over a thirty-year period.

In an attempt to better understand her students’ experiences, Cathy went back to school as a freshman student, moving out of her home and into a dormitory. The experience proved transformative. Under the penname Rebekah Nathan, Small wrote the book “My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student” (Penguin Press) to share what she learned.

Her most recent book was spurred by a chance but troubling encounter with a homeless man in a dog park, who became her co-author for The Man in the Dog Park: Coming Up Close to Homelessness. Over seven years, she and her co-authors meet and interview people living in the woods, on the streets, and In their cars, telling their stories of what it means and, also, what it takes to live homeless. A touching animated documentary short film (14 minutes) that captures one piece of this story “the stigma of being homeless” is available free at themaninthedogparkfilm.org