On August 16, 2011, anthropologist and historian Fernando Coronil died of lung cancer after a four-month struggle that he insisted on referring to not as a battle, but as a dance. At his side throughout that dance was his partner of 46 years, Julie Skurski, as well as their daughters, Mariana and Andrea Coronil. Coronil was a distinguished professor of anthropology and Latin American studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a position he assumed in 2008 after teaching for two decades at the University of Michigan, where he had served as director of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History. First in Ann Arbor, and then in New York, several generations of students — myself included — found him to be a constant source of guidance and inspiration.
Fernando Coronil was born in Caracas, the son of Fernando Rubén Coronil and Lya Imber de...
