Ph.D. University of Chicago 1979

Specialties

Sociocultural anthropology; nationalism, ethnicity and multi-culturalism; museum studies; cultural criticism; symbolic anthropology; history of anthropology; anthropology and literature; culture theory; modern societies; contemporary North America.

I am a cultural anthropologist who studies modern western societies. My initial fieldwork was in Quebec (1976-1984) where I studied the Québécois nationalist movement. This has led to an enduring interest in nationalism, ethnicity, and the politics of culture. Upon coming to Virginia in 1986, I pursued the latter topic by looking at history museums. Beginning in 1990, I worked
with Eric Gable (Ph.D. Virginia 1990) and Anna Lawson (Ph.D. Virginia 1995) on an ethnographic study of Colonial Williamsburg, which is both an outdoor museum and a mid-sized nonprofit corporation. In addition to examining the invention of history and tradition, our study focuses on corporate culture, class, race and gender.

A different interest is the intersection of anthropology and literature. I have written on Jane Austen's novels, on the literary bent of such noted anthropologists as Ruth Benedict and Edward Sapir, and on the difficulties of writing the ethnography of nationalist movements. I also have had an ongoing interest in the history of American anthropology - in particular, in anthropologists as critics of modernity, and the relationship of our discipline's critical discourse to other intellectual trends.

My most recent work has been on U.S. postal iconography in relation to national identity, citizenship, and consumerism.

Books

2023 - The American Stamp: Postal Iconography, Democratic Citizenship, and Consumerism in the United States (with Laura Goldblatt). Columbia University Press.

2014 - Vehicles: Car, Canoes and Planes as Metaphors of the Moral Imagination (co-edited with David Lipset). Berghahn Books.

2006 - Central Sites, Peripheral Visions: Cultural and Institutional Crossings in the History of Anthropology (History of Anthropology, vol. 11) (editor). University of Wisconsin Press.

2005 - Critics Against Culture: Anthropological Observers of Mass Society. University of Wisconsin Press.

2004 - Significant Others: Interpersonal and Professional Commitments in Anthropology (History of Anthropology, vol. 10) (editor). University of Wisconsin Press.

2000 - Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions: Essays toward a More Inclusive History of Anthropology. (History of Anthropology, vol. 9) (editor). University of Wisconsin Press.

1997 - The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg. (With Eric Gable). Duke University Press.

1995 - Schneider on Schneider: The Conversion of the Jews and Other Anthropological Stories. (With David M. Schneider). Duke University Press.

1990 - The Fiction of Culture: Jane Austen and the Narration of Social Realities. (With Daniel Segal). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

1988 - Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press