Professional Website
Educational Background
MA, PhD, University of Chicago
BA, Cornell University
Expertise Areas
The Caribbean; post-Columbian world history; the social construction of race.
Selected Publications, Conferences Presentations, Invited Talks and Media Coverage
“Witnessing Chimpanzee-Human Closeness: Jane Goodall at Gombe and Since,” Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 4, 2017.
“Some Reflections on Editing with Contrarian Sensibilities,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 30, Issue 2, May 2015.
“Jane Goodall, or Tales and Performances of Chimp-Human Closeness,” keynote lecture at the Spring Symposium: Performance and Globalization, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana, Champagne-Urbana, IL, April 5, 2013.
“Should We Relativize Hierarchy or Say that Democratic Aspirations are a Human Disposition?” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA, November 16, 2012.
Cited in “Not Feeling the Kinship,” which appeared in Inside Higher Ed on November 18, 2011.
Quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education on November 17, 2011 in a piece titled, “Anthropologists Seek a More Nuanced Place for Science.”
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
Fulbright U.S. Scholar Research Fellowship in Brazil (Summer 2017, Summer 2018)
Page-Barbour lecturer, University of Virginia (Fall 2005)
American Historical Association’s 2001 “William Gilbert Award for the Best Article on Teaching History” for “‘Western Civ’ and the Staging of History in American Higher Education,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 3.
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (1998-99)
National Endowment for the Humanities “Travel to Collection Fellowship” to visit Haitian art in US museums (1991)
Additional Information
Inaugural Director, Munroe Center for Social Inquiry
Spring 2013 Theme: Examining THE CITY
Spring 2012 Theme: Democracies (and forces that thwart and pervert them)
Spring 2011 Theme: Schooling in Mass Societies
Spring 2010 Theme: Capitalism in Question (Because it Is)
Spring 2009 Theme: Global Issues in Public Health and Foods
