About Me

Curious about the “Shreds and Patches” name? This post explains it.

I am an ethnographer and ethnologist whose work is centered in the fields of folklore studies and cultural anthropology. I have collaborated with Native American communities in Oklahoma since 1993, when I began a lifelong personal and research relationship with the Euchee/Yuchi people. My experiences in the company of Euchee people in turn brought me into relationship with other Native communities in central and eastern Oklahoma. My studies concern, most centrally, the nature of customary arts, practices and beliefs and the role that these play in social life. In addition to the ethnography and ethnology of Eastern North America, I also pursue projects exploring emerging issues (often quite contested) in the areas of intellectual property, cultural property, and heritage policy. Lastly, most of my career has been spent working as a curator in museum contexts and I remain deeply engaged with research in, and teaching about, museums, especially museums of art and ethnography. [more]

At Indiana University I am a Ruth N. Halls Professor of Folklore and Anthropology as well as the editor of Museum Anthropology Review, a gold open access journal published by the Indiana University Press. Also published by Indiana University Press is a book series that I edit, Material Vernaculars.  [more]