I am an ethnographer whose work bridges the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology and ethnomusicology. I have collaborated with Native American communities in Oklahoma since 1993, when I began a lifelong personal and research relationship with the Yuchi people. 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 am increasingly also pursuing 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]
I presently serve as an Associate Professor of Folklore at Indiana University and am the editor of Museum Anthropology Review, a gold open access journal that colleagues and I founded in early 2007. In addition to my primary appointment in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, I am an Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology and an affiliated faculty member in the American Studies Program and the Cultural Studies Program, all at Indiana University. Thus I am available to work with students in any of these fields. [more]
