Richard Handler
( Email - Website )
Professor and Assoc Dean, Academic Programs
Department of Anthropology
P O Box 400133
College of Arts and Sciences
Charlottesville, VA 22904
Phone:434-924-8873
Fax:434-924-1405
Education and Experiences:
(BA) Columbia University
(MA) University of Chicago
(PhD) University of Chicago
Interests:
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. My second major field project was an ethnographic study of Colonial Williamsburg, which is both an outdoor museum and a mid-sized nonprofit corporation. This has led me to an interest in tourism and cultural development around the world. Finally, I have had an enduring interest in the work of anthropologists as critics of modernity and development. My most recent book is Critics Against Culture: Anthropological Observers of Mass Society.
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. Finally, I 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. I am the editor of the journal-series History of Anthropology. I am also completing a collection of essays entitled Critics Against Culture: Anthropological Visions of Mass Society.
Specializations:
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.
Selected Projects:
A Better Past Through Technology: World War II Aircraft as a Form of Cultural Heritage
Drawing on research into the cultural construction of technology and research on the objectification of culture in heritage movements, this project examines the “industrial romanticism” which underlies ...
Colby-Bottel Dissertation Research: New Orleans Traditional Music
This project examines New Orleans traditional music as a set of practices in which local concepts of tradition are staged and expressed. It draws together anthropological studies of tradition with ...
Critics Against Culture : Anthropological Observers of Mass Society
Critics against Culture: Anthropological Observers of Mass Society—a collection of essays on the history of anthropology focused on Benedict, Boas, Sapir, and modernist thought by one of American anthropology’s ...
Cultural and Institutional Crossings in the History of Anthropology (History of Anthropology)
Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions : Essays Toward a More Inclusive History of Anthropology (History of Anthropology)
History-making can be used both to bolster and to contest the legitimacy of established institutions and canons. Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions seeks to widen the anthropological past and, ...
Jane Austen and the Fiction of Culture
With a new introduction by the authors, this paperback edition of Jane Austen and the Fiction of Culture takes the complete body of work of a major novelist as the basis for rethinking ethnographic representation ...
Nation, State and Its Sexual Dissidents
This essay explores circumstances under which the nation/state might tolerate, if not support, the proliferation of unruly difference. To do so, my narrative counterposes historically specific accounts ...
Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (New Directions in Anthro Writing)
Handler, an anthropologist, analyzes the rise and decline of the Quebec Independence party (Parti Quebecois), including its victory in the 1976 provincial election and the failure of its 1980 independence ...
Reinventing the invention of culture.(Critical Essay) : An article from: Social Analysis
We must say something to be able to say it in a certain manner. (Sapir 1921: 63).
The conventions of language must be "metaphorized" through some interrelation with situational phenomena (the context ...
Significant Others: Interpersonal and Professional Commitments in Anthropology (History of Anthropology)
Anthropology is by definition about "others," but in this volume the phrase refers not to members of observed cultures, but to "significant others"—spouses, lovers, and others with whom anthropologists ...
The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg
In the past decade the staff of Colonial Williamsburg has attempted to incorporate the methodology of the new social history into its interpretive program. This change meant involving the "real" people ...
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