Indiana University

Faculty Member, Folklore & Ethnomusicology

Associate Professor of Folklore

College of Arts and Sciences

About

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.

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