Princeton University

Ph.D. Stanford University 1995, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies

interests
Social and cultural anthropology, gender, medical anthropology, psychology as cultural discourse, anthropology of modernity, social theory; Japan, Japan and the United States

short bio
Amy Borovoy is interested in cultural encounters, cultural traffic, and culturally and historically different constructions of modernity. Her research has looked at Japanese postwar national identity and Japan's struggle to define itself on western terms while veering from Euro-centric constructions of capitalism, feminism, modernity, and the social good.Currently she is at work on a book manuscript which looks at American popular psychology in Japan. A recent article, "Recovering from 'Co-Dependence' in Japan" shows how the concept of "co-dependence" functions very differently in Japan: instead of re-affirming the importance of individual autonomy, as it has in the American context, it provokes Japanese women to distinguish "good" or necessary forms of dependence from exploitative and abusive dominant cultural practices. Another article, "Not A Doll's House: Public Uses of Domesticity in Japan" (1998) shows how Japanese feminism problematizes liberal feminism and liberal social theory, both of which have placed great emphasis on leaving the home as a key aspect of liberation. "The Traffic in Selves" (2000) looks at the impact of Japan anthropology on anthropological theories of the self. Professor Borovoy teaches courses on colonial encounters and their impact on anthropology, social theory and approaches to East Asia, Japan and the U.S., and contemporary Japanese society and culture.
Prof. Borovoy's website: www.princeton.edu/~aborovoy

teaching Fall 2008
EAS 229/ ANT 229 Contemporary East Asia
EAS 549/ ANT 549 Japan Anthropology in Historical Perspective

teaching Spring 2009
EAS 225/ ANT 225 Japanese Society and Culture
EAS 437/ ANT 437 What is a Good Society? Modern Social Ideals in Japan

Ph.D. Columbia University 2005, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures

interests
sociocultural anthropology; ethnography of Eurasia; contemporary Russian culture; nationalism; trauma, memory and identification; everyday socialism

short bio
Serguei Alex Oushakine has studied history, political theory, gender, and anthropology in Russia, Canada, Hungary, and the US. Born and raised in Siberia, he earned a PhD (with distinction) in anthropology at Columbia University in 2005, held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harriman Institute at Columbia in 2005-2006, and joined the Princeton Department of Slavic Languages and Literature in 2006. Oushakine’s current research examines transitional periods in Russia’s twentieth-century history and explores cultural manifestations of identity in Soviet and contemporary Russia.
Based on fieldwork in Siberia in 2001-3, his forthcoming book, The Patriotism of Despair: Communities of Loss in Contemporary Russia, documents how the social ties to and identification with the Soviet state became gradually replaced by negatively structured forms of patriotic attachment after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His English-language articles have appeared in American Anthropologist; Cultural Anthropology; Public Culture; Ethnos; Theory, Culture & Society, and Europe-Asia Studies. He has published widely in Russian academic journals in the fields of philosophy, sociology, ethnology and politics, and he has edited two collections of essays in Russian: On Masculinity (O muzhe(N)stvennosti. Moscow, 2001) and the two-volume set Family Bonds: Models For Assembling (Semeinye uzy: modeli dlia sborki. Moscow, 2004).

teaching Fall 2008
SLA 216/ ANT 216 Russia Today
ECS 320 Cultural Systems: The Human Face of Soviet Socialism

Ph.D. Harvard University 1981, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

interests
archaeology, early European food production, prehistoric human ecology, archaeozoology, historical archaeology

short bio
Peter Bogucki is an archaeologist interested in the early farming cultures of Europe and the spread of agricultural communities into temperate woodland environments. Since 1976, he has done archaeological fieldwork in Poland, excavating settlements dating to the period between 4500 and 2500 B.C. The particular focus of his research has been on the diet and settlement patterns of the prehistoric inhabitants of these sites. He is the author of Early Neolithic Subsistence and Settlement in the Polish Lowlands (1982), Forest Farmers and Stockherders: Early Agriculture and Its Consequences in North-Central Europe (1988), editor of Case Studies in European Prehistory (1993, CRC Press), The Origins of Human Society, Blackwell Publishers, (1999, Oxford Press) and Ancient Europe 8000 B.C. -- A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World, editor with Pam J. Crabtree (2003, Charles Scribner's Sons). Dr. Bogucki has taught HUM 200/ANT 200 Prehistoric Background to Western Civilization.

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley 2002; Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program

interests
archaeology, trade and exchange, lithic analysis, cultural resource management, prehistoric North America

short bio
Carolyn Dillian is an archaeologist with an interest in stone tool production and exchange. Her past fieldwork explored the selective use of a quarry in northeastern California as a raw material source for ceremonial objects in prehistory. More recently, she is using geochemical techniques to trace cross-continental long distance transport of rare obsidian artifacts from mid-Atlantic archaeological contexts. This recent research explores the role of the exotic in Native American trade and exchange and examines down-the-line systems as mechanisms for long-distance movement of stone materials. She has also worked extensively in cultural resource management throughout the United States, and has directed archaeological excavations in New Jersey and across the Northeast. Dr. Dillian teaches The Archaeology of Sex and Gender (WRI 175/176).

Ph.D. Princeton University 1996, Associate Director of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning

interests
Anthropology of media and sound; capitalism and circulation; indigenous media; visual anthropology and documentary filmmaking; ethnography of archaeological sites; Bolivia and the Andes

short bio
Jeff Himpele is both an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. His articles and book chapters from his research in the Bolivian Andes have appeared in Visual Anthropology Review, American Anthropologist, Visual Anthropology, and the edited volume Media Worlds. He is the author of Circuits of Culture: Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes (2008), a book that charts the histories of cinema and television in Bolivia, tracks media circulation and the formation of urban publics, and accompanies the emergence of indigenous filmmaking in relation to the modern national project. His films on the social dynamics and knowledges at archaeological sites include Taypi Kala: Six Visions of Tiwanaku and the award-winning Incidents of Travel in Chichen Itza; he is currently shooting a film on the electrification of sound and the commodification of music in the US.

E-mail: jhimpele@princeton.edu.

Ph.D. New York University 2007, Postdoctoral member of Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and Lecturer in Humanistic Studies

Ph. D. Rutgers University, Lecturer in Princeton Writing Program and Anthropology

interests and projects
economic and medical anthropology; social issues related to capitalism, mental illness, and labor in the northern Italian city of Padua; anxiety disorders and the rise of pharmaceutical remedies in Rome

teaching Fall 2008
ANT 335 Medical Anthropology
 

Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997, Lecturer

interests
languages and literature of South Asia with a focus on Hindi, performance studies and dance anthropology

short bio
Mekhala Natavar was assistant professor of the practice in Hindi in the department of Asian and African Languages and Literature at Duke University (1998-2004). She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork on religious and secular performers, their performances and their lives in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, India since 1975, living there for fourteen of the past twenty nine years. She is concerned with the relationship between spirituality, aesthetics and activism in the performing, literary and visual arts with a focus on South Asia. A lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Dr. Natavar teaches Hindi language and courses on expressive culture and identity. Her publications include articles on various performance genres in South Asia. Her dissertation "New Dances, New Dancers, New Audiences Shifting Rhythms in the Evolution of India's Kathak Dance" explores the effects of changing patterns of patronage on 20th century dance forms in North India and the lives of Kathak performers, teachers, and students. She is also a visual artist and a professional Kathak dancer trained in modern, jazz, salsa, flamenco, African, and East Indian forms. Courses taught include Contemporary Cultures of South Asia, Indian Dance and Hindu Cosmology, Performing the Self Expressions of South Asian Identity, South Asian Muslim Women in America, Gender Expression in South Asian Television, The Music of Saint Mira, Hindi Grammar and Usage, Yoga and the Sacred Body.

Natasha Zaretsky is a cultural anthropologist who studies political violence, social change, citizenship, diaspora, and human rights. Her work examines the significance of memorial practices to social movements that developed in the wake of violence in Argentina, and how Jewish Argentines engage memories of violence in redefining their relationship with their state and one another. Zaretsky’s current research focuses on the emerging Argentine diaspora, investigating transformations to Argentine citizenship and sovereignty in response to political and economic uncertainty.