ANTHROPOLOGY FACULTY

Union's anthropologists have conducted research and have first-hand knowledge of a range of societies and have been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller, Ford and Fulbright Foundations, and other foundations and agencies.

Karen Brison, Associate Professor (B.A., McGill and Ph.D., University of  California, San Diego), specializes in political anthropology and the study of language and culture. She lived and did research in Papua New Guinea for two years and published a book on oratory and village politics. She is currently studying ethnic and national identity in Fiji and in other Pacific island nations.
Email: brisonk@union.edu

 

 

Linda E. Cool, Professor (B.A., Bryn Mawr and Ph.D. Duke), has conducted long-term research on the island of Corsica and in Paris, France on the development of regional/ethnic political movements, the changing roles of older people, and the relationship of land tenure, inheritance, and family structure from the eighteenth century to the present.  In addition, she has focused on Portuguese immigration to California, especially the integration of immigrants from the Azores into both the Portuguese “colony” in California and the larger American society.  Most recently, she has turned her attention to research on changing attitudes toward retirement among faculty members and is working on an applied anthropology project to create a consortium of higher education institutions in order to meet the health insurance needs of their retirees. 
Email: cooll@union.edu

 

George Gmelch, Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Anthropology (B.A., Stanford and Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara), is a cultural anthropologist. He did his early research in Ireland among a nomadic group known as Travellers. Since then he has done research on return migration in Ireland, Newfoundland and Barbados, studied the ecology of salmon fisherman in Alaska, government policy and Gypsies in England, professional baseball players in the United States, and tourism in Barbados and the Napa Valley. He is the author and editor of ten books dealing with these subjects.
                                                                                 Email: gmelchg@union.edu
 

 

Sharon Bohn Gmelch, Professor and Chair (B.A., Ph.D., University of   California at Santa Barbara), is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in ethnic identity and inter-group relations, ethnohistory and biography, visual anthropology, and tourism.  She has conducted research with Irish Travellers, Tlingit Indians in Alaska,  Barbadian villagers, and tourist guides in several countries. She is author or  editor of six books  and  co-producer of an ethnographic film on the Tlingit.  She is currently studying wine tourism in the Napa Valley and finishing her cross-cultural research on tour guides.
Email: gmelchs@union.edu

 

 

Stephen Leavitt, Associate Professor and Dean of Students (B.A., Swarthmore and Ph.D., University of California, San Diego), is a psychological anthropologist who did his field research among the Bumbita Arapesh people of Papua New Guinea. He studied family relations and religious change and has written on Bumbita Arapesh sexuality, adolescence, and responses to bereavement. His most recent research with Karen Brison has been in Fiji, where he is studying the personal dimensions of ethnic and national identity.                                      Email: leavitts@union.edu
 

 

R. Kenji Tierney, Visiting Assistant Professor (B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley), is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in historical and symbolic anthropology, focusing on national symbols, cultural constructions of the body, and formations of community through exchange and reciprocity in Japan. He is currently working on a book entitled Wrestling with Tradition:The Place of Sumo in Japanese Culture, History and   Beyond.
Email: tierneyk@union.edu

 

 

Derick Fay, Visiting Assistant Professor (B.A., Amherst, M.Th., Edinburgh, M.A. and Ph.D., Boston U.) specializes in environmental anthropology, economic anthropology and the anthropology of development.  He has conducted fieldwork in Xhosa-speaking communities in the Eastern Cape, South Africa on land tenure, involuntary and voluntary resettlement and conservation.  His current interests include the role of so-called "traditional authorities" in land management and local governance and the dynamics of negotiations between communities and protected areas.
Email: fayd@union.edu

 

 

Ari Gandsman, Visiting Assistant Professor (B.A., University of Michigan, M.A. and Ph.D., McGill University) is a cultural anthropologist specializing in medical and political anthropology. His interests include anthropological approaches to human rights, state violence, memory, biomedical technologies, and post-conflict societies. His fieldwork was conducted in Argentina, on human rights organizations.      Email: gandsmaa@union.edu

 

 

Reginald Byron, Research Professor (BA University of Southern California, PhD University of London) is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology in the University of Wales and the former chair of the anthropology departments at the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the University of Wales, Swansea, UK.  He has written or edited twelve books on various topics in social anthropology, including North Atlantic maritime communities, economic development, European emigration to the US and Canada, cultural mixing, intermarriage, and multiculturalism.  His book Irish America (Oxford UP, 1999), much of which focuses on Albany, NY, dispels a number of myths about Irish-American identity and ethnicity in the United States.
                                                                                     Email: R.Byron@swansea.ac.uk

 

ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS AND PROGRAMS

Jennifer Milioto Matsue, Assistant Professor,  (B.A. Wellesley College and Ph.D. University of Chicago), is an ethnomusicologist specializing in modern Japanese music and culture.  She has conducted research on theTokyo Hardcore Rock Scene, Nagauta (a type of traditional chamber music featuring the three-string lute, shamisen), Electronica and Trance Raves, and most recently, the increasingly popular world of Wadaiko (Japanese ensemble drumming).  She is interested in how performers find meaning through participating in such music worlds, with a particular interest in women’s roles  in music-making.  She is currently working on a book on the Tokyo Hardcore Rock Scene, as well as completing several articles on related topics.  
                                                                                             Email: matsuej@union.edu
 

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Affiliated Research Professors

Charles Bishop (B.A., University of Toronto and M.A. Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo) is a cultural anthropologist and ethnohistorian who has done research on Ojibwa India ns and the evolution of early hominids. He has written a book on the Ojibwa Indians and is currently doing ethnohistorical research on the fur trade and Canadian Indians.

James M. Schaefer (B.A., University of Montana, and Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo) is a cultural anthropologist with a background in cross-cultural and biomedical research techniques. His field studies include work with contemporary American ethnic groups on alcohol, drugs and gambling behavior. He heads his own consulting and research contracting firm and works with legal, corporate and governmental clients. As an adjunct professor of anthropology, he teaches courses on applied anthropology and Native Americans.
 

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