I am an anthropologist and photographer. Currently I am working on turning my dissertation, entitled “Streets and Children in Surabaya,” into a book. The Fulbright-Hays sponsored research looks at what it means to make a living on the streets of the second largest city in Indonesia, including local understandings of the street and conceptions of childhood.

I teach anthropology at Seattle University, and will be a research fellow at KITLV in Leiden during 2010.

i take photos mostly to get another perspective on what is around me (cameras see in their own way, after all). walter benjamin famously observed that the invention of the camera revealed the existence of the optical unconscious—everything which is right there, waiting to be seen, but which normally escapes our perception. taking photos is thus a bit like interpreting public dreams.

areas of interest:

Indonesia and Southeast Asia

urban poverty, street kids, cities

documentary film and visual theory

modernity, mass media, commodification

colonialism and postcolonialism

magic

some classes I teach:

class and culture in America

the culture concept

visual anthropology

metropolis

principles of sociocultural anthropology

magic