Patricia Pierce Erikson, Ph.D., Associate Professor
I joined Smith's
Anthropology Department in the Fall of 1997 after
completing my Ph.D. at the University of California-Davis in Cultural
Anthropology and Native American Studies. My dissertation, entitled
"Encounters in the Nation's Attic: Native American Community Museums, the
Smithsonian Institution, and the Politics of Knowledge-Making" focused on
the contemporary upheaveals in the historic relationship between Native
American peoples, their material culture, and museums. My fieldwork took
me to Museo Shan Dany in the Zapotec pueblo of Santa Ana del Valle in
Oaxaca, Mexico, to the Makah Cultural and Research Center on the Makah
Reservation in Neah Bay, Washington, and to the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C. My research interests are in identity and
representation;
material culture; indigenous self-determination movements; and the
anthropology of museums. I share these interests in the following
courses:
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Museums, Native
Peoples of North America, and Objects, Selves, and Others: The
Anthropology of Material Culture.
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