My research concentrates on the racial politics of culture. It concerns itself most broadly with how individuals and institutions do race: how they talk about racial difference; how they make such differences matter, often in contexts in which is not supposed to matter; how changing circumstances have facilitated novel forms of racism; and how forms of memory, representation, identity, and power foster racialization. It has explored these themes in the context of expressive and public culture (museums, sports, cinema, and the media), political struggles (especially indigenous activism concerned with representation, naming, and history, and the racial rhetorics of the culture wars), and dominant discourses of difference (anti-Indianism, new racism, and white power).
The Native American mascot controversy has centered my scholarship. The subject has allowed continued inquiry into the persistence of anti-Indian racism, Black-Indian relations, new racism, and the articulations of racism and sexism in defense of such icons. Of equal importance, it has laid a foundation for research in several areas. First, informed by he mascot controversy, my scholarship has expanded to a broader examination of the racialization of sporting worlds: (a) the rich heritage and lasting significance of athleticism in Native America, (b) mainstream and extreme accounts of race and sport, (c) the centrality of sport media, and (d) comparative analyses of race and sport (African American, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders). Second, the mascot controversy has directed me to deeper study of prevailing uses and understandings of Indianness in popular culture (from comic books and video games to film and coverage of Hurricane Katrina) and indigenous resistance to them (such as the struggle against Squ*w place names). Third, such anti-Indian racism has prompted me to probe the resiliency of racism more generally, its reinventions, and efforts to erase or deny it. Fourth, the struggles over mascots have compelled me to think more deeply about popular culture, especially as directed at young people. Fifth, the centrality of whiteness and white racism to the controversy made it apparent to me the urgency of studying the increasing importance of white power movements and ideologies (in debates of immigration, the quickening of anti-semitism, and the emergence of white power popular culture). Finally, it has inspired me to unpack the use of metaphors in political and popular cultures.
Coming of age in cultural anthropology during the crisis over poetics and politics of the field made me especially attentive to ethnography as method and text. It has left me committed to forms of qualitative inquiry that engage the complex contours of racial discourses and politics and encourage creative and critical ways of writing culture. As my work has increasingly gone online, it has become progressively more genealogical and archaeological. While much of my work embodies the tradition of interpretive ethnography, I have experimented with emergent techniques, including performance based approaches and more autoethnographic modes. Much of my research has been collaborative and in dialogue with others.
I have recently completed a monograph on the Washington professional football team and its traditions to be released by the University of Nebraska Press in early 2016. This first of its kind study, entitled Redskins: Insult and Brand, explores the history and significance of the team and its traditions. It offers a close reading of the key arguments, central metaphors, and fundamental assumptions at the heart of the current controversy. Tracing the origins of the racial slur as well as how and why it became attached to the team, it considers the ways in which the organization used popular images of American Indians to establish a recognizable brand. Against this background, it analyzes the racial politics of the moniker and the ongoing struggle over it. In particular, it explores the importance of the white/black paradigm, settler colonialism, and cultural entitlement to the defense of the team. Against this backdrop, it deconstructs the place of Indianness in the organization’s efforts to deflect critique and defend itself. In spit of this, many have imagine the end of the team, and their imaginings highlight shifting understandings of self and society. In conclusion, my analysis reflects on the larger significance of the possible end of the brand.
Presently, I am finishing Playing with Indigeneity, a comparative assessment of racial play today. This monograph concerns itself with public performances of the qualities associated with and ascribed to indigenous cultures and peoples. It pivots around four themes: the ongoing significance of enactments of indigeneity, the racial politics of playing with inidgeneity, the transnational flow of such racial play, and the oppositional possibilities emergent from such stagings. It explores them through a series of case studies, which individually and collectively produce a more rounded account of how indigeneity and enactments of it matter. While anchored by more familiar US and Canadian examples, it also engages with cultural patterns and social practices in Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. Doing so, it encourages readings across and against--across national borders and stylistic boundaries, across continents and color lines, and against conventions and expectations.
The Native American mascot controversy has centered my scholarship. The subject has allowed continued inquiry into the persistence of anti-Indian racism, Black-Indian relations, new racism, and the articulations of racism and sexism in defense of such icons. Of equal importance, it has laid a foundation for research in several areas. First, informed by he mascot controversy, my scholarship has expanded to a broader examination of the racialization of sporting worlds: (a) the rich heritage and lasting significance of athleticism in Native America, (b) mainstream and extreme accounts of race and sport, (c) the centrality of sport media, and (d) comparative analyses of race and sport (African American, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders). Second, the mascot controversy has directed me to deeper study of prevailing uses and understandings of Indianness in popular culture (from comic books and video games to film and coverage of Hurricane Katrina) and indigenous resistance to them (such as the struggle against Squ*w place names). Third, such anti-Indian racism has prompted me to probe the resiliency of racism more generally, its reinventions, and efforts to erase or deny it. Fourth, the struggles over mascots have compelled me to think more deeply about popular culture, especially as directed at young people. Fifth, the centrality of whiteness and white racism to the controversy made it apparent to me the urgency of studying the increasing importance of white power movements and ideologies (in debates of immigration, the quickening of anti-semitism, and the emergence of white power popular culture). Finally, it has inspired me to unpack the use of metaphors in political and popular cultures.
Coming of age in cultural anthropology during the crisis over poetics and politics of the field made me especially attentive to ethnography as method and text. It has left me committed to forms of qualitative inquiry that engage the complex contours of racial discourses and politics and encourage creative and critical ways of writing culture. As my work has increasingly gone online, it has become progressively more genealogical and archaeological. While much of my work embodies the tradition of interpretive ethnography, I have experimented with emergent techniques, including performance based approaches and more autoethnographic modes. Much of my research has been collaborative and in dialogue with others.
I have recently completed a monograph on the Washington professional football team and its traditions to be released by the University of Nebraska Press in early 2016. This first of its kind study, entitled Redskins: Insult and Brand, explores the history and significance of the team and its traditions. It offers a close reading of the key arguments, central metaphors, and fundamental assumptions at the heart of the current controversy. Tracing the origins of the racial slur as well as how and why it became attached to the team, it considers the ways in which the organization used popular images of American Indians to establish a recognizable brand. Against this background, it analyzes the racial politics of the moniker and the ongoing struggle over it. In particular, it explores the importance of the white/black paradigm, settler colonialism, and cultural entitlement to the defense of the team. Against this backdrop, it deconstructs the place of Indianness in the organization’s efforts to deflect critique and defend itself. In spit of this, many have imagine the end of the team, and their imaginings highlight shifting understandings of self and society. In conclusion, my analysis reflects on the larger significance of the possible end of the brand.
Presently, I am finishing Playing with Indigeneity, a comparative assessment of racial play today. This monograph concerns itself with public performances of the qualities associated with and ascribed to indigenous cultures and peoples. It pivots around four themes: the ongoing significance of enactments of indigeneity, the racial politics of playing with inidgeneity, the transnational flow of such racial play, and the oppositional possibilities emergent from such stagings. It explores them through a series of case studies, which individually and collectively produce a more rounded account of how indigeneity and enactments of it matter. While anchored by more familiar US and Canadian examples, it also engages with cultural patterns and social practices in Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. Doing so, it encourages readings across and against--across national borders and stylistic boundaries, across continents and color lines, and against conventions and expectations.
