University of Chicago

Graduate Student, Anthropology

Thesis Title: MA "Turning Up the Light: The Role of Rock as Ritual for Counter Culture Communities"

About

Broadly I am interested in an anthropology of "counter" cultures.  That is, social groups that actively resist dominant political and ideological structures, and in particular their use of ritual practice in such resistance. Those groups that effectively cause paradigm shifts and move from counter culture to a dominant political (or in modern periods economic) power stimulate the greatest interest for me. 

As an anthropologist I have written on modern counter-cultural movements such as the punk/independent rock scene as such a  counter culture possessed of its own ritual practices, art and aesthetic and prized/sacred spaces.  As well as the Burning Man Festival as an example of a de novo modern pilgrimage ritual, developed over nearly 25 years and practiced by marginal actors within the West to challenger a dominant global capitalist system. 

As an archaeologist I am currently doing research at Dura Europos in Syria where the oldest known Christian Church is located (early-mid 3rd century CE) just two blocks away from a third century Jewish synagogue - two "outlaw" societies that were nevertheless surviving if not thriving in the Roman East. 

The study of the "rise" of Christianity through the first 4-5 centuries CE offers one of the richest, most diverse, and archaeologically approachable examples of counter cultural practices influencing and being influenced by its subjuagtor until it achieves a position of dominant political power.  But such patterns can also be seen in the modern era as "punk rock" for instance, originating in the late 1960s and 70s as a rebellious form of a rebellious form (rock and roll) has now come to be a successful commercial form of popular music and one recent punk rock band, Green Day, even had a musical on Broadway.

In my studies I hope to identify social processes that allow for a group to first organize in opposition to a dominant ideological paradigm and also, sometimes, become a major player if not dominant player in the modification, creation and recreation of dominant ideologies.

Post-colonial studies, particularity in anthropology, and particularly those that examine the deployment of religion by indigenous peoples in their interactions with colonizing powers, have come to play a major role in informing my theoretical approaches to understanding the behavior of oppressed groups in the present and antiquity.

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