Alumni News
Q.You work at a museum now, how does your background in anthropology help you do your job?
A. I work at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian. There are three components to the Museum; the George Gustave Heye Center (GGHC) located in New York City, the Cultural Resources Center (CRC) located in Suitland, Maryland, and the new mall Museum in Washington, D.C. set to open September 21, 2004. I’m located at the CRC which is the facility that houses the Museum’s collections. I started off as an intern at the CRC in 1999, then after graduating came back to the CRC as a researcher for the Our Lives exhibit for the Mall Museum. I am currently working with the Native Nations Procession which is the event that will kick off the opening ceremonies and festivities for the Mall Opening.
Q. How did you first get interested in anthropology?
A. While the introductory anthropology classes at UVA initially sparked my interest in the field, it wasn’t until I did an internship with Dr. Tom Vennum at the Smithsonian. Now retired, Tom, at the time, was the senior ethnomusicologist at
the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies (Folklife). Although, while I say this and believe this to be the actual instigating experience for my interest in anthropology, I simply like people and our human experience. This is the real reason. Anthropology just seemed to be a natural choice of study.
Q. What was working with Jeff Hantman like? You’ve said you two are similar in some ways, how so? What sort of anthropological ideas most excite you?
A. What can I say about Prof. Hantman other than he is the best. He is the mentor, other than Dr. Vennum, who increased my excitement about anthropology. He always made anthropology fun, keeping it interesting simply by being himself....take his classes, listen to him, and visit with him. Yes, I like to think that Prof. Hantman and I are similar. Similar in the fact that I think we both share in the excitement of what we do; living and learning. We’re both people persons.
Anthropological ideas? It is not about the ideas, it is more the process of anthropology that interests me the most. Anthropology is a process of translation and in that way the science is very individualistic in nature. At least the theoretical side of it. Most of the ideas become very centered on one’s own experience. The process is what everyone has to go through. Culture experienced is something witnessed and felt once one steps out of their own cultural realm or perspective. Not everyone can do that (step out)
My interest in anthropology originated in the experience of cul- ture shock, which I underwent twice when changing countries of residence. It is an interesting jolt to find one’s strategies and habits completely undermined, especially in those areas that one considered trivial and universal. Previously simple tasks become challenges, and something as minute as buying stamps from the local post office can be a terrifying experience. I think every foreigner finds him- or herself in the role of an amateur social scientist, feverishly noticing all that is “other”, drawing comparisons, imagining new strategies, and inevitably committing social blunders.
The Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia has allowed me to explore this phenomenon theoretically, but also to re-experience it. I had the opportunity to work with Roy Wagner as discussion leader for his classes on Science Fiction and on Carlos Castaneda. Professor Wagner’s theoretical approach, both in his written work, and in his lectures has the same relativizing effect as culture shock. I had the opportunity to interact with students, and to see them engage the material, sometimes with elation, sometimes with caution and sometimes with outright resistance. Like culture shock, Wagner’s way of thinking can be threatening to one’s worldview because it requires a shift in perspective and subjectivity.
My current interests have taken me back to Russian culture. In my senior thesis I explore the use of humor and jokes among Russians, a humor which the nationalistic discourse presents as untranslatable. Self-consciously “other” to both the rest of the world and to themselves, negotiating identity as those who are neither from the “East” nor from the “West”, Russians seem to nonetheless participate in the West’s myth of modernity, defending its assumptions, notably, through humor and jokes, while, at the same time, infusing their own world with irony and absurdity.
