Eric is currently Researcher and Writer with The Rhodes Project, a London-based study of the lives, successes, and struggles of Rhodes Scholar women Formerly, Eric was Full Professor and Research Professor of Anthropology at Wheelock College, Boston, MA, USA. He is also currently a Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA (profile).
Eric has long-standing interest in the people of Papua New Guinea, especially one community of Iatmul speakers along the middle Sepik River, with whom he has studied for more than 20 years. He first conducted fieldwork for two years in the late-1980s, and has returned many times. Currently, he is writing a book about Iatmul art and globalization, including the changing environment of the Sepik River (partly due to climate change), focusing on Iatmul traditional and ‘tourist art’ as well as how the Iatmul today decorate their visual and acoustic world through modern images and modern music. The book, in short, will use art and objects as a window onto how Iatmul people understanding their lives amid the changes and upheavals of the past 150 years. Eric is also studying other aspects of globalization in Papua New Guinea, including Facebook, tourism, hotels, hotel workers, and Iatmul who live in the capital city, Port Moresby.
Eric also has long-term interest in Jewish studies. He is, in fact, perhaps the only anthropologist today who shifts his research, writings, and public speaking between Jewish Studies and Melanesian Studies.
As you can see from visiting other pages on this website, I have published four books, numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, delivered scores of conference papers, frequently make public presentations, and write guest columns for newspapers and other public media.
Previously, Eric was the Edward Myers Dolan Professor of Anthropology at DePauw University in Indiana, where he taught from 1992-2006.
He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota in 1993; his MA in Anthropology, also from the University of Minnesota in 1987; and his B.A. in Anthropology from Brandies University in 1984. He also studied from 1982-1983 at College Year in Athens, Greece. Please click for his full curriculum vitae.