Associate Professor
Sociocultural Anthropologist
ctnelson@unc.edu
919-962-1243
Alumni Building 311B
Research Interests
History and Memory; everyday life; ethnography; critical theory; storytelling, ritual and performance; Japan and Okinawa
Specializations
EthnographyResearch Background
Research Background: The central theme of my research has been the transformational possibilities of everyday life. My recent book Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa takes up this question, building on several years of fieldwork that I carried out in Okinawa, Japan. Through ethnographic and archival research, I explored traditional forms of social organization and genres of ritual and performance. I studied the work of ethnographic comedians, whose performances weave Okinawan folk humor, Japanese traditional monologues and improvisational storytelling into sophisticated critiques of everyday life. I also worked with the youth group from which these performers emerged. In particular, I examined their eisaa—dance for the dead—and its mediation of social relationships. My book provides close readings of these performances, focusing on modalities of mourning, memoration and creative action.
Current Research: My first project focused on creative actors who were able to struggle against the constraints of the modern world in order to carve out a moment for meaningful activity. While I remain committed to the possibilities of daily life, I feel it is also important to consider those for whom the burden of the everyday becomes unbearable. My new project Listening to the Bones: The Rhythms of Life and Death in Contemporary Japan takes up this problem. It involves the study of early Okinawan ethnologists such as Iha Fuyû; an ethnography of efforts to recover the remains of the Japanese war dead; as well as a critical exploration of Okinawan photography and experimental film. I am interested in the ways in which people negotiate the vortex of local knowledge, Japanese nativist ethnology, western anthropology and discourses of the state.
Education
PhD, University of Chicago, 2002
Current Courses
- ANTH 89 – WALKING IN THE WORLD (TTH, 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM)
- ANTH 490 – VALUE, PRODUCTION AND SACRIFICE (TTH, 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM)