Thomas Boellstorff

Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California


and Editor-in-Chief, American Anthropologist

Virtual Popular Culture

Monday, Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Virtual worlds represent an important new modality of human interaction. The discussion will focus on emerging forms of popular culture in virtual worlds, the promise of ethnographic methods for studying these emerging forms of popular culture, and the broad social implications of their emergence.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Tom Boellstorff, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. His research projects have focused on questions of virtual worlds, sexuality, globalization, nationalism, language, and HIV/AIDS. He is the author of The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005), winner of the 2005 Ruth Benedict Award from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists; A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007); and Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008). He is also co­editor of Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language (University of Illinois Press, 2004), co-editor of a theme issue of Ethnos, “Bodies of Emotion: Rethinking Culture and Emotion through Southeast Asia” (Volume 69:4, 2004) and co-editor of a theme issue of Anthropological Forum, “East Indies/West Indies: Comparative Archipelagos” (Volume 16:3, 2006). He is the author of publications in many journals, including American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist (twice), Cultural Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, Law and Society Review, PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Games and Culture, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (three times). He is also a core faculty member for the Culture and Theory Ph.D. program at Irvine, as well as a program faculty member for the Arts, Computation, and Engineering graduate program. He has worked as a consultant for the Intel Corporation, and sits on the advisory boards of two community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in Indonesia (Gaya Nusantara in the city of Surabaya (East Java province), and Gaya Celebes in the city of Makassar (South Sulawesi province).