Faculty Member, Draper Program in Humanities & Social Thought
Director
GSAS
About
I am an anthropologist interested in the categories of material culture that we define as discardable and the processes by which those definitions are made. That said, I am most especially interested in the people who must tend to, take away, and manage those discards.
My primary work focuses on New York City's Department of Sanitation; I've done ethnographic research off and on with the DSNY for the last five years and in 2006 was named the department's anthropologist-in-residence. My book, Picking Up, is overdue at FSG.
Recent classes include Garbage in Gotham: The Anthropology of Trash; Waste, Water and the Urban Environment; Making a Museum (co-taught with Haidy Geismar); and Invisible Metropolis, a freshman honors/urban studies seminar. I also teach Introduction to Anthropology and once upon a time taught Anthropology of Religion.
Besides the book and teaching responsibilities, I'm working on the beginnings of a Sanitation Museum.
I also direct the Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program. The Draper Program has approximately 200 students; their work ranges widely across the humanities and the social sciences. When the Program serves them best, students use their master's research to discern a clearer focus for further graduate study, or to learn new perspectives on specific subjects that then inform their professional work.
