Michael E. Harkin

Professor

Cultural Anthropology

B.A. 1980, University of North Carolina

M.A. 1984, University of Chicago

Ph.D 1988, University of Chicago

harkin@uwyo.edu • (307) 766-6328 • Anthropology Bldg 119

Michael Harkin grew up in California and North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in English and International Studies. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1988. He has conducted field research with the Heiltsuk and Nuu-chah-nulth of British Columbia, and in France, North Carolina, and Wyoming. He wrote The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), has edited three books and two special issues, and authored dozens of articles and chapters. He serves as Editor of Ethnohistory and on the editorial board of UNESCO's Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. He has received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Canadian Embassy, and the Wyoming Arts Council. In addition to the University of Wyoming, he has taught at Montana State, Emory, and Shanghai University.

Courses Taught:

ANTH 5010 Twentieth-century Anthropological Thought

ANTH 4020/5020 Seminar: Landscape and History

ANTH 4740/5740 Native American Language and Culture

ANTH 4320/5320 Political Anthropology

ANTH/AIST 2210 North American Indians

Recent/Selected Publications:

Harkin, Michael E. and David Rich Lewis, eds., 2007, Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian. University of Nebraska Press. website

Harkin, Michael E., ed., 2004, Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands, foreword by Anthony F.C. Wallace. University of Nebraska Press. Bison Books edition 2007. website

Harkin, Michael E., 2008, The Floating Island: Anachronism and Paradox in The Lost Colony. In Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, and Narrative in Microhistory, edited by James F. Brooks, Christopher R. DeCorse, and John Walton, pp. 121-44. SAR Press. website

 
Harkin, Michael E., 2007, Performing Paradox: Narrativity and the Lost Colony of Roanoke. In Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact, edited by John Lutz, pp. 103-117. University of British Columbia Press. website

Harkin, Michael E., 2008, Lvi-Strauss and History. In The Cambridge Companion to Claude Lvi-Strauss, edited by Boris Wiseman. Cambridge University Press. website

Research Interests:

Ethnohistory, cultural theory, politics and power, religious movements, environment and landscape, ethnopsychology, history of anthropology Northwest Coast (Heiltsuk, Nuu-chah-nulth), Southeast (The Lost Colony), Wyoming (public lands ethnohistory), France

OTHER LINKS:

•   American Society for Ethnohistory is the main scholarly organization devoted to the study of historical and contemporary indigenous communities
•   Native Web, provides scholarly resources and information on American Indian groups and issues that concern them