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James Clifford (born 1945) is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work combines perspectives from history, literature, history of science, and anthropology.
Biography
He grew up in New York City and was for thirty-three years Professor in the
History of Consciousness
History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the University of California, Santa Cruz with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fiel ...
Department at the
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...
until his retirement in 2011. Clifford and
Hayden White
Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work '' Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (1973/2014).
Career
...
were the first faculty directly appointed to the graduate-only department at UC-Santa Cruz. Clifford served as department Chair from 2004–2007, and was the founding director of UCSC's
Center for Cultural Studies. He has been a visiting professor in France, England and Germany and was elected to the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2011.
James Clifford is the author of several widely cited and translated books, including ''The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art'' (1988), ''Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century'' (1997), and ''Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty First Century'' (2013). He was co-editor (with George Marcus) of the widely influential collection ''Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography'' (1986). Clifford's work has sparked controversy and critical debate in a number of disciplines, such as
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
,
art history
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
and
visual studies
Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images. Many academic fields study this subject, including cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, Deaf Studies, and anthropology.
The field of ...
, and especially in
cultural anthropology. His historical and rhetorical critiques of ethnography contributed to Anthropology's important self-critical, decolonizing period of the 1980s and early 1990s. Since then he has worked in a cultural studies framework that combines cross-cultural scholarship with the British Birmingham tradition. Since 2000 his writing has focused on processes of globalization and decolonization as they influence contemporary "indigenous" lives.
James Clifford's dissertation research was conducted at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
in History (1970–1977), and focused on the history of anthropology. He specialized in the French tradition, writing on Marcel Mauss, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. His dissertation and first book, "Person and Myth" (1982) was a study of the missionary-anthropologist
Maurice Leenhardt Maurice Leenhardt (9 March 1878 – 26 January 1954), was a French pastor and ethnologist specialising in the Kanak people of New Caledonia.
Life
Leenhardt was born in Montauban.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Protestant authorities co ...
and the colonial history of New Caledonia in French
Melanesia
Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...
. A geographical interest in the Island Pacific continues to influence Clifford's scholarship on issues related to indigeneity, transnational flows,
museum studies
Museology or museum studies is the study of museums. It explores the history of museums and their role in society, as well as the activities they engage in, including curating, preservation, public programming, and education.
Terminology
The w ...
,
visual and performance studies,
cultural studies, and
cross-cultural translation.
Published works
*''Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World'' (
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...
, 1982; Duke University Press, 1992)
*''Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography'', edited with George Marcus (University of California Press, 1986)
*''The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art'' (
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...
, 1988)
*''Traveling Theories, Traveling Theorists'', edited with Vivek Dhareshwar (Inscriptions 5, 1989)
*''Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century'' (Harvard University Press, 1997)
*''On the Edges of Anthropology'' (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003)
*''Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty First Century'' (Harvard University Press, 2013)
Further reading
References
External links
James CliffordJames Clifford: Tradition and Transformation at UC Santa Cruz (Regional History Project, UCSC Library, 2013)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Clifford, James
Living people
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
Haverford College alumni
Harvard University alumni
Stanford University alumni
University of California, Santa Cruz faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1945 births
American male non-fiction writers