Michael Eugene Harkin is one of the leading anthropologists in the United States specializing in the

ethnohistory Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...

of indigenous people of the western U.S. and Canada. He is currently professor and former chair of anthropology at the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

, having previously taught at

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

and

Montana State University Montana State University (MSU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 6 ...

. In 2011 he was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and in 2007 he was a visiting professor at

Shanghai University Shanghai University, commonly referred to as SHU, or colloquially Shangda (), is a public research university located in Shanghai. The 555-acre main Baoshan campus is situated in the north of Shanghai, and there are two other campuses in Jiadi ...

. From 1985 to 1987 he conducted fieldwork in the

Heiltsuk The Heiltsuk or Haíɫzaqv , sometimes historically referred to as ''Bella Bella'', are an Indigenous people of the Central Coast region in British Columbia, centred on the island community of Bella Bella. The government of the Heiltsuk people ...

community of

Bella Bella, British Columbia Bella Bella, also known as Waglisla, is the home of the Heiltsuk and is an unincorporated community and Indian reserve community located within Bella Bella Indian Reserve No. 1 on the east coast of Campbell Island in the Central Coast region ...

. More recently he has worked with the

Nuu-chah-nulth The Nuu-chah-nulth (; Nuučaan̓uł: ), also formerly referred to as the Nootka, Nutka, Aht, Nuuchahnulth or Tahkaht, are one of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast in Canada. The term Nuu-chah-nulth is used to describe fifte ...

(formerly referred to as "Nootka") people of

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are o ...

, and several groups of the northern Great Plains. He received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where he studied with Raymond D. Fogelson, Nancy Munn, and

Marshall Sahlins Marshall David Sahlins ( ; December 27, 1930April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished ...

. His early monograph on the Heiltsuks employed a dialogic perspective to understand issues of power and representation of both self and other. This was influenced by Lévi-Straussian structuralism and the historical structuralism of Sahlins. In more recent works, he has pursued a range of interests, primarily in the analysis of indigenous culture in a historical context. His work on revitalization movements revisits one of the classic ethnohistorical theories. He has also contributed to the literature on ethnoecology, arguing that traditional Northwest Coast ecological models expressed via ritual and myth non-linear system dynamics. He was co-editor of the journal ''Ethnohistory'' in 2007–2013, and is now editor-in-chief of the journal ''Reviews in Anthropology''. He is theme editor for cultural anthropology of UNESCO's ''Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems'', and he writes a column titled The World is Curved for the journal ''Anthropology News''. He was president of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology in 2006–2008, and in 2013 was elected president of the American Society for Ethnohistory (for 2014–2015). He has edited several important books on Native Americans and the environment, revitalization movements, and Northwest Coast ethnology. He has published extensively on anthropological history and theory, especially the Boasian tradition, and the structuralism of

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...

. He was a visiting fellow in Lévi-Strauss' laboratory in 1997. He was the 2016 William Evans chair at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Bibliography

* Harkin, Michael E. (1993) Power and Progress: The Evangelical Dialogue among the Heiltsuk. ''Ethnohistory'' 40(1):1-33. * Harkin, Michael E. (1994) Contested Bodies: Affliction and Power in Heiltsuk History and Culture. ''American Ethnologist'' 20(4):586-605. * Harkin, Michael E. (1995) Modernist Anthropology and Tourism of the Authentic. ''Annals of Tourism Research'' 22(3):650-70. * Harkin, Michael E. (1996) Carnival and Authority: Heiltsuk Schemata of Power in Ritual Discourse. ''Ethos'' 24(2):281-313. * Harkin, Michael E. and Sergei Kan (eds.) (1996) Native American Women's Responses to Christianity. ''Ethnohistory'' 43(4). * Harkin, Michael E. (1997) ''The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast.'' Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (1998) Whales, Chiefs, and Giants: An exploration into Nuu-chah-nulth Political Thought. ''Ethnology'' 37(4):317-32. * Harkin, Michael E. (2001) "Ethnographic Deep Play: Boas, McIlwraith, and Fictive Adoption on the Northwest Coast." In ''Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America,'' ed. by Sergei Kan, pp. 57–79. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (2001) Potlatch in Anthropology, In ''International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences'', Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, (eds.) vol. 17, pp. 11,885-11,889. Oxford: Pergamon Press. * Kornfeld, Marcel, Michael Harkin, and Jonathan Durr (2001) Landscapes and Peopling of the Americas. In ''On Being First: Cultural Innovation and Environmental Consequences of First Peopling, Proceedings of the 31st Annual Chacmool Conference'', Jason Gillespie, Susan Tupakka, and Christy de Mille (eds.) pp. 149–162. * Harkin, Michael E. (2002) (Dis)pleasures of the Text: Boasian Anthropology on the Northwest Coast. In ''Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902'', Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology, v. 1. Igor Krupnik and William Fitzhugh (eds.) pp. 93–106. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution. * Harkin, Michael E. (2003) Staged Encounters: Indians and Tourism. ''Ethnohistory'' 50(3):573-583. * Harkin, Michael E. (2003) Feeling and Thinking in Memory and Forgetting: Towards an Ethnohistory of the Emotions. ''Ethnohistory'' 50(2):261-284. * Mauzé, Marie, Michael E. Harkin, and Sergei Kan (eds.) (2004) ''Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions.'' Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (2004) Northwest Coast Sacred Places. ''Acta Americana'' 12(2):5-13. * Harkin, Michael E., 2004, Lévi-Strauss en Amérique : L’ « indigénisation» du Structuralisme. In ''Claude Lévi-Strauss'' Michel Izard (ed.) pp. 373–382. Paris: Éditions de l’Herne. * Harkin, Michael E. (ed.) (2004) ''Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands'', foreword by Anthony F.C. Wallace. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (2005) The House of Longing: Missionary-led Changes in Heiltsuk Domestic Forms and Structures. In ''Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change'', Peggy Brock (ed.) pp. 205–226. Leiden: Brill. * Harkin, Michael E. (2006) ‘I’m an Old Cow Hand on the Banks of the Seine’: Representations of Indians and Le Far West in Parisian Commercial Culture. In ''New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories and Representations'', Sergei Kan and Pauline Turner Strong (eds.) pp. 815–846. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Harkin, Michael E. and David Rich Lewis (eds.) (2007) ''Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian''. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (2007) Performing Paradox: Narrativity and the Lost Colony of Roanoke. In ''Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact'', John Lutz (ed.) pp. 103–117. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (2008) The Floating Island: Anachronism and Paradox in The Lost Colony. In ''Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, and Narrative in Microhistory'', James F. Brooks, Christopher R. DeCorse, and John Walton (eds.) pp. 121–44. Santa Fe: SAR Press. * Whitehead, Neil and Michael E. Harkin (eds.) (2009) Anthropology of Violence. ''Anthropology and Humanism'' 34(1). * Harkin, Michael E. (2009) Lévi-Strauss and History. In ''The Cambridge Companion to Claude Lévi-Strauss'', Boris Wiseman (ed.), pp. 39–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Harkin, Michael E. (2010) Ethnohistory's Ethnohistory: Creating a Discipline from the Ground Up. ''Social Science History'' 34:113-128. * Harkin, Michael E. (2010) Uncommon Ground: Holism and the Future of Anthropology. ''Reviews in Anthropology'' 39:25-45. * Harkin, Michael E. (2011) John White and the Invention of Anthropology: Landscape, Ethnography, and Situating the Other in Roanoke. ''Histories of Anthropology'' 7:216-45. * Harkin, Michael E. (2012) Anthropology at the End of the World. ''Reviews in Anthropology'' 41(2):96-108. * Harkin, Michael E. What Would Franz Boas have thought about 9/11? On the Limits of Negative Capability. In ''Indigenous Visions'', edited by Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Wilner. Yale University Press, (forthcoming 2013). * Harkin, Michael E. From King Philip's War to the Mayan Apocalypse: Native American and Western Visions of End Times. In ''Apocalypse: Imagining the End'', edited by Mathias Fuchs and Allanah Hernandez, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.Net (forthcoming 2013).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harkin, Michael Living people 1958 births American anthropologists