Colleen E. Boyd

Luke Eric Lassiter

Explorations in Cultural Anthropology is a collection of readings chosen to demonstrate the varied and valuable applications of the anthropological perspective to real-world problems on local, regional, and global scales. It introduces undergraduates to the exciting, perplexing, and troubling issues that socio-cultural anthropologists confront in their work in academia and beyond. Students now have a one-stop source for a variety of key ethnographic and cultural materials without having to buy or search for numerous texts. Explorations in Cultural Anthropology offers 31 classic readings and contemporary anthropological essays as well as pieces written by journalists, scholars from other disciplines, cultural consultants, and community leaders. The selections are meant to thoughtfully challenge students and provoke further discussion within introductory-level classrooms. The book is organized into nine parts that reflect significant themes and current trends in cultural anthropology: Culture; Fieldwork and Ethnography; Language, Communication, and Expressive Culture; Socio-economic and Political Systems in a Changing World; Race and Ethnicity; Gender and Sexuality; Marriage, Family, and Kinship; Belief Systems; and Applied and Future Anthropologies. Each part introduces the articles therein and provides probing questions per article for student response. This outstanding collection perfectly complements Luke Eric Lassiter's Invitation to Anthropology textbook but has wide appeal for all introductory cultural anthropology courses.

A Reader

Explorations in Cultural Anthropology

The imagined ghosts of Native Americans have been an important element of colonial fantasy in North America ever since European settlements were established in the seventeenth century. Native burial grounds and Native ghosts have long played a role in both regional and local folklore and in the national literature of the United States and Canada, as settlers struggled to create a new identity for themselves that melded their European heritage with their new, North American frontier surroundings. In this interdisciplinary volume, Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush bring together scholars from a variety of fields to discuss this North American fascination with "the phantom Native American." "Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence" explores the importance of ancestral spirits and historic places in Indigenous and settler communities as they relate to territory and history--in particular cultural, political, social, historical, and environmental contexts. From examinations of how individuals reacted to historical cases of "hauntings," to how Native phantoms have functioned in the literature of North Americans, to interdisciplinary studies of how such beliefs and narratives allowed European settlers and Indigenous people to make sense of the legacies of colonialism and conquest, these essays show how the past and the present are intertwined through these stories.

Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History

Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence

Coll-Peter Thrush

The imagined ghosts of Native Americans have been an important element of colonial fantasy in North America ever since European settlements were established in the seventeenth century. Native burial grounds and Native ghosts have long played a role in both regional and local folklore and in the national literature of the United States and Canada, as settlers struggled to create a new identity for themselves that melded their European heritage with their new, North American frontier surroundings. In this interdisciplinary volume, Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush bring together scholars from a variety of fields to discuss this North American fascination with ?the phantom Native American.?ø ø Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence explores the importance of ancestral spirits and historic places in Indigenous and settler communities as they relate to territory and history?in particular cultural, political, social, historical, and environmental contexts. From examinations of how individuals reacted to historical cases of ?hauntings,? to how Native phantoms have functioned in the literature of North Americans, to interdisciplinary studies of how such beliefs and narratives allowed European settlers and Indigenous people to make sense of the legacies of colonialism and conquest, these essays show how the past and the present are intertwined through these stories.

Colleen E. Boyd

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