Debbora Battaglia
Office:
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, MA 01075
E-Mail: dbattagl@mtholyoke.edu
(413) 538-2293/538-2283
Home:
23 Ashfield Lane
South Hadley
Massachusetts 01075
(413) 532-2887
Education
1975 B.A., Art History (Ethnographic Art Emphasis)
1972 University of California at Santa Barbara
Identity theory, culture and power, social memory and forgetting, gender, expressive culture, Melanesian ethnography, spirituality
Courses taught:
Constructing Cultural Identities, Introduction to Anthropology, Person and Self in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Poetics and Politics of Ritual Practice, Dramaturgical Approaches to Ritual, Urban Anthropology, Cultural Responses to Mortality, Social Process in Oceania, Anthropology of Art, Visualizing Culture, The Anthropology of Spirituality
Professional Teaching and Research Positions
1997/98 NSF Mathematics Across the Curriculum: Ethnomathematics (Grant for seminar participation)
1998 Mount Holyoke College Research Fellowship
1996 Mellon Grant for Community-Based Learning (Grant for course development)
1993-1994 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
1992-1993 Fellowship Mount Holyoke College Research Grant
1989-1990 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
1987 Mount Holyoke College Research Fellowship
1986 Mount Holyoke College Research Grant
1986 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Grant-In-Aid
1985 National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend
1985 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Grant-in-Aid
1980-1981 Social Anthropology Department, Cambridge University
1979-1980 Trinity College, Cambridge: William Wyse Fund
1976-1977 Girton College, Cambridge
1976-1977 Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
1976-1977 Smuts Memorial Fund, Cambridge
1976-1977 Trinity College, Cambridge: William Wyse Fund
1970-1971 President's Undergraduate Fellowship: University of California (9 campus competition)
1975 -1976 Elmdon, England. Research anthropologist for Audrey Richards
BOOKS:
1995 Battaglia, Debbora, ed. Rhetorics of Self-Making. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
\1990 Battaglia, Debbora. On the Bones of the Serpent: Person, Memory, and Mortality In Sabarl Island Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1999 Toward an Ethics of the Open Subject: Writing Culture in
Good Conscience. In H. L. Moore, ed. Anthropological Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity Press
1997 Ambiguating Agency: The Case of Malinowski's Ghost. American Anthropologist 99 (3): 18-22.
1997 Displacing the Visual: Trobriand Axe Blades and Ambiguation.
In H. Morphy and M. Banks, eds. Rethinking Visual Anthropology. Yale: Yale University Press.
1995 "You Are Never Alone With a Clone": Human Cloning and the Value of Individuality in the American Cultural Imaginary. American Anthropologist 97 (4): 15-21.
1995 Problematizing The Self: A Thematic Introduction. In D. Battaglia, ed. Rhetorics of Self-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1995 On Active Nostalgia: Self-Prospecting Among Urban Trobrianders. In D. Battaglia, ed. Rhetorics of Self-Making. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1994 Retaining Reality: Some Practical Problems With Objects as Property. Man (n.s.) 29: 1-15.
1993 At Play in the Fields (and Borders) of the Imaginary: Transformations of Forgetting in Melanesia. Cultural Anthropology 8 (3): 20-32.
1992 Displacing Culture: A Joke of Significance in Urban Papua New Guinea. New Literary History 23 (4):1003-1017.
1992 The Body in the Gift: Memory and Forgetting in Sabarl Mortuary Exchange. American Ethnologist 19 (1): 3-18.
1991 Punishing the Yams: Leadership and Gender Ambivalence on Sabarl. In M. Godelier and M. Strathern, eds. Big Men and Great Men: The Development of a Comparison in Melanesia. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Maison des Sciences de L'Homme.
1985 "We Feed Our Father": Paternal Nurture Among the Sabarl of Papua New Guinea. In American Ethnologist 12 (3): 427-441.
1983 Projecting Personhood in Melanesia: The Dialectics of Artefact Symbolism on Sabarl Island. In Man (n.s.) 18: 289-304.
1983 Syndromes of Ceremonial Exchange in the Eastern Calvados: The View from Sabarl Island. In E. Leach and J. Leach, eds. The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1993 Marilyn Strathern. Partial Connections. In American Anthropologist 95: 189-90.
1991 Frederick Damon and Roy Wagner, eds. Death Rituals
and Life in the Societies of the Kula Ring. In Journal of Ritual Studies 5:2 pp. 145-8.
(1991) Giancarlo Scoditti. Kitawa: A Linguistic and Aesthetic Analysis of Visual Art in Melanesia. In Man (n.s.).
1991 James F. Weiner. The Heart of the Pearl Shell: The Mythological Dimension of Foi Sociality. In American Anthropologist.
1991 David Freedberg. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. In American Ethnologist.
1990 Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz. Cultural Alternatives and a Feminist Anthropology: An Analysis of Culturally Constructed Gender Interests In Papua New Guinea. In Signs 15:4 pp. 869-72.
1985 Michael Young. Magicians of Manumanua. In Man (n.s.):415-16.
"Corporealizing Theory". Discussant's paper, presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association session, Narratives of Modernity, November 1999.
"Time and Race in Replication Genre Films: An Anthropological Reading". Paper presented at the annual Cinema Studies Conference, West Palm Beach, Florida, April 1999.
"Writing Performance in Good Conscience". Paper presented at Cambridge University, Department of Social Anthropology, February 1999.
"Toward an Ethics of the Open Subject: Writing Culture In Good Conscience". Paper presented at Columbia University, Department of Anthropology, October 1998.
"Ethnomathematics and Ideology". Keynote address: Mathematics Across the Curriculum Conference, Dartmouth College, July 1998.
"The Culture in the Clone". Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the
"Towards a Pacific Ethnography of Contingency". Discussant's Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association session, Rethinking Subjectivities, Washington, D.C., November 1997.
"Multiplicities: An Overview of Animation and Cessation". Discussant's Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, session on Animation and Cessation, San Francisco, November 1996.
"Ambiguating Agency: The Case of Malinowski's Ghost" Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, session Agency, Washington, D.C. November 1995.
"Fear of Selfing in the American Cultural Imaginary". Paper presented at the conference Anthropology and the Question of the Other. Rudesheim am Rhein, Germany. Institut fur Ethnologie und Afrika-Studien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, Apr 30-May 5, 1995.
"Meditations on the Social Life of Things: Some Critical Considerations" Paper presented at the 21st Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, April 7-9, 1995.
"Displacing Identities: Cultural Process Among Urban Trobrianders" Department of Anthropology, Harvard University. Cambridge, December 1994.
"Aesthetics/Anti-Aesthetics: Introducing the Issues". Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Atlanta, Georgia, session on Aesthetics/Anti-Aesthetics, November 1994.
"Who Authors/Authorizes The Self: Anthropological Perspectives" NSF Workshop on Cultural Pluralism and Ethical Decision-Making, Stanford University, May 12, 1994.
"You Are Never Alone With a Clone: The Ethics and Aesthetics
"Retaining Reality: Some Practical Problems with Objects as Property". Paper presented at the Association for Social Anthropology Decennial meeting. Oxford, July 1993.
"On Practical Nostalgia". Paper presented at the Department of Anthropology, Rice University. February 1993.
"Urban Trobriand "Publicity" in the National Press: Thinking About Self-Prospecting". Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (invited session) "The Rhetoric of Self-Making". San Francisco (December 1992).
"Urban Trobriand Identity Displacement: An Indigenous Problematic". Colloquium, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University. Stanford, (April 1992).
"Humor and Self Displacement in Urban Trobriand Practice".
"Serious Joking About the Self: A Trobriand Example" Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, invited session "History In Person: Social Formation In Practice" Chicago (November 1991).
"Displacing Culture: A Joke of Significance in Urban New Guinea". Paper presented at the conference on "Culture and Change", The Commonwealth Institute for Literary and Cultural Change, University of Virginia (November 1991).
"Cultural Screen Memory and Ideologies of Persistence: Preliminary Thoughts from Melanesia". Paper presented at the conference "Embodiment and Sociality", University of Manchester, England (July 1991).
"Ideologies of Persistence: Comment on Fredrik Barth". Paper presented at the Plenary Session "Culture and Memory", Annual Meeting of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, Boston (May 1991).
"The Body in the Gift: Further Thoughts on Sabarl Gender and Exchange". Paper presented to the Department of Anthropology, University of California at Santa Cruz (January 1991).
"Intentional Forgetting in Gendered Exchange" Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association session, "The Reproduction of the Person" (November 1990).
"Memory and Exchange in Melanesia: An Introduction" (co-author, Susanne Kuechler). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, invited session, "Memory and Exchange: Social History Through Narrative and Objectification". Phoenix, Arizona (November 1988).
"Punishing the Yams: Leadership and Gender Ambivalence on Sabarl Island". Paper presented at the conference on "Big Men and Great Men in Melanesia". Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (July 1987).
"Urban Gardens and their Magic". Paper presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (October 1985).
"Urban Gardens and Self-Construction". Paper presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of Papua New Guinea (August 1985).
"Patrilineality in a Matrilineal Society". Paper presented at the Philadelphia Anthropological Society, University of Pennsylvania (February 1985).
"Lines and Circles: Melanesian Myth, Reciprocity and Reproduction". Paper presented to the Department of Anthropology, New York University (March 1984).
"Body-Building in Melanesia: Preliminary Thoughts". Paper presented at the
"Self-Decoration in Melanesia" Paper presented at the Department of Art. University of California at Los Angeles (December 1981).
"Witchcraft and Sorcery Among the Sabarl". Paper presented at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California at Los Angeles (October 1981).
"Ceremonial Exchange in the Eastern Calvados". Paper presented at the
conference on "Rethinking the Kula". Cambridge University, Cambridge, England
(July 1977).
1999 External Examiner, Ph.D. Dissertation in Social Anthropology, Cambridge University
1994-present Member of the Editorial Board, American Ethnologist.
1995-present Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, Material Culture
1990-1995 Member of the Editorial Board, Cultural Anthropology
1994-present National Research Council panelist.
1996 Promotion Evaluation: Department of Anthropology, Cornell University
1997 Promotion Evaluation: Department of Anthropology, William and Mary College
1997 Panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships
1993-1994 Panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships
1990-91 Panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships
1990 Consultant: Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut). Anthropology candidate assessment and hiring procedures review Ongoing Book-length Manuscript Evaluation: Duke University Press, University of California Press, University of Chicago Press, Smithsonian Institution Press, Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, Routledge Press, Princeton University Press.
1992 "Rhetorics of Self Making". Invited Session (GAD/AES).
1988 "Memory and Exchange: Social History Through Narrative and Objectification". Invited Session (GAD/AES).
Organizer: Public Lecture - Film Studies and Anthropology. Professor Steven Caton (Harvard University), "Lawrence of Arabia." February 2000. Also, Film Studies Seminar on Orientalism in "Lawrence of Arabia."
Organizer: Public Lecture - Professor Steven Feld (New York University), "World Music and Afro-Pop." February 1999.
Committee to Appoint Committees; Faculty Fellowships and Grants Committee; Five-College Women and History Curriculum Committee; Academic Policy Committee (including Literacies sub-committee); Scheduling Committee; Five-College Dance Reappointment Committee; Chair of two Tenure and Promotion Committees for Sociology and Anthropology; Chair of the Search Committee for position in Anthropology (three times); Chair of the Search Committee for African-American Studies positions (twice); Chair of the Search Committee for position in Sociology (once); Chair of the Search Committee for Five-College medical anthropology position; Appeals Committee (current); Member Reappointment Committee for Joshua Roth; Tenure and Promotion Committee Member, Dance Department; Tenure and Promotion Committee, Theatre Department.
Membership in Professional Organizations
American Anthropological Association
Royal Anthropological Institute (Fellow)
American Ethnological Society
Society for Cultural Anthropology
Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania
Professional Development Seminars
Mellon Seminar in the Case Study Method
Writing Beyond the Academy
Mathematics Across the Curriculum