PhD University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought, 1996;

Professor of History and Anthropology (George Russell Corlis Chair), Beloit College, Beloit WI USA.

I have long sought to articulate an ethnographic vision that encompasses the complex written tradition that often dominates daily life in China (and beyond). I have published essays focusing upon my ongoing ethnographic fieldwork on China’s sacred mountains (五嶽), as well as a wide-range of studies dealing with Chinese historical literature, the Chinese calendar, Durkheimian social theory, and the French interdisciplinary scholar, Marcel Granet (1884-1940), an ethnographer, social theorist, and scholar of China.

I am an anthropologist who wishes to embrace the vast and complex textual tradition that has dominated Chinese studies. All of my work has engaged both ethnographic fieldwork and archival research. I believe that we can understand key elements of sometimes abstruse texts much more clearly when we do fieldwork, ask questions, and reflect upon how people live, as well as how their words flow from embodied action.