I am a cultural anthropologist interested in how value, economic and socio-cultural, is constituted. My interest in value focuses on intercultural arts and crafts markets, particularly powwows and other indigenous arts and crafts venues. I am also building a research and programmatic interest in material culture and university/cultural institution engagement.
I am passionate about providing a variety of learning opportunities for my students, undergraduate and graduate, through professional networking opportunities such as trips to NYC to learn about the textile and apparel industry, community engagement opportunities through building networks and collaborative projects with museums such as the Marshall Steam Museum, Yorklyn, Delaware, and developing a public wiki to house research done by undergraduate students in an Honors section of the course, TMD 224:Culture, Dress and Appearance. This wiki provides a forum to market the University of Rhode Island's 20,000+ piece Historic Textile and Costume Collection and celebrate how we learn through our student's exploration. Please feel free to visit the wiki through the link on the right of this page. The site also contains pedagogical information as a way to share the process of course development around the integration of university collections, a growing trend. Over the next week or so, I will soon be adding new pages as the semester has just ended.