Corinne Kratz, Ph.D.
My research and writing combine interests in performance theory and analysis, the history and politics of representation in visual and verbal media, ritual studies, and the cultural politics of ethnic identity and gender relations. All these areas are encompassed more generally in the study of culture and communication. My research and writing have a strong ethnographic grounding that speaks to methodological and epistemological questions as well. I have been working in eastern Africa with Okiek communities since the mid 1970s; in 1990 I began a comparative project on exhibitions and cultural display. My most recent books are The Ones that are Wanted: Communication and the Politics of Representation in a Photographic Exhibition (University of California Press, 2002) and a co-edited volume entitled Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (Duke University Press, 2006). The Ones That are Wanted follows a traveling exhibition, Okiek Portraits, from its beginnings in Kenya through showings at seven venues, including the National Museum in Nairobi and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The book examines how the exhibition developed, the stereotypes it sought to challenge, how local commentaries were incorporated, how different installations recast the exhibition, and the different ways that visitors in Kenya and the United States understood it. It received the Collier Prize for Still Photography awarded by the Society for Visual Anthropology in 2003 and Honorable Mention for the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in 2004. Museum Frictions is the third volume of a series on culture, society and museums that began with Exhibiting Cultures and was followed by Museums and Communities. The outcome of a series of international workshops and conferences supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, Museum Frictions considers the place of museums in global cultural spheres and examines a variety of museums and other display contexts, including papers from or about virtually every continent and authors from North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. I am currently working on three major book projects:
I co-direct the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship with Ivan Karp. Since 2000, CSPS has been the home of Institutions of Public Culture, a collaborative program that has been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Emory University. The Institutions of Public Culture program fosters exchange and linkages among museums, universities, and cultural institutions in Atlanta and South Africa through fellowships, internships, workshops, and seminars. CSPS also organizes an extensive Grant Writing Program for Emory’s Graduate School in collaboration with the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. |
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