Faculty Profile

Eric Silverman

Associate Professor
(617)879-2423
esilverman@wheelock.edu

B.A. in Anthropology, Brandeis University (1984)
MA in Anthropology, University of Minnesota (1987)
PhD in Anthropology, University of Minnesota (1993)

Eric Silverman is a cultural anthropologist who teaches in the American Studies and Human Development departments (see also www.eksilverman.com ). He employs a binocular approach to teaching and research that tacks between American culture and other societies—and between local experiences in the US and elsewhere, and globalization. Eric has a long-standing interest in the Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea, whom he has studied since the late 1980s (fieldwork in 1988-1990, 1994, February 2008). He also studies American Jews and Judaism. He is interested in masculinity, gender fatherhood, consumerism, childhood, clothing, ethnicity, food, tourism, ritual and religion, immigrants, death and funerary rites, myth and folklore, pop culture and the material culture of everyday life.

Eric’s first book was Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery: Psychoanalyzing Culture and the Iatmul Naven Rite in New Guinea (2001, University of Michigan Press). His second book was From Abraham to America: A History of Jewish Circumcision (2006, Rowman and Littlefield). Currently, Eric is completing a third book about how everyday and ritual clothing for Jews conveys messages about gender, assimilation, diaspora, and ethnic identity. Additionally, Eric is planning a project on comparative fatherhood that will involve several fieldwork trips to Papua New Guinea to study how modernization shapes masculinity, childhood, families, and especially fathering; the project will also study how Jewish men in America understand the Jewishness of their fathering styles.

Eric teaches courses on, among other topics, anthropology, the family, social theory, men and masculinity, clothing, and food. His courses increasing include major segments on the ethnic, religious, and racial diversity of the greater Boston area. Eric is also a Visiting Research Associate at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

To read more about Eric’s publications, conference papers, courses, and other scholarly activities, and to see some fieldwork photos, visit his professional webpage at www.eksilverman.com