Miriam Kahn (PhD 1980, Bryn Mawr)
Research Interests:
Anthropology of place, colonial and postcolonial politics, nuclear testing, tourism and travel, museum representation; Oceania (French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea)
"In addition to being a professor in the Department of Anthropology, I also hold an affiliate position in the UW’s interdisciplinary PhD program in Urban Design and Planning. And from 1986-99 my position in the Department of Anthropology was a joint one with the Burke Museum, where I was Curator of Asian and Pacific Ethnology. My field research has taken me to Papua New Guinea (for three years in the late 70s and early 80s), and to French Polynesia (for 18 months since the early 90s). Because of my focus on travel and placemaking the Boeing Company recently asked me to assist them in their long-term efforts to understand the “cultures of flying” for use in future design of airplane interiors. I am the author of two books and just completed a third, Beyond the Edges of the Postcard: Tahiti and the Complexities of Place (under review with the University of Hawai’i Press), in which I apply the work of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre to the politics of placemaking in French Polynesia."
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Selected Publications:
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2007
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Narrating Colonial Encounters: Germany in the Pacific Islands. (Co-edited with Sabina Wilke). Journal of Pacific History, special issue. Volume 42(3).
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2005
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Pacific Voices: Keeping Our Cultures Alive (co-authored with Erin Younger). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
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2003
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Tahiti: The Ripples of a Myth on the Shores of the Imagination. History
and Anthropology 14(4):307-26.
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2000
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Tahiti Intertwined: Ancestral Land, Tourist Postcard, and
Nuclear Test Site. American Anthropologist 102(1):7-26.
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2000
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Not Really "Pacific Voices:" Politics of Representation in Collaborative Museum Exhibits. Museum Anthropology 24(1):57-74.
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