Shelly E. Errington is a

cultural anthropologist Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portman ...

specializing in the studies of plastic art and

narrative art Narrative art is art that tells a story, either as a moment in an ongoing story or as a sequence of events unfolding over time. Some of the earliest evidence of human art suggests that people told stories with pictures. Although there are som ...

s, focusing on

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

, and

multi-media Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditio ...

. She is a Professor Emerita of

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

Life

Errington received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in 1966 from

Newcomb College H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, or Newcomb College, was the coordinate women's college of Tulane University located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It was founded by Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1886 in memory of her daughter. ...

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

and an M.A and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

. In 1981, she was the recipient of one of the first MacArthur Foundation "genius grants". Errington has done field work in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

and

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. Her current courses include a study of Multi-Media Ethnography. She is currently working on a documentary film on the art of the

Pátzcuaro Pátzcuaro () is a city and municipality located in the state of Michoacán. The town was founded sometime in the 1320s, at first becoming the capital of the Purépecha Empire and later its ceremonial center. After the Spanish took over, Vasco d ...

region of Mexico, and an accompanying book on the subject. On September 24, 2009, she spoke at a rally protesting cuts to California University education.

Selected bibliography

*''The Death of Authentic Primitive Art and Other Tales of Progress''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. *''Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia'' (edited with J. Atkinson). Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990. *''Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm''. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. *"The Cosmic Theme Park of the Javanese" ''Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Arts'', published in Sydney, Australia, July 1997. *"Myth and Structure in Disney World." In ''Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views From the Outside''. Edited by Irving Lavin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. *"What Became Primitive art?" ''Cultural Anthropology'' 9 (2) : 201-226, 1994. *"Making Progress on Borobudur: A New Perspective." ''Visual Anthropology Review'' 9 (2): 32-59, Fall 1993. *"Progressivist Stories and the Pre-Columbian Past: Notes on Mexico and the United States." In ''Collecting the Pre-Columbian Past'', pp. 209–49. Edited by Elizabeth Boone. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993. *"Some Comments on Style in the Meaning of the Past," ''Journal of Asian Studies'', 38:2, 231-244, 1979. *"The Cosmic House of the Buginese," ''Asia'', 1:5, 8-14, 1979.

References

External links

Shelly Errington's personal page at the University of California, Santa Cruz
{{DEFAULTSORT:Errington, Shelly American anthropologists American women anthropologists Tulane University alumni Cornell University alumni 1944 births Living people MacArthur Fellows 21st-century American women