Robert Brightman
Ruth C. Greenberg Professor of Native American Studies
Social/cultural theory, semiotics and structuralism, sociolinguistics, environmental anthropology, hunter-gatherer societies, functional syntax and language typology, Native North America.
Ph.D. 1983 University of Chicago
M.A. 1976 University of Chicago
B.A. 1973 Reed College
Visual Media
2012. Heart of Ice: The Legend, Condition, and Prophecy of Windigo. Christian Tizya, director. Watson Street Pictures. [interview]
Recent Conferences
2013 “In the old days, you can go live anywhere”: Cree and Canadian Indian Affairs Rules of Band Membership. 10th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies. Liverpool, 23-28 June 2013
2012. Discussant: Panel on “Crossings from Present to Past: History of Anthropology in Anthropological Practice.” 111th Annual American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Francisco, CA, November 16-20.
2011. Context and Cotext in Plains Cree Gender Shifts. 43rd Annual Algonquian Conference. Ann Arbor, MI Oct. 20-23.
2010. “Irony and Ontology in Luiseno Cosmogony.” Society for Cultural Anthropology Spring Conference Program on “Natureculture” Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 7-9.
2008. Discussant for Organized Session “Hunting Windigo: The Cannibal Spirit in Folklore, History and Film. 13th Rupert’s Land Colloquium, Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, May 14-16.
2004.Beneath the Valley of 4th World Monism. Invited plenary session paper for Conference on The Nature of Spirits: Human and Non-Human Beings in Amerindian Cosmologies. Laval University, Québec City, Québec, April.
Selected Articles
____. 2007. Nature and Culture in the Bush. La nature des esprits dans les cosmologies autochtones. F. Laugrand and Jarich Oosten, eds. Pp.31-44. Québec: Les Presses de L’Université Laval.
____. 2006. North American Indian Culture and Culture Theory. Native
American Cultures, Histories, and Representations. Pauline Strong and Sergei Kan, eds. Pp. 351-384. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
____. 2004. Chitimacha. Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 14:
Southeast. R. Fogelson, ed. Pp. 642-652. Washington D.C: Smithsonian Institution.
____. 2003. Jaime de Angulo and Alfred Kroeber: Bohemians and Bourgeois
in Berkeley Anthropology. History of Anthropology Volume 10: Significant Others. R. Handler, ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
____. 2002. Totemism Reconsidered (Co-author Raymond Fogelson). Anthropology, History, and American Indians: Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant. W. Merrill and I. Goddard, eds. Pp. 305-314. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
____. 1999. Traditions of Subversion and the Subversion of Tradition: Cultural Criticism in Maidu Clown Performances. American Anthropologist 101(2): 272-287.
____. 1996. Biology, Taboo, and Gender Politics in the Sexual Division of Foraging
Labor. Comparative Studies in Society and History 38(4): 687-729
____. 1995. Forget Culture: Replacement, Transcendence, Relexification. Cultural
Anthropology 10(4):1-39.
____. 1989. Primitivism in Missinipi Cree Historical Consciousness. 1989. Man 25:399-418.
____. 1989. Tricksters and Ethnopoetics. International Journal of American Linguistics 55(2):179-203.
____. 1988. Windigo in the Material World. Ethnohistory 35(4):337-379.
Books
____. 1993. Grateful Prey: Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 1-396.
____. 1989. Aca∂ohkiwina and Acimowina: Traditional Narratives of the Rock Cree Indians. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization. Pp. 1-223
____. 1988. Co-author: Jennifer Brown. The Orders of the Dreamed: George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Legend. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press . Pp. 1-226.