Office Hours
By Appointment
Education
PhD, University of Michigan
MA, University of Michigan
Graduate Certificate, University of Michigan
BA, Union College
About Me
At Auburn Christopher Berk has taught a number of courses, including Introduction to Anthropology, Ethnographic Methods, Language and Culture, and Museum Studies in Anthropology. He has also taught multiple courses in indigenous studies and courses that approach fiction from an anthropological perspective.
Berk has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Tasmania, Australia since 2004. His research focuses on the ways in which the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, a community historically believed to be culturally and racially extinct, have revived many aspects of their purportedly “lost” culture and achieved broader recognition from both state and national bodies. In 2019 he was a faculty fellow during the Smithsonian's Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) at the National Museum of Natural History.
Publications
- Berk, Christopher D. 2020. “Navigating Cultural Intimacy in Tasmanian Aboriginal Public Culture.” Cultural Dynamics 32 (3): 196-212.
- Berk, Christopher D. and Joshua B. Friedman. 2020. “The Intimate Workings of Culture: An Introduction.” Cultural Dynamics 32 (3): 141-150.
- Berk, Christopher. 2017. "Palawa Kani and the Value of Language in Aboriginal Tasmania." Oceania 87 (1): 2-20.
- Berk, Christopher. 2015. "This Exhibition is About Now: Tasmanian Aboriginality at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery." Museum Anthropology 38 (2): 149-162.