Kenneth M. George (Ph.D. Michigan 1989) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a specialist on Indonesia, and Past Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies (2005-2008).   Ken’s early work in Indonesia (1982-1992) dealt with ritual speech, song, and violence.  Since 1994, he has been collaborating with Indonesian painter A. D. Pirous and others in exploring the predicaments and possibilities for Islamic visual culture in national and transnational art publics.  Ken is also using that collaboration to set agendas for ethnographic art historical research and the cross-disciplinary analysis of ideology, ethics, and subjectivity.  His books include the forthcoming Picturing Islam: Art and Ethics in a Muslim Lifeworld (Wiley-Blackwell); Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia (co-edited with Andrew Willford); and Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a 20th-Century Headhunting Ritual, winner of the 1998 Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies.  Ken was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1999-2000, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 2003-2004.  He is presently on a fellowship year sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Ken is also associated with the Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle and the Visual Culture Studies Group.

Kenneth M. George CV

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Selected Publications:
-- Picturing Islam: Art and Ethics in a Muslim Lifeworld.  Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.  (Forthcoming 2009).
--“Ethics, Iconoclasm, and Qur’anic Art in Indonesia.” in Cultural Anthropology 24(4):589-621. (2009)
--“Ethical Pleasure, Visual Dzikir, and Artistic Subjectivity in Contemporary Indonesia.” in Material Religion 4(2):172-193. (2008)
-- “Art and Identity Politics: Nation, Religion, Ethnicity, Elsewhere.”  in Asian and Pacific Cosmopolitans: Self and Subject in Motion, edited by Kathryn Robinson, pp. 37-59.  New York:  Palgrave, 2007
-- Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia.  Co-edited with Andrew Willford.  Ithaca: Southeast Asian Publications Series, Cornell, 2005.
-- "Violence, Culture, & the Indonesian Public Sphere: Reworking the Geertzian Legacy."  in Violence: Culture, Performance and Expression, edited by Neil L. Whitehead.  pp. 25-54. Santa Fe: SAR Press, 2004.
-- "Signature Work: Bandung, 1994."  in Ethnos 64(2):212-231.  (1999)
-- "Designs on Indonesia's Muslim Communities".  in Journal of Asian Studies 57(3):693-713.  (1998)
-- "Some Things That Have Happened to The Sun After September 1965: Politics and the Interpretation of an Indonesian Painting."  in Comparative Studies in Society and History 39(4):599-634.  (1997)
-- Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996

Office Hours:
TBA

How to contact Professor George:
Email: kmgeorge@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 890-1114
Address:
Department of Anthropology
5339 Sewell Social Science Building
1180 Observatory Drive University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI 53706-1393