Anthropology at Berkeley
 

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Anthropology Faculty
 
 
 

Charles L. Briggs

Social, Cultural, Linguistic and Medical Anthropology; Folklore
 
Office Hours:
M 1:00p - 2:40p; T 2:30p-4:10p





Research Interests

Charles L. Briggs is the Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor in Folklore. He focuses on linguistic and medical anthropology, social theory, modernity, citizenship and the state, race, and violence. He has studied the tension between modernity and traditionality as socio-political processes in performance, focusing on jokes, proverbs, legends, myths, anecdotes, gossip, curing songs, and ritual wailing, along with how constructions of language and tradition have shaped the politics of modernity. He has conducted research with Latino/a populations in the Southwestern US and in Latin America. Current projects focus on revolutionary health care in Venezuela; how the state is “communicated” through the press­particularly through health issues­in Cuba, Venezuela, and the United States; and how violence is projected in legal, media, and medical institutions (Venezuela).
 
 
 

Anthropology 250X8
Folklore 250B
Curriculum Vitae
List of Representative Publications
   

News: Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs win J. L. Staley Prize from School of Advanced Research

Charles L. Briggs and Richard Bauman win the Edward Sapir Prize from the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, November 2006
 

 

 

 

Recent Publications

Stories in the Time of Cholera (2003) [en Español]
Voices of Modernity (2003)


Courses for Fall 2007

Anthropology 160AC: Forms of Folklore


Anthropology C262A: Theories of Traditionality and Modernity