Publications by Peter Wogan

BOOKS:

·Hollywood Blockbusters: The Anthropology of Popular Movies. Berg Press, 2009. Co-author David Sutton.

Anthropological analyses of Jaws, Field of Dreams, The Godfather, The Big Lebowski, and The Village.

·Search entire book here.

·For further exploration of questions raised in this book—e.g. What do Jaws and WWII have in common? What would George Carlin say about basketball?—see my other website.

·Magical Writing in Salasaca: Literacy and Power in Highland Ecuador. Westview Press, 2004.

Ethnography of an indigenous group in Ecuador, with chapters on witchcraft, Day of the Dead, weaving, etc.

Search entire book here. You can also listen to a podcast interview I did about this book.

(In progress) Dream Chase: Searching for Meaning in a Mexican Video Store.

An account of my fieldwork in a Mexican video store in Oregon: movies, dreams, jokes, stories, and middle-aged ambitions. To be published circa 2015

JOURNAL ARTICLES:

·"Compliment Topics and Gender." Women and Language 29: 21-28, 2006. Co-author Christopher Parisi.

An analysis of gender patterns within compliments given by American college students, i.e., gender variations in compliments on the other person’s appearance vs. skill vs. personality vs. possessions.

Compliments_and_Gender.pdf

·"Audience Reception and Ethnographic Film: Laughing at First Contact." Visual Anthropology Review 22:14-33, 2006.

An analysis of what college students find funny in a documentary film about first contact in the 1930s between Australian gold miners and indigenous Papua New Guineans.

·"Deep Hanging Out: Reflections on Fieldwork and Multi-sited Andean Ethnography." Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11: 129-139, 2004.

Commentary on Andean ethnographies that span multiple locations.

·"The Gun, the Pen, and the Cannoli: Orality and Writing in The Godfather, Part I." Anthropology and Humanism 28:155-167, 2003 (with David Sutton).

An analysis of literacy and food symbolism in The Godfather, such as the famous offer he can't refuse ("either his brains or his signature would be on that contract"). Sutton and I updated this analysis in our 2009 book, Hollywood Blockbusters.

·"Imagined Communities Reconsidered: Is Print-Capitalism What We Think It Is?" Anthropological Theory 1:403-418, 2001.

A critique of notions of print and orality in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, showing how these notions replicate long-standing Western views of language.

·"Magical Literacy: Encountering a Witch's Book in Ecuador," Anthropological Quarterly 71:186-202, 1998. Reprinted in Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society. Richard Warms, James Garber, Jon McGee, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Describes a witch who kills people with a book of names, including my own run-in with the witch.

·"Perceptions of European Literacy in Early Contact Situations." Ethnohistory 41:407-29, 1994.

Debunks the theory that Native Americans were in awe of 17th-century missionaries because of their books and writing.

Contact Information: Mail: Peter Wogan, Professor of Anthropology, Willamette University, Department of Anthropology, Eaton Hall, 900 State Street, Salem, OR 97301 (USA). Email: pwoganATwillamette.edu. Tel.: 503-370-6032.

University home page: http://www.willamette.edu/cla/anthro/faculty/wogan/index.php