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. 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 blog. Search entire
book here.
·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.
Next book, to be published circa 2015:
Dream Chase: Searching for Meaning in a Mexican Video Store. An account
of the way my life changed once I started
hanging out at a Mexican video store in
Oregon, sharing dreams, jokes, and middle-aged ambitions with the store owner.
JOURNAL ARTICLES:
·"Compliment Topics and Gender." Women and Language 29: 21-28,
2006. Co-author Christopher Parisi.
An analysis of the way compliments
vary by gender, e.g. greater female reluctance to give males compliments on
their appearance.
·"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. First_Contact.pdf
·"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.
Imagined Communities Reconsidered.pdf
·"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.
BOOK REVIEWS:
·Review of Remembering the
Hacienda: Religion, Authority and Social Change in Highland Ecuador, by
Barry Lyons. American Ethnologist 35 (2), 2008.
·Review of Travels with Ernest:
Crossing the Literary/Sociological Divide, by Laurel Richardson and Ernest Lockridge. American Ethnologist 34:2043-2045, 2007.
·Review of American Cinema's
Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp. Visual Anthropology Review
22:90-91, 2006.
·Review of After Spanish Rule:
Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas, edited by
Mark Thurner and Andrés Guerrero. Journal of
Anthropological Research 60:460-61, 2004.
·Review of Creating Context in
Andean Cultures, edited by Rosaleen Howard-Malverde. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
7:230-231, 1998.
Contact
Information: Mail:
Peter Wogan, Associate 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