Aaron Glass
Email:
Ph.D. Dissertation:
Conspicuous consumption: An intercultural history of the Kwakwaka-wakw Hamat’sa (2006)
Bio:
Aaron Glass is an anthropologist and visual artist working primarily with Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations in British Columbia, Canada. His doctoral dissertation, along with a companion film In Search of the Hamat’sa: A Tale of Headhunting (www.der.org), examines the ethnographic representation and performance history of the Hamat’sa or "Cannibal Dance." Glass has published articles on various aspects of First Nations art and performance on the Northwest Coast,and is the co-author, with Aldona Jonaitis, of the forthcoming book, The Totem Pole: An Intercultural Biography (University of Washington Press). He is presently collaborating with the U’mista Cultural Centre to create a digital database to document the Kwakwaka’wakw collection in the Ethnological Museum Berlin, and to restore and present Edward Curtis’s 1914 silent film, In the Land of the Head Hunters with a performance by descendants of the film’s indigenous actors. In September 2008, Glass will take up a dual fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History and Bard Graduate Center in New York City, where he will teach anthropology of museums and material culture and coordinate a research program into the museum’s Northwest Coast collection.
For more info on the Edward Curtis project, please visit: www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu
