The subfield of literary anthropology logically connects the study of culture shared by literary studies and humanistic anthropology. Cohen presents seven articles covering this nexus with topics from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. A common theme in the essays is how specific literature can provide, particularly to students, superb introductions to social and cultural customs, beliefs, artifacts, behavior, and roles. From literature, the seven contributors (six from the US) examine Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, William Defoe, Harriet Martineau, Mark Twain, the Jamaican author Jean Rhys, minor 20th-century Irish authors, and 20th-century Southeast Asian authors. In the Sterne article, Ray McDermott compares and contrasts Sterne's culturally rich presentation of 18th-century England with Charles Frake's 1964 ethnography of Subanun religious life in the Philippines, a fascinating treatment examining methodology, approach, and content. The other articles (by Mary-Elizabeth Reeve, Cohen, David Surrey, John W. Pulis, Helena Wulff, and Ward Keeler) are likewise fascinating, each with in-depth insights into cultural life and of cultural analysis. The level of scholarly writing suggests an intended audience of advanced undergraduates to professors. Cohen's introduction prepares readers for the dazzling display that follows. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *
As it stands, this collection of creative and well-written essays will appeal to a wide audience of readers with a diverse set of literary sensibilities. . . . [T]he essays in the collection will convince social scientists to ask their students to read novels, analyze films, and ponder plays-from an anthropological perspective. * Current Anthropology *
Novel Approaches to Anthropology mines fictional forms for deep ethnographic engagements. Whether providing cultural insights into Caribbean caste and color, English gendered domestic arrangements, American racism and imperialism, or discovering the compulsions of colonialism in South East Asian literary genres, these wide-ranging essays fix our attention on the accessibility and verisimilitude that storied accounts gift to anthropology. In turn, these writers return the favor, highlighting their richly contextualized appreciation of literary forms and content as ethnography. What an engrossing text! -- Rayna Rapp, New York University
Novel Approaches to Anthropology reveals a beautiful coupling of fiction and anthropology. A reader's delight, this smart collection is provocative, engaging, sometimes disturbing-and always inspiring. This volume, rich with new readings of old and contemporary novels, will be cherished by students. -- Alisse Waterston, The City University of New York
