Faculty

Katherine J.L. Miller

Visiting Assistant Professor, Anthropology

503 838 9529 | millerka@wou.edu | BELL 203 | Virtually TW 12-2, R 4-5 & by appointment

Ph.D., University of California, San Diego 2015 (Anthropology)

M.A., University of California, San Diego 2004 (Anthropology)

B.A. Reed College 2001

Research: I am a cultural anthropologist with a particular interest in morality and its rootedness in cultural systems and interpersonal interaction. My primary research site is the Hunza Valley in the Northern Pakistan, where I have conducted a total of 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork. In addition to ethics, my interests include international development, religion (specifically Isma‘ili Shi‘i Islam), the natural and built environment, cultural change, labor and exchange. The research for my doctoral dissertation was conducted among villagers and NGO workers in Northern Pakistan and focused on the ethical stakes of and moral aspirations for development. I am currently beginning a new phase of research examining the role of Islamic ideas about nature, society and responsibility in shaping a distinctive environmental sensibility within transnational Isma‘ili institutional networks.

Teaching: In the Fall 2016-17 I will be teaching Cultures of South Asia, Anthropological Theory, and Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. I have previously offered courses on Islam, Ethics and Morality, Development and Humanitarianism, the Self and Exchange and am developing courses on Environmental Anthropology and on Pakistan.