mini-biographies

Danny Yee (danny@STAFF.CS.SU.OZ.AU)
Thu, 21 Apr 1994 14:27:28 +1000

Here's the collection so far, in alphabetical order.
An interesting variety of people!

Danny Yee.

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Graber, Bob

I was born in 1950 in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in northern
Indiana. My father was a physician (obstetrics/gynecology), my mother
a schoolteacher. We were Mennonites. Though we were not among the
highly culturally-conservative ones, I was impressed by the church's
claims to ultimate significance and by the church/"world" dichotomy.
Within months after leaving home at age 19, however, I became a devout
agnostic. I was attracted to anthropology by the popular books by
Desmond Morris and Robert Ardrey. I got my bachelor's at Indiana
University in 1973, my masters ('76) and doctorate ('79) at University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Victor Barnouw, who had been a student of Ruth
Benedict, was my adviser. My dissertation was a comparative study of
the schisms that have made Mennonites such a culturally variable group
of sects. I published several papers in psychoanalytic anthropology,
but have grown more and more preoccupied with quantitative theorizing
about cultural evolution. My book in press is *A Scientific Model of
Social and Cultural Evolution* (Thomas Jefferson University Press 1994)
and I am writing an introduction to general anthropology for Harcourt
Brace. I have a wonderful wife and two great daughters 13 and 11. I
play classical guitar, golf, and chess (in order of declining
proficiency), and drive a red '72 Mustang (fastback) which still looks
good if you don't look too closely. I taught for two years at Millsaps
College in Jackson, MS, before coming to Northeast Missouri State. I
enjoy teaching anthropology as an integrative, "eye-opening" experience
for students. I have enjoyed--and benefitted from--ANTHRO-L.

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Hays-Gilpin, Kelley

I was born in 1960 in a Detroit suburb, daughter of a research chemist
and a teacher. Dad was an avocational archaeologist who collected
historic pueblo pottery (purchased from the potters, didn't dig 'em
up). I grew up as one of those obnoxious children that volunteers
bring with them to archaeological projects--I got the opportunity to
learn field methods quite young, but also burned out on digging quite
young and perhaps that's why I do ceramic analysis and method and
theory stuff now. I moved to Arizona in 1983, finally finished my PhD
in 1992, married an Oklahoman, also an archaeologist, no offspring or
pets. I drive a red Chevy 4x4 pickup truck with dents in it from
running into tree stumps and parking lot guardrails. I enjoy gardening
and reading fiction of the sort by mostly English women writers,
especially Jane Austen, Barbara Pym, and Angela Thirkell--the sorts of
novels in which nothing much happens but there are a lot of
relationships.

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Lieber, Mike

Mike Lieber, Associate prof. at University of Illinois at Chicago (but
worked at U. of Washington, Nevada, Oregon, College of Micronesia, and
Bryn Mawr). Am Jewish, though I learned most of what I know about it
from my father, who did n't practice ritual, but had a huge library and
read incessantly. I also learne d my love of competitive argumentation
from him, as he trained me from an early age in a kind of partnership.
When I became an anthropologist, his life was complete, 'cause now we
could argue from better defined positions. I grew up with music and
have played as an amateur and a professional since age 11, starting
with accordion, then trombone (for trad jazz), then strings--guitar,
banjo, andolin, autoharp, harp, dulcimer, langelik, balalaika, bandura,
and string bass and bass guitar. I've continued playing all these
years, mainly in bands but some solo work--clubs, bars, radio, TV, one
film, but only one record, and theater. These days, I play bass in a
bluegrass band. I'm married with two sons--14 and 11, both musicians,
baseball players, and thoroughly delightful human beings. I coach
Little League baseball (and have coached some football) and have just
completed a parents' manual for coaching really young kids. I'm an
enthusiastic cyclist, commuting 7.5 miles to work on a bike except on
the worst days. I do bicycle repair and build bikes as a hobby,
usually for neighborhood kids and friends a who can't afford a real
repair person.

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McCreery, John

Who? Me. Born in 1944 in Savannah, Georgia. Grew up in Virginia, near
Yorktown where the last major battle of the American Revolution was
fought. Am old enough to have been to a segregated high school and to
have a fifth grade home teacher who (after we'd said the Lord's Prayer
and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and sung the Star Spangled
Banner) made us sing Dixie. Grew up and turned my back on my parents'
(Lutheran) religion. Did philosophy as an undergraduate (Michigan
State) and a Ph.D. in anthropology (Cornell, 1973). Did fieldwork in
Taiwan, wrote a dissertation called "The Symbolism of Popular Taoist
Magic," taught four years at Middlebury College in Vermont. Didn't make
tenure. Spent another year in Taiwan, then three years in New Haven,
CT, where Ruth (my wife) was doing a Ph.D. in Japanese literature at
Yale. Spent first two years househusbanding and taking care of daughter
Katie (who's now 17, going on 18, and deciding where to go to college).
The third year I found a job in the Yale Computer Science Department's
Artificial Intelligence Program and learned about computers. Then Ruth
got a grant that to brought us to Japan. A friend's introduction got me
an editor's job in a small translation cum corporate communications
company. A mutual interest in personal computers led to my meeting my
predecessor at Hakuhodo, Inc. (Japan's 2nd largest advertising agency),
where I started working as a copywriter and am now International
Creative Director. In the last couple of years, I've revived my
academic interests. I've got a paper ("Negotiating with Demons: The
Uses of Language in a Taoist Exorcism" ) accepted by American
Ethnologist that is scheduled to appear some time in 1995 and am
teaching a graduate seminar on "The Making and Meaning of Advertising"
at Sophia University in Tokyo. Ruth, Katie and I share space with four
Persian cats.


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Salovesh, Mike

I was born in Chicago in 1931, and was mostly raised there (with the
years from 3rd to 6th grade spent in Milwaukee.) Anthropologically
speaking, all my degrees are from the U of Chicago (A.B., Social
Sciences, 56; Ph.B., Liberal Arts, 56; A.M., Anthro, 59; Ph. D., 71)
but I also attended UCal Berkely (1957-58) and a linguistics insti-
tute (Linguistic Society of America, NOT the Summer Institute of
Linguistics) at U Michigan, Ann Arbor, summer 57. I taught at the
Chicago City Colleges (61-65), U of Minnesota (65-67), and Purdue
(67-70) before coming to Northern Illinois in 1970. I thought I was
only going to be here four years at most. Hah!

Research: dialect geography, Chiapas, Mexico, 58-59; same town, now
as social anthropologist (working on politics and soc org), 60-61 and
many field trips later. Since 1982, I've been working on politics in
Central America (particularly Guatemala and Nicaragua). Other work
was on the social world of CB radio, intergroup relations, folk music
and folk musicians, and the politics of academia.

That's a lot of me, but it just ain't all. Before anthro, and some-
times inbetween, I've had what feels like several other lives:
Quaker/conscientious objector who enlisted in the US Army Medical
Corps in the Korean War; junior pharmaceutical chemist (Armour Labs)
and quality control food chemist (Wilson & Co.); junior accountant
and customer service rep, Texaco Regional Credit Card Office; piano
player and folk singer for money (but too diffident to call myself a
one-time pro musician); traffic director for a small auto parts fac-
tory; traveling salesman; bookstore part-owner; manager, tire and
muffler store; day laborer; Post Office worker (loading sacked mail
on and off Railway Post Offices); part of the gang that founded the
Second City back in the 50's; victim of an FBI Cointelpro operation
in 68-70; other stuff. The first job I ever held (at 14) was as an
operating room orderly, Michael Reese Hospital, which was a helluva
way for a boy to learn about female anatomy. (That was 1945, and a
14 year old could get a work permit in the summer because all the
able-bodied men were off to war, one way or another. OR orderly was
just not thought of as a job a woman could do, for some reason.)

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Thornton, Robert

b. 1949 in Denver Colorado to a father who had returned wounded from
the War and so had begun to study psychology to figure out Why, and a
mother who was more certain about Things and who studied biochemistry.
My birth caused my mother to drop her studies and my father to redouble
his, thus I grew up with lab rats (live) as they spilled over from my
father's psychology Ph.D. and lab rats (dead and pickled) as they
spilled over from my mother's teaching bio-labs in after-school
afternoons waiting to go home. Home was Denver til I was 5, then Iowa
til i was 12, then Delhi, India til 14, back to Iowa, then to
California in the late sixties to People's Park demos and draft
resistance while studying at Stanford U. and hanging out in Berkeley,
and SF. Fled to Uganda in 1970 to visit my parents who were Peace
Corps administrators there, taught science to Ugandan High School Girls
for two years, then back to Stanford to finish degree, and on to
Chicago to study for the Ph.d. Field work in Tanzania, mid-seventies,
and first job in Cape Town SA in 1979. STill here, dangerously
hypereducated with broad interests including staying alive, computers
and programming, south AFrican politics, landscape and langauges, most
aspects of anthro., gardening, keeping my old car running since I can't
afford a new one, food and cooking, an d other things that I have
forgotten at this moment. I dislike cats, find dogs mildly amusing
but don't have one, and, surprisingly, am neither for nor against
laboratory rats.

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Tourigny, Francois

I am running after my Master in Urban Anthropology, but I like good
food, great wine and beer. I like taking photo of the wilderness, so
climbing, treking, cannoing and camping is part of my life. I love
cats (I belong to Barbouille and Orphee), dogs and horses.
Anthropology is one of my greatest interest, but I like also marine
life, specially marine mammels)

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Yee, Danny

Born 1969. Eurasian (father 2nd generation Chinese), but socialised as
'Australian' (whatever that means) and technically Jewish (mother's
mother's mother was a practising Jew)! Makes a bare living as a
part-time computer network administrator; devotes the rest of his time
to a wide range of subjects of which anthropology is only the most
prominent. Would like to do a PhD in anthropology one day. Writes
book reviews and likes cats and climbing mountains.