Edmund Searles

Edmund Searles

Professor of Anthropology
Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program
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Director, Writing Program

Educational Background

  • B.A., Bowdoin College
  • Ph.D., University of Washington

Teaching Interests

  • The Anthropology of Native North America
  • Environmental Anthropology
  • Communicating Across Cultures
  • Nature, Culture, Place
  • Hairdos, Piercings, and Tattoos: Body and Identity
  • Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
  • Fieldwork in the Local Community
  • Advanced Seminar in Anthropology
  • Culture and Environmental Change
  • Culture, Nature, and Mythology

Selected Publications

Reciprocity Rules: Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters

Johnson, Michelle C. and Searles, Edmund (Ned), eds. 2021. Reciprocity Rules: Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters. Lanham: Lexington Books.

"The Smell of Smudge, the Work of Smoke: Reenacting Native American Ritual in an Anthropology Course," pp. 101-116 in Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom: Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner, Pamela Frese and Susan Brownell eds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

"Fresh seal blood looks like beauty and life": #Sealfies and subsistence in Nunavut." Hunter Gatherer Research 3:4.

Review of 'Hunters, Predators, and Prey: Inuit Perceptions of Animals'. Human Ecology, 2017.

"Digging into my Past: Archaeology and Humanism in the Canadian Arctic," Anthropology and Humanism 42(1): 72-90, 2017.

"Restaurants, fields, markets, and feasts: Food and culture in semi-public spaces." co-authored with Clare Sammells. Food and Foodways 24(3-4): 129-135, 2016.

"To Sell or Not to Sell: Country food markets and Inuit identity in Nunavut." Food and Foodways 24 (3-4): 194-212, 2016.

"The raw, the cooked and the fermented: The culinary heritage of foragers, past and present." Pp. 25-36 in Heritage Cuisines: Traditions, identities and tourism, Dallen J. Timothy ed. Routledge, 2016.

“Placing Identity: Town, Land, and Authenticity in Nunavut, Canada.” Acta Borealia 27(2): 151-166, 2010.

“Inuit Identity in the Canadian Arctic.” Ethnology 47(4): 239-255. Fall 2008.

“Prophecy, Sorcery, and Reincarnation: Inuit Spirituality in the Age of Skepticism.” Pp. 158-182 in Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field, Jean-Guy Goulet and Bruce Granville Miller, eds. University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

"Anthropology in an Era of Inuit Empowerment." Pp. 89-101. In Critical Inuit Studies in an Era of Globalization, Pam Stern and Lisa Stevenson, eds. University of Nebraska Press. 2006.

“Inuit: Canada and Greenland.” Pp. 279-281 in the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, Volume 1. Solomon H. Katz, ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 2003.

“Noms, Récits, et Mémoire au Nunavut [The Embodiment of Cultural Memory and Meaning in Nunavut]," Anthropologie et Sociétés 26(2-3): 179-191, 2002.

"Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities" Food and Foodways 10(1): 55-78, 2002.

“Fashioning Selves and Tradition: Case Studies on Personhood and Experience in Nunavut.” American Review of Canadian Studies 31 (1-2): 121-136, 2001.

“Why Do You Ask So Many Questions?”: Dialogical Anthropology and Learning How Not to Ask in Canadian Inuit Society. Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement 11(1): 47-64, 2000.

Usher, Peter J., Gerard Duhaime, and Edmund Searles, ""The Household as an Economic Unit in Arctic Aboriginal Communities and its Measurement by Means of a Mass Survey." Social IndicatorsResearch 61(2): 175-202, 2002.

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