Alexander S. Dent
Title — Associate Professor of Anthropology
Associate Editor of Anthropological Quarterly
Office — Hortense Amsterdam House 302
Phone — (202) 994-5084
E-mail — asdent@email.gwu.edu
Areas of Expertise —
Linguistic Anthropology
Public/popular culture; language; media, rural-urban relations; ethnography; ethnomusicology. Regional foci: Brazil; Latin America; North America
Current Research
Dr. Dent's recent book manuscript analyzed the post-authoritarian popularity of rural public culture in Central-Southern Brazil, focusing in particular on Brazilian "country" music and rodeo. His next project involves the informal musical economy in Brazil, inquiring into the way in which 52% of Brazilian music sales are made up of illegal copies of CDs. His research contributes to the ethnography of public culture, and the elaboration of theories of performativity.
Ongoing Projects
- A documentary film on bull-riding in Brazil in collaboration with Charles Laird of Big Fish Productions, and funded by the National Film Board of Canada.
- An elaboration on the musical attributes of culture through analysis of the history of anthropological theory.
Visit Dr. Dent's website, which describes his research in greater detail.
Education
Ph.D. 2003, University of Chicago
M.A. 1998, University of Chicago
B.A. 1993, Princeton University
Publications
See Dr. Dent's CV for a complete list of publications.
Books
2009 Dent, A.S. River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
2012 Dent, A.S. "Piracy, circulatory legitimacy, and neoliberal subjectivity in Brazil," Cultural Anthropology 27(1): 28-49. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01125.x
2010 Dent, A.S. "Flouting the Elmo necessity and denying the local roots of interpretation: 'Anthropology's' quarrel with ACTA and authoritarian IP regimes," PIJIP Research Paper no. 3. Washington, DC: American University Washington College of Law.
2007 Dent, A.S. "Country brothers: Kinship and chronotype in Brazilian rural public culture," Anthropological Quarterly 80(2): 455-496.
2006 Dent, A.S. "High ropes and hard times: Wilderness and the sublime in adventure-based education," International Journal of the History of Sport 23(5): 856-875.
2003 Dent, A.S. "Cross-cultural 'countries': Covers, conjectures, and the whiff of Nashville in musica sertaneja (Brazilian commercial country music)," Popular Music and Society 28(2): 207-227.
Classes Taught
Anth 0801 (old 801): Piracy, Copying, and Culture
Anth 1004 (004): Language in Culture and Society
Anth 3601 (161): Language, Culture, and Cognition
Anth 3602 (162): Ethnographic Analysis of Speech
Anth 3691 (169): Topics: Media, Technology, and Performance
Anth 3702 (172): Peoples of Central and South America
Anth 6104 (204): Proseminar in Linguistic Anthropology
Anth 6591 (259): Topics: Culture, Intellectual Property, and the Informal Economy