Professor, joint appointment with Watson
Institute for International Studies
Ph.D. Harvard University

Research Interests
I have researched and taught in a number of areas, including cultural understandings of the emotions, popular photography and ideas of race and gender in the U.S., changes in local democracy with economic restructuring in the last part of the twentieth century, and militarization and its shaping of social life beyond the battlefield. Each of these diverse subjects share relevance, however, to the question of how to better understand power and inequality as they are culturally articulated. For the last ten years, my research has focused on questions of militaries, war, and society. Through research around military bases in North Carolina, Guam, Okinawa, South Korea, and the Philippines, I have examined the impact of military spending and military practice on communities in political economic and cultural historical perspective. With an interest in the relevance of anthropological research for social change efforts, some of my research has been conducted for service and activist organizations, including a domestic violence shelter, Cultural Survival, and the American Friends Service Committee.

Current Research Projects

Selected Publications

The Bases of Empire:  The Struggle against US Military Posts (ed.). London: Pluto Press (with The Transnational Institute), 2008.

Local Democracy under Siege: Activism, Public Interests, and Private Politics (with Dorothy Holland, Donald Nonini, Marla Frederick, Thaddeus Guldbrandsen, Enrique Murillo, and Lesley Bartlett). New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Empire Is in the Details. American Ethnologist, 2006, 33 (4): 593-611.

Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century. Boston : Beacon Press, 2001.

Making War at Home in the United States : Militarization and the Current Crisis. American Anthropologist , 2002, 104 (3): 723-35.

The Psychological Ethic and the Spirit of Containment. Public Culture , 1997, 9 (2):135-59.

The Gender of Theory. In Women Writing Culture. Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon, eds. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1995.

Reading National Geographic. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1993 (with Jane Collins ).

Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Courses Taught
For current and scheduled courses taught by Professor Lutz, click here.