JOHN BORNEMAN
Professor of Anthropology
Princeton University
Curriculum Vitae
Work Address Private Address
Department of Anthropology 69 Valley Road
100 Aaron Burr Hall Princeton, New Jersey 08540
Princeton University Tel. (609)-430-9767
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-1011 Fax: (607) 258-1032
Tel. (609) 258-5535 Email:
RESEARCH AREAS
Culture and international order; political and legal anthropology; anthropology of memory, authority and identification, narrative theory and ethnographic method; urban studies, sexuality; Europe; Germany, Lebanon, Syria
FIELDWORK
1999-present -- research in Lebanon and Syria
1994 -- research in central Europe (Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Moscow)
1984-2000 -- extended and shorter periods of research in Berlin, Germany
EDUCATION
11/89 Harvard University. Ph.D. 1989. Anthropology. Thesis entitled: Narratives of Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kinship Formation and Nation-Building in the Context of the Cold War, 1945/49-1989
10/87-2/89 Free University (West Berlin)
9/86-6/87 Humboldt University (East Berlin)
9/83-6/85 Harvard University. M.A. 1985. Anthropology
9/80-6/83 University of Washington. M.A. 1983. Political Science
9/70-12/73 University of Wisconsin-Madison. B.A. 1973. Political Science
AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS
2005 Wenner Gren Research Fellowship
2004-5 Fulbright Sr. Professor, Aleppo University, Syria
2002-4 Old Dominion Fellow, Humanities Council, Princeton University
1999 City of Vienna - Urban Fellow, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, Austria
1998 Cornell University Appel Teaching Award
1997, 1996 Rockefeller Foundation Invited Team Residency, (Team Leader) "Death of the Father," book, digital video disk project, Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy
1995 Rockefeller Foundation Resident Guest, Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy
1995 Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant, "Restructuring Justice and State Legitimacy
in Former East European Socialist Countries"
1995 Swedish Academy of Science of Sweden, Guest Scholar, Stockholm, Sweden
1995 Norwegian Academy of Science, Guest Scholar, Bergen, Norway
1994-1995 Fulbright Sr. Professor, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
1993-1994 ACLS-DAAD Grant for American-German cooperative research, "Restructuring Justice and State Legitimacy in the Former GDR"
1992-1994 National Council for Soviet and East European Research, "Restructuring
Justice and State Legitimacy in the Former GDR"
1991 Mellon Grant from Cornell University Western Society Program, and MacArthur Foundation Grant for faculty research in peace studies, Cornell University
1991 Center for German and European Studies, University of California-Berkeley, grant for completion of book manuscript for Cambridge University Press
10/90 Spencer Foundation, Small Grants Program, "Learning to be entrepreneurs in the transition from a plan to a market economy in East Germany"
3/90 German Marshall Fund, grant to observe East German elections
8/89-10/89 International Research Exchange (IREX), "Returned: Life histories of formerly exiled German Jews in the two Berlins"
1986-1989 Social Science Research Council - Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, Harvard Krupp Fellowship, International Research Exchange, Fulbright-Hays Grant, for thesis research
1983 DAAD language study grant (Staufen, FRG)
EDITORSHIPS, OFFICES
2005-Princeton Report on Knowledge (P-ROK), internet platform, founding editor (with Gyan Prakash) http://www.prok.princeton.edu
2004-2006 Executive Board, Political and Legal Anthropology Review
2004- Executive Board of Princeton Institute for International Studies
2000-2008 Executive Board, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, Austria (Appointed)
2001-2004 Executive Board, Cultural Anthropology (Appointed)
2001-2002 Wenner-Gren Foundation Review Board (Appointed)
1998-2003 Councilor, American Ethnological Society (Elected)
1998 Director, Institute for European Studies, Cornell University (Appointed)
1997-1999 Executive Board, Association of Political and Legal Anthropologists (Elected)
1995-1998 Associate Editor, American Ethnologist (Appointed)
1992-2000 Executive Committee, Cornell Institute for European Societies (Appointed)
1992-2001 Executive Committee, Cornell Peace Studies Program (Appointed)
PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS, GUEST PROFESSORSHIPS
2004 (Fall) Aleppo University, Syria. Sr. Fulbright Guest Professor
2001-present Princeton University, Professor of Anthropology
1999-01 Cornell University, Professor of Anthropology
1998-99 Cornell University, Associate Professor of Anthropology
1991-1998 Cornell University, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
1999 (Spring) University of California, Berkeley, Guest Professor of Anthropology
1998 (May-June) École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Guest Directeur d'Etudes, Seminars on Political Identification and German Unification
1995 (April) University of Stockholm, Sweden, Guest Professor in Department of Social Anthropology
1995 (May-June) University of Bergen, Norway, Guest Professor in Department of Social Anthropology
1994-95 Humboldt University, Berlin, Sr. Fulbright Guest Professor for European Ethnology
1990-91 University of California, San Diego, Visiting Lecturer in Departments of Anthropology and Political Science
1989-90 Harvard University, Lecturer in Committee on Degrees in Social Studies
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
American Anthropological Association (1987-); American Ethnological Society (1987-); Society for the Anthropology of Europe (1992-); Society for Cultural Anthropology (1997-), Association of Political and Legal Anthropologists (1995-1999), German Studies Association (1992-1998)
REVIEWER FOR PROFESSIONAL JOURNALS
American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Man: Journal of the Royal Academy of Britain, Cultural Anthropology, Society for the Anthropology of Europe, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Diacritics, Current Anthropology
REVIEWER FOR PRESSES AND GRANT AGENCIES
Cambridge, Chicago, California, Oxford, Duke, Cornell, Princeton, Indiana, Rutgers University Presses, The Free Press, Basic Books, Houghton Mifflin Social Studies Series, National Science Foundation, SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Peace and Security Studies, SSRC-Berlin Program for European Studies, Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada, Wenner-Gren Foundation, American Academy in Berlin, SSRC-Fieldwork Grants, American Council of Learned Scholars, Berlin Academy
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
2007 Syrian Episodes: Sons, Fathers, and an Anthropologist in Aleppo (Princeton: Princeton University Press)
2004 The “Case of Ariel Sharon” and the Fate of Universal Jurisdiction, ed. (Princeton: Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies)
2004 Death of the Father: An Anthropology of The End in Political Authority, ed. (New York: Berghahn Press) Also Website [http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/dof/]), used as Digital Screen Capture by Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 2000
1998 Subversions of International Order: Studies in the Political Anthropology of Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press)--simultaneous hardcover and paperback
1997 Settling Accounts: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History, Princeton: Princeton University Press)--simultaneous hardcover and paperback
1995 Sojourners: The Return of German-Jews and the Question of Identity, (co-author Jeffrey Peck) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)
1992 Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation (No. 86, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)--simultaneous hardcover and paperback
1991 After the Wall: East Meets West in the New Berlin, (New York: Basic Books)--hardcover in 1991, paperback in 1992
1991 Gay Voices From East Germany, edited and with introduction, co-translation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) -- simultaneous hardcover and paperback
ARTICLES (reviewed articles followed by *)
2007 “On Money and the Memory of Loss,” in Restitution and Memory: Historical Remembrance and Material Restitution in Europe, ed. Dan Diner and Gotthart Wunberg, New York: Berghahn Books*
2007 Comments on Robert Hayden’s “Moral Vison and Impaired Insight: Or the Imagination of Other People’s Communities in Bosnia,” Current Anthropology 48 (1) February
2006 "Postscript: Reflections on Totemism Tomorrow: Horse Breeds and Breeding in the United States and “France,” 351-365. And reprint of "Race, Ethnicity, Species, Breed: Totemism and Horse Breed Classification in America," 319-350, in Modes of Comparison: Theory and Practice, ed. Aram Yengoyan. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)
2006 “Kiss Daddy! A Syrian son longs to be an American,” Granta 93 (Spring): 185-200
2005 “Public Apologies as Performative Redress,” Johns Hopkins SAIS Review of International Affairs 25 (2): 53-66, special issue “Pride and Guilt in International Relations”*
2005 “The Weather Where We Are (Sri Lanka),” Granta 91 (Fall): 227-233.
2004 “Returning German Jews and the Question of Identity,” 127-149, in Coming Home: Refugees, Migrants, and Those Who Stayed Behind, ed. Lynellen Long and Ellen Oxfeld (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press)*
2003 “Is The United States Europe’s Other? American Ethnologist 30 (4): 487-507, with commentaries by Ostendorf, Rabinow, Schiller, Bowman, Ickstadt, and my rejoinder “Someone won the war!”
2003 “Responsibility after Military Intervention: What is Regime Change?” POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropological Review, Vol. 26 (1): 28-54. Response by Kunal Parker, “Rejoinder,” POLAR Vol. 26 (1): 49-54
2002 “Deutschsein: Fiction und das Reale,” 173-194, in Inspecting Germany, eds. Thomas Hauschild and Bernd Jürgen Warneken. Münster: Lit Verlag
2002 “Multikulti or Schweinerei in the Year 2000,” German Politics & Society 20 (2) (Issue 63, Summer 2002): 93-114*
2002 “On Money and the Memory of Loss,” Etnográfica 6(2): 281-302 (Portuguese Journal of Social Anthropology)
2002 “Introduction: German Sacrifice Today,” 3-25, in Sacrifice and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Germany, eds. Greg Eghigian and Matthew P. Berg. (College Station: Texas A & M Press)
2002 "Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing: Listening, Retribution, and Affiliation," Public Culture 14(2):281-304.* Commentary and Response to Laura Nader, Richard Falk, Richard Wilson, and Seven Sampson, “Why Reconciliation: A Response to Critics,” Public Culture 15 (1): 197-206
2001 “Genital Anxiety,” Anthropological Quarterly 75 (1): 129-138
2001 "Caring and To Be Cared For: Displacing Marriage, Kinship, Gender, and Sexuality," 29-46, in The Ethics of Kinship, ed. James Faubion. (New Jersey: Rowland and Littlefield)*
2001 "State, Anthropological Aspects," International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. London: Elsevier Science Ltd.
2001 "Alternative 'Geschichten' in Gegenwärtigen Amerikanischen Socialanthropologie,” in The Cultural Turn--Einst und Jetzt. Zur Geschichte der Kulturwissenschaften. Vienna: Internationales Forschungszentrum der Kulturwissenschaften
2000 “Politics without a Head: Is the Love Parade a New Form of Political Identification?” (co-author Stefan Senders), Cultural Anthropology 15 (2):294-317*
2000 "Comments on Richard Wilson's 'Reconciliation and Revenge in South Africa,'" Current Anthropology 41 (1) (February): 87-89
2000 "Kopflose Politik: Die Love Parade als neue Art der politischen Identifikation--ein Essay, (co-author Stefan Senders), in Religion und Politik. Zwischen Universalismus und Partikularismus," pp. 179-202, eds. Heinz-Dieter Meyer, Michael Minkenberg, Ilona Ostner. (Opladen: Leske & Budrich)*
1999 "Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing: Witnessing, Retribution, and Domestic Reform," in Die Zeit der Jungs. Zur Organisation von Gewalt und der Austragung von Konflikten in Georgien, editors Jan Koehler and Christian Zuercher. (Hamburg: Lit-Verlag)
1999 "Drei Arten, die DDR zu begraben. Ein anthropologischer Essay zur deutschen Vereinigung," Berliner Debatte INITIAL 10 (4/5): 174-179
1999 "Can Apologies Contribute to Peace? An Argument for Retribution," The Anthropology of East Europe Review 17 (1): 7-20*
1999 "Grundung durch Umzug. Die Hauptstadtwerdung Berlins," (co-author Heinz Bude) Mittelweg 36 (6/98): 25-35
1998 "Retribution and Judgment: Violence, Democratic Accountability, and the Invocation of the Rule of Law," Ethnologia Europaea 28: 131-150
1998 "Der 'Standort Deutschland' und die Verlegung der Hauptstadt," Berliner Blaetter: Ethnographische und Ethnologische Beitraege 17 (June): 61-71
1997 "Caring and To Be Cared For: Displacing Marriage, Kinship, Gender, and Sexuality," International Social Science Journal 154 (December 1997): 573-584 (special issue, Anthropology--Issues and Perspectives: II. Sounding Out New Possibilities), translated into six languages and distributed by UNESCO and Blackwell Press)
1997 "Europeanization," Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 487-514 (co-author Nick Fowler)
1997 "Grenzregime (Border Regime): The Wall and Its Aftermath," in Border Cultures: Nation and State at International Boundaries, eds. Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, pp. 162-190 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).* First published in shorter form, 1995 "Heidi and the Wall," Canadian Woman Studies/ les cahiers de la femme 16 (1): 15-22*
1997 "State, Territory, and National Identity Formation in the Two Berlins, 1945-1995," in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, eds. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, pp. 93-118 (Durham: Duke University Press)*
1996 "Identity, Exile, and Division: Disjunctures of Culture, Nationality, and Citizenship in German-Jewish Selfhood in East and West Berlin," in Jews, Germans, Memory: Reconstructions of Jewish Life in Germany, ed. Y. Michal Bodemann, pp. 131-159 (Michigan: University of Michigan Press)*
1996 "Until Death Do Us Part: Marriage/Death in Anthropological Discourse," featured article: issues in debate, American Ethnologist 23 (2): 215-238*
1996 "Narrative, Genealogy, and Historical Consciousness: Citizenship in a Disintegrating State," in Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Study, eds. E. Valentine Daniel and Jeffrey M. Peck, pp. 214-235 (Berkeley: University of California Press)*
1995 "Anthropology as Foreign Policy," American Anthropologist 97 (4): 663-671*
1995 "How Not to Think about German Culture," The Funnel (April, 1995): 12-16
1994 "Towards a Theory of Ethnic Cleansing: Territorial Sovereignty, Heterosexuality, and Europe," Working Papers on Transitions from State Socialism #94.4, pp. 1-45, Cornell Project on Comparative Institutional Analysis (Ithaca: Cornell Center for International Studies)
1993 "Time-Space Compression and the Continental Divide in German Subjectivity," New Formations (3) 1 (Winter): 102-118; shorter version reprinted in Oral History Review 21/2 (Winter, 1993): 41-47.* First published in 1991 as “Time, Space, and Person in the New Germany.” The Stanford Berlin Symposium on Transition in Europe. Economic Transformation in Germany -- Social, Political, and Psychological Dimensions, pp. 46-51 (Berlin, Germany: Stanford Berlin Study Center)
1993 "Trouble in the Kitchen: Totalitarianism, Love, and Resistance to Authority," in Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present, pp. 93-118, ed. Sally Falk Moore (Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society Monograph Series)*
1993 "Germany: Mired in a Slough of Despondence," in Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order, pp. 449-457, eds. Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck. (New York: Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.)
1993 “Uniting the German Nation: Law, Narrative, and Historicity,” American Ethnologist 20(2): 288-311.* First published in 1991 as “Uniting the German Nation: Law and Narrations of History,” Working Papers on Transitions from State Socialism #91.2, Cornell Project on Comparative Institutional Analysis. Cornell: Center for International Studies
1992 “State, Territory, and Identity Formation in the Postwar Berlins,” Cultural Anthropology 7(1): 44-61*
1991 "Power, Objectivity, and the Other: Studies in the Creation of Sexual Species in Anglo-American Discourse," Dialectical Anthropology 15 (4): 285-314 (co-author Scott Long) *
1988 "Race, Ethnicity, Species, Breed: Totemism and Horse Breed Classification in America," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1): 25-51 *
1988 "Leihmütterverträge in den USA," (Surrogate Motherhood Contracts in the USA) Neue Justiz: Zeitschrift für sozialistisches Recht und Gesetzlichkeit 42:9, (co-author Ilona Stolpe) Berlin, GDR *
1987 "AIDS in the two Berlins," special issue of October: Journal of Art, Politics, Culture 43, Winter, pp. 223-237. Reprinted in AIDS: Cultural Activism/Cultural Analysis, ed. Douglas Crimp (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988) *
1987 "Sexual Aufklärung and Sexual Practices in the German Democratic Republic," Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality? Conference papers, Social Science, Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Free University, pp. 249-261
1986 "Emigrees as Bullets/ Immigration as Penetration: Perceptions of the Marielitos," Journal of Popular Culture 20 (3): 73-92 *
PUBLICATIONS IN PRESS
"Immigration Through Event Analysis: The Marielitos of 1980 and the Elian Story of 2000," Postscript to reprint of "Immigration as Penetration,” in Images of the Immigrant: A Global Perspective, ed. Leo Chavez. (Berkeley: University of California Press)*