Office: EPS 1.146
Office Hours: Fridays 10:30-12:30
Phone: 512 471 8520
ward.keeler@mail.utexas.edu

Additional affiliations: Editor, Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group; Trustee, Burma Studies Foundation

Education: PhD, University of Chicago, 1982.

Research interests:
Anthropology and expressive culture, including music, theatre, and literature; language and culture; postcoloniality; Java and Bali (Indonesia), and Burma.

I am interested in the ways that people in the societies of Southeast Asia where I have worked (Java and Bali, and lowland Burma) take hierarchy as the grounds upon which all social relations are based, whereas in the U.S. people are endlessly troubled by contradictions among equality, autonomy, and hierarchy. The contrast helps to make sense of what people in these societies do and say in their performing arts— which are the main focus of my research—as well as in religious, domestic, and other matters.

Field(s) of Study: Folklore/Public Culture; Social Anthropology

Recent Publications:

Compact Disks

In production. Classical Burmese Theatre Music.

2003. Mahagita: harp and vocal music from Burma. Music recording coproduced with Rick Heizman. Liner notes by Ward Keeler. Smithsonian Folkways 40491.

Book

2004. Durga Umayi, by Y. B. Mangunwijaya. Translated and annotated, with an Introduction and Afterword, by Ward Keeler. Seattle: University of Washington Press, Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Articles

In Press. Teaching Southeast Asia Through Fiction and Memoirs. To appear in Anthropology Today.

Accepted. What’s Burmese About Burmese Rap?: how expressive genres go global. To appear in American Ethnologist.

2006. The Pleasures of Polyglossia. In ed. J. Lindsay, Between Tongues: Translation and/of/in Performance in Asia. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Pp. 204- 23.

2005. “But Princes Jump:” performing masculinity in Mandalay. In, ed. Monique Skidmore, Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Pp. 206-228.

2003. Wayang Kulit in the Political Margin. In, ed. Jan Mrazek, Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance-Events. Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan Press. pp. 92-108.

2002. Durga Umayi and the Postcolonialist Dilemma. In, eds. Keith Foulcher and Tony Day, Clearing a Space: postcolonial readings of modern Indonesian literature. Leiden: KITLV Press. pp. 349-69.