Alexander S. Dent

Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Associate Editor of Anthropological Quarterly
E-mail asdent@gwu.edu
Office: Hortense Amsterdam House 302 / (202) 994-5084

Dr. Dent is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist whose work examines language, public culture, intellectual property, and music in Latin America (Brazil) and North America.

Research

Dr. Dent's current book manuscript analyzes 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.

Current Research Projects

1. 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.
   
2. 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.

Selected Publications

See Dr. Dent's CV for a complete list of publications. (link)

Book

2009	Dent, A.S. River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

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.

Courses Taught

Anth 004: Language in Culture and Society
Anth 161: Language, Culture, and Cognition Anth 162: Ethnographic Analysis of Speech
Anth 169: Topics in Linguistic Anthropology: Media, Technology, and Performance
Anth 172: Peoples of Central and South America
Anth 204: Proseminar in Linguistic Anthropology

Education

Ph.D. 2003, University of Chicago
M.A. 1998, University of Chicago
B.A. 1993, Princeton University