Professor Emerita, Anthropology
gfharnik@umich.eduOffice Information:
104-D West Hall, 1085 S. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107
phone: 734.763.4735
About
Gillian Feeley-Harnik (Ph.D. Anthropology, New York University, 1976) is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her areas of ethnographic and archival research include Madagascar (since 1971), the United States (since 1994) and Great Britain (since 1998). She is also interested in the history and anthropology of the Bible and biblically inspired religions in the Jewish and Christian diasporas and beyond. Her research in these areas has been published in many articles and books, including A Green Estate: Restoring Independence in Madagascar (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), The Lord's Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2nd ed., 1994), and two books in progress: comparative studies of Charles Darwin and Lewis Henry Morgan, their kin and co-workers, focusing on popular ideas and practices concerning kinship and ecology, religion and science. These are tentatively entitled: "Intimate Immensities: Kinship and Ecology in Darwin's England" and "Lewis Henry Morgan and the American Beaver." This current work is based mainly on archival research in Great Britain and the U.S., but includes some ethnographic work in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (and some forays into the work of British missionary-botanists in Madagascar). Morgan, Darwin's American contemporary, was the founder of the comparative study of kinship, and through kinship, the founder of anthropology in the U.S. Both Darwin and Morgan argued that "descent is the hidden bond of connection" linking all forms of life (Darwin's words). Both drew on biblical language to articulate social, biological, and moral concerns they hoped to resolve through science. The goal of the research is to illuminate how people grasp the "mystery of life" in their everyday social practices, in reckoning who is kin to them, how they are connected to other creatures living and dead, and how popular practices of kinship and ecology in nineteenth-century Great Britain and America contributed to the life sciences of biology and anthropology. Here are publications related to these issues (including some related papers in other areas).
2019. "Lewis Henry Morgan: American Beavers and Their Works." Ethnos, special issue on "Ethnography Beyond the Human: The 'Other-then-Human' in Ethnographic Work," eds. Marianne Elisabeth Lien and Gísli Pálsson. DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1080/00141844.2019.1619605
2019. “Descent in Retrospect and Prospect.” For The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Kinship, ed. Sandra Bamford, 51-87. Cambridge Handbooks in Anthropology. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1017/9781139644938.003
2018. “Morgan, Lewis Henry (1818-81).” International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Hilary Callan, General Editor; Morgan Clarke, Associate Editor. London: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2056
2017. “Environmental Justice and Stratified Re/Production: An Update to ‘Plants and People, Children or Wealth: Shifting Grounds of ‘Choice’ in Madagascar [Po-LAR 18/2, 1995].” Po-LAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Virtual Edition 2017 on “Environmental Justice.” DOI: https://polarjournal.org/2017-virtual-edition-environmental-justice/
2017. ““Spiritual Kinship in an Age of Dissent: Pigeon Fanciers in Darwin’s England.” In New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties across the Abrahamic Religions, eds. Asiya Malik, Todne Thomas, and Rose Wellman, 51-83. Series: “Contemporary Anthropology of Religion.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2016. “Christianity.” In The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, ed. Darra Goldstein, foreword by Sidney Mintz, pp. 158-62. New York: Oxford University Press. URL: https://www-oxfordreference-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780199313396.001.0001/acref-9780199313396-e-117
2014. “Bodies, Words, and Works: Charles Darwin and Lewis Henry Morgan on Human-Animal Relations.” In America’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory and U.S. Culture, 1859-Present, eds., Tina Gianquitto and Lydia Fisher, 265-301. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
2013. “Placing the Dead: The Kinship of Free Men in Pre- and Post-Civil War America.” In Vital Relations: Kinship and the Critique of Modernity, eds. Fenella Cannell and Susan McKinnon, 179-216. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
2013. “John Ferguson McLennan (1827-1881).” In R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopaedia. 2 v, 2:537-539. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
2011. Stiner, Mary C., and Gillian Feeley-Harnik. 2011. “Energy and Ecosystems.” In Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, eds., Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail, 78-102. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2011. Trautmann, Thomas R., Gillian Feeley-Harnik, and John Mitani.] 2011. “Deep Kinship.” In Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, eds., Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail, 160-188. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2008. “Death, Mourning, and Ancestors [Africa]” and “Madagascar: People and History, Religions. Revised for New Encyclopedia of Africa, 2nd edition, eds. John Middleton and Joseph Miller. Vols. 2:12-26; 3:41-45. N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons Reference Books, Thomson/Gale (in print & ebook).
2007. “‘An Experiment on a Gigantic Scale’: Darwin and the Domestication of Pigeons in London.” In Where the Wild Things Are Now: Domestication Reconsidered, eds. Molly Mullin and Rebecca Cassidy, 147-182. Oxford: Berg.
2006. “The Anthropological Study of Religion.” In “Anthropology,” edited by Ralph Nicholas. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved September 19, 2006, from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-236859
2004. “The Geography of Descent.” Proceedings of the British Academy 125:311-64. (Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 2003.)
2003. “Number One — Nambawani — Lambaoany: Clothing and Cultural Exchange in Northwestern Madagascar.” In Lova/Inheritance: Past and Present in Madagascar, eds Z. Crossland, G. Sodikoff, W. Griffin. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 14:63-103.
2002. “Lewis Henry Morgan.” In Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, eds., Hans Dieter Betz, Don. S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, Eberhard Jüngl. 4th edition. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
2001. “The Ethnography of Creation: Lewis Henry Morgan and the American Beaver.” In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, eds. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, 54-84. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
2001. “Ravenala madagascariensis Sonnerat: The Historical Ecology of a “Flagship Species” in Madagascar.” (Special double issue, “Emerging Histories in Madagascar,” ed. Jeffrey C. Kaufmann.) Ethnohistory 48 (1/2): 31-86.
2001. “‘The Mystery of Life in All Its Forms’: Religious Dimensions of Culture in Early American Anthropology.” In Religion and Cultural Studies, ed., Susan Mizruchi, 140-91. Princeton University Press.
2000. “Childbirth and the Affiliation of Children in Northwest Madagascar.” Taloha (Revue de l’Institut de Civilisations—Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, Antananarivo) 13:135-72. (Numéro spécial: “Repenser ‘la femme malgache’: de nouvelles perspectives sur le genre à Madagascar,” ed. S. Fee).
1999. “‘Communities of Blood’: The Natural History of Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41: 215-62.
About
Gillian Feeley-Harnik (Ph.D. Anthropology, New York University, 1976) is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her areas of ethnographic and archival research include Madagascar (since 1971), the United States (since 1994) and Great Britain (since 1998). She is also interested in the history and anthropology of the Bible and biblically inspired religions in the Jewish and Christian diasporas and beyond. Her research in these areas has been published in many articles and books, including A Green Estate: Restoring Independence in Madagascar (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), The Lord's Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2nd ed., 1994), and two books in progress: comparative studies of Charles Darwin and Lewis Henry Morgan, their kin and co-workers, focusing on popular ideas and practices concerning kinship and ecology, religion and science. These are tentatively entitled: "Intimate Immensities: Kinship and Ecology in Darwin's England" and "Lewis Henry Morgan and the American Beaver." This current work is based mainly on archival research in Great Britain and the U.S., but includes some ethnographic work in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (and some forays into the work of British missionary-botanists in Madagascar). Morgan, Darwin's American contemporary, was the founder of the comparative study of kinship, and through kinship, the founder of anthropology in the U.S. Both Darwin and Morgan argued that "descent is the hidden bond of connection" linking all forms of life (Darwin's words). Both drew on biblical language to articulate social, biological, and moral concerns they hoped to resolve through science. The goal of the research is to illuminate how people grasp the "mystery of life" in their everyday social practices, in reckoning who is kin to them, how they are connected to other creatures living and dead, and how popular practices of kinship and ecology in nineteenth-century Great Britain and America contributed to the life sciences of biology and anthropology. Here are publications related to these issues (including some related papers in other areas).
2019. "Lewis Henry Morgan: American Beavers and Their Works." Ethnos, special issue on "Ethnography Beyond the Human: The 'Other-then-Human' in Ethnographic Work," eds. Marianne Elisabeth Lien and Gísli Pálsson. DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1080/00141844.2019.1619605
2019. “Descent in Retrospect and Prospect.” For The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Kinship, ed. Sandra Bamford, 51-87. Cambridge Handbooks in Anthropology. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1017/9781139644938.003
2018. “Morgan, Lewis Henry (1818-81).” International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Hilary Callan, General Editor; Morgan Clarke, Associate Editor. London: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2056
2017. “Environmental Justice and Stratified Re/Production: An Update to ‘Plants and People, Children or Wealth: Shifting Grounds of ‘Choice’ in Madagascar [Po-LAR 18/2, 1995].” Po-LAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Virtual Edition 2017 on “Environmental Justice.” DOI: https://polarjournal.org/2017-virtual-edition-environmental-justice/
2017. ““Spiritual Kinship in an Age of Dissent: Pigeon Fanciers in Darwin’s England.” In New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties across the Abrahamic Religions, eds. Asiya Malik, Todne Thomas, and Rose Wellman, 51-83. Series: “Contemporary Anthropology of Religion.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2016. “Christianity.” In The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, ed. Darra Goldstein, foreword by Sidney Mintz, pp. 158-62. New York: Oxford University Press. URL: https://www-oxfordreference-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780199313396.001.0001/acref-9780199313396-e-117
2014. “Bodies, Words, and Works: Charles Darwin and Lewis Henry Morgan on Human-Animal Relations.” In America’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory and U.S. Culture, 1859-Present, eds., Tina Gianquitto and Lydia Fisher, 265-301. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
2013. “Placing the Dead: The Kinship of Free Men in Pre- and Post-Civil War America.” In Vital Relations: Kinship and the Critique of Modernity, eds. Fenella Cannell and Susan McKinnon, 179-216. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
2013. “John Ferguson McLennan (1827-1881).” In R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopaedia. 2 v, 2:537-539. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
2011. Stiner, Mary C., and Gillian Feeley-Harnik. 2011. “Energy and Ecosystems.” In Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, eds., Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail, 78-102. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2011. Trautmann, Thomas R., Gillian Feeley-Harnik, and John Mitani.] 2011. “Deep Kinship.” In Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, eds., Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail, 160-188. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2008. “Death, Mourning, and Ancestors [Africa]” and “Madagascar: People and History, Religions. Revised for New Encyclopedia of Africa, 2nd edition, eds. John Middleton and Joseph Miller. Vols. 2:12-26; 3:41-45. N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons Reference Books, Thomson/Gale (in print & ebook).
2007. “‘An Experiment on a Gigantic Scale’: Darwin and the Domestication of Pigeons in London.” In Where the Wild Things Are Now: Domestication Reconsidered, eds. Molly Mullin and Rebecca Cassidy, 147-182. Oxford: Berg.
2006. “The Anthropological Study of Religion.” In “Anthropology,” edited by Ralph Nicholas. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved September 19, 2006, from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-236859
2004. “The Geography of Descent.” Proceedings of the British Academy 125:311-64. (Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 2003.)
2003. “Number One — Nambawani — Lambaoany: Clothing and Cultural Exchange in Northwestern Madagascar.” In Lova/Inheritance: Past and Present in Madagascar, eds Z. Crossland, G. Sodikoff, W. Griffin. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 14:63-103.
2002. “Lewis Henry Morgan.” In Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, eds., Hans Dieter Betz, Don. S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, Eberhard Jüngl. 4th edition. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
2001. “The Ethnography of Creation: Lewis Henry Morgan and the American Beaver.” In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, eds. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, 54-84. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
2001. “Ravenala madagascariensis Sonnerat: The Historical Ecology of a “Flagship Species” in Madagascar.” (Special double issue, “Emerging Histories in Madagascar,” ed. Jeffrey C. Kaufmann.) Ethnohistory 48 (1/2): 31-86.
2001. “‘The Mystery of Life in All Its Forms’: Religious Dimensions of Culture in Early American Anthropology.” In Religion and Cultural Studies, ed., Susan Mizruchi, 140-91. Princeton University Press.
2000. “Childbirth and the Affiliation of Children in Northwest Madagascar.” Taloha (Revue de l’Institut de Civilisations—Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, Antananarivo) 13:135-72. (Numéro spécial: “Repenser ‘la femme malgache’: de nouvelles perspectives sur le genre à Madagascar,” ed. S. Fee).
1999. “‘Communities of Blood’: The Natural History of Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41: 215-62.
