Andrew Shryock

Andrew Shryock is a cultural anthropologist. He has done ethnographic fieldwork in Yemen, Jordan, and among Arab and Muslim communities in Detroit. His research in the Middle East centers on nationalism, historicity, oral tradition, tribe-state relations, and modernity (both its cultural politics and its alternative forms). His work in North America focuses on ethnicity, mass mediated culture, diaspora, community formation, and identity politics. Shryock is active in public cultural work, especially documentary films, museum exhibitions, and collaborative, community-based research and writing projects. Recently, he has given much of his attention to the moral and political dimensions of hospitality. He is also interested in developing new ways to write about the ancient past, human and pre-human, an agenda that calls for a rethinking of the relationship between anthropology, history, and the natural sciences. Since 2006, Shryock has edited the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History.

Research Areas(s)

• Arab/Muslim communities in the Middle East and North America
• hospitality as culture and politics
• modernity
• trans/nationalism
• alternative forms of history writing
• genealogy and oral tradition

Affiliation(s)

• Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies
• Program in Anthropology and History
• Islamic Studies Program

Award(s)

• 2011 John Dewey Teaching Award
• 2007 Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship
• 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2002 Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences
• 1997 The Albert Hourani Book Award (Middle East Studies Association) for Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination
• 1995 Member, Institute for Advanced Study