I started the Ph.D. program at Rutgers in 1995 and Michael taught my
first anthropology class there. He taught the "proseminar" where each
faculty member came in and discussed her or his work and then we did
some readings in the person's field and discussed the professor's work
and the readings. Michael was fantastic in the class. He was so generous
towards his colleague's scholarship - helping us to find the value and
worth in everything from the study of gender in China to the study of
human evolution through primate jaws. In that class he had a gift for
making things one was not interested in both interesting and seemingly
important. It seems to me that this is connected to Michael's
extraordinary sense of the field of anthropology as one that encompasses
human lives across time and space. We all say that lots, that that is
what we examine as a field, but Michael was able to show us, using our
faculty's work, how this really is the case.
Michael
also told me, as a graduate student who was just learning about social
theory and reading Foucault and other for the first time, that to be a
"theory person" I was going to have to become a more careful reader and
writer. He was correct and this has helped me throughout my career.
Other Michael memories:
I
loved Sadie the dog. She would sit in the window when I met with
Michael, he was my initial advisor in the anthropology department (as I
had come to work with someone in Human Ecology and needed an
anthropology person that first year). She was so sweet and Michael was
so gentle and sweet with her.
The day that one
of his colleagues said something truly insane in the Proseminar and
Michael started laughing and disguised it as a cough so as not to offend
the colleague. I think of this just about every time someone I work
with says something insane in a faculty meeting and I keep myself from
laughing.
His first book - Coming of Age - and reading it and teaching it for the first time.
I have so many warm feelings towards you Michael.
Paige
