Biography

I am a cultural and linguistic anthropologist who explores how people use language and other media to enact expertise in practice, performance, and interaction. After studying literature at Reed College (BA, 1998) and anthropology at New York University (PhD, 2007), I was a postdoctoral member of the Princeton Society of Fellows (2007-2010).  My two monographs constitute a diptych:  Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician's Craft (California, 2011) describes day-to-day life and everyday talk within the insular subculture of contemporary French illusionists; Magic's Reason: An Anthropology of Analogy (Chicago, 2017) examines the meaning of magic in Western modernity, shuttling between the intellectual history of anthropology and the cultural history of popular entertainment.  Alongside these books, I have a third set of projects investigating how language and culture shape, and are in turn shaped by, the way people use technologies of digital communication.  At MIT, I teach classes on a range of subjects, including: the anthropology of education; the language of mediated communication; and ethnographic research methods.

Research

I study how people use language and media to not only share knowledge, but also to imbue it with meaning and value - whether by colluding in shared secrets or staking out contrastive positions in an argument.   Through ethnographic engagements with a wide range of communities of speech and practice, I analyze ways in which signifying practices shape moral and epistemological convictions.  From the way sleight-of-hand magicians verbally regulate the circulation of technical secrets to the ways computer hackers communicatively coordinate software design projects and anthropologists construct arguments with analogies, my work spans diverse forms of expertise.  It also attends to multiple scales, from the shared intimacies of a conversation between friends to debates in a sprawling and anonymous online discussion forum.  I use the tools of linguistic anthropology to demonstrate how verbal strategies of encoding knowledge and producing evidence connect with complex social dynamics of identity and difference.   My ethnographic and ethnohistorical research has focused primarily on metropolitan and colonial France, but I have also conduced research in the United States, China, Singapore, and Québec.

Selected Publications

Teaching

21A.00
Introduction to Anthropology: Comparing Human Cultures

Through the comparative study of different cultures, anthropology explores fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Seeks to understand how culture shapes societies, from the smallest island in the South Pacific to the largest Asian metropolis, and affects the way institutions work, from scientific laboratories to Christian mega-churches. Provides a framework for analyzing diverse facets of human experience, such as gender, ethnicity, language, politics, economics, and art.

21A.150
Teaching and Learning: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Explores the diverse ways that people teach and learn in different countries, disciplines, and subcultures (computer gamers, magicians, jazz musicians, etc.). Compares schooling to other forms of knowledge transmission, from initiation and apprenticeship to recent innovations in online education. Students discuss various learning theories and apply them to a variety of in-class activities using qualitative methods to conduct original research on topics of their choice.

21A.157
The Meaning of Life

Examines how a variety of cultural traditions propose answers to the question of how to live a meaningful life. Considers the meaning of life, not as a philosophical abstraction, but as a question that individuals grapple with in their daily lives, facing difficult decisions between meeting and defying cultural expectations. Provides tools for thinking about moral decisions as social and historical practices, and permits students to compare and contextualize the ways people in different times and places approach fundamental ethical concerns.

21A.502
Fun and Games: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Considers the cultural organization of play in different communities and societies. Explores why all people play, how different cultures experience fun, and what particular games mean, if anything. Surveys major theories of play in relation to a variety of play phenomena, such as jokes, video games, children's fantasies, sports, and entertainment spectacles. As a final project, students develop their own case study.

21A.503J / 24.913J / STS.070J
Language and Technology

Examines cultural impact of communication technologies, from basic literacy to cell phones, and computer-based social networks on patterns of verbal interaction. Introduces theories and methods of linguistic anthropology pertinent to technologies that make it possible for people to communicate across distances in space and time. Students develop their own research projects exploring the cultural dimensions of technologically enhanced communication. Enrollment limited.

21A.513
Drawing Human Experience 

Introduces fundamental techniques of drawing with traditional media and their application as tools of anthropological inquiry. Examines what the human impulse to draw reveals about connections between mind, hand, and eye. Explores ideas, refines perceptions, and communicates insights through both abstract and figurative drawing. Each student completes a portfolio of original drawings with accompanying written analysis. Limited to 20 due to space constraints.

21A.520
Magic, Science, and Religion

Explores the origins of magic, science, and religion as forms of belief within and across cultures. Addresses the place of rationality and belief in competing sociocultural theories, with a focus on analyzing modern perspectives. Examines how cases of overlap between magic, science, and religion raise new questions about modernity and human nature.

21A.802
Seminar in Ethnography and Fieldwork

Introduction to ethnographic practices: the study of and communicating about culture. Subject provides instruction and practice in writing, revision of fieldnotes, and a final paper. Preference to Anthropology majors and minors.

21A.819J / 15.349J
Qualitative Research Methods

Training in the design and practice of qualitative research. Organized around illustrative texts, class exercises, and student projects. Topics include the process of gaining access to and participating in the social worlds of others; techniques of observation, fieldnote-taking, researcher self-monitoring and reflection; methods of inductive analysis of qualitative data including conceptual coding, grounded theory, and narrative analysis. Discussion of research ethics, the politics of fieldwork, modes of validating researcher accounts, and styles of writing up qualitative field research.

Awards

News

MIT welcomes nine MLK Scholars for 2024-25 - Leslie Jonas and Christine Taylor-Butler are hosted by MIT Anthropology Faculty Members

Institute Community and Equity Office | MIT News

September 11, 2024

Every year since 1991, MIT has welcomed outstanding visiting scholars to campus through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program. The Institute aspires to attract candidates who are, in King’s words, “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.”

MLK Scholars enhance the intellectual and cultural life of the Institute through teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and through active research collaborations with faculty. They work within MIT’s academic departments, but also across fields such as medicine, the arts, law, and public service. The program honors King’s life and legacy by expanding and extending the reach of our community.

Joining MIT in January 2025, Leslie Jonas, an elder member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, is an Indigenous land and water conservationist with a focus on weaving traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM).

Christine Taylor-Butler ’81, member of the 2023–24 MLK Visiting Scholars cohort is extending her visit with MIT for an additional year: she will build on her existing partnerships on campus and in the local communities in promoting STEAM literacy for children.

In the new interdisciplinary course 21A.513 (Drawing Human Experience), students look within themselves for artistic inspiration.

Article: Nicole Estvanik Taylor | Photo: Allegra Boverman | School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences | MIT News

January 29, 2024

On the first Friday in November, the students of 21A.513 (Drawing Human Experience) were greeted by two unfamiliar figures: a bespectacled monkey holding a heart-shaped message (“I’m so glad you are here”) and the person who drew that monkey on the whiteboard: award-winning cartoonist and educator Lynda Barry, whose “Picture This” was a central text on the new interdisciplinary course’s syllabus.

As the afternoon’s guest speaker, Barry welcomed each arrival, her long gray braids swinging, pens dangling from her neck. Within minutes, she had everyone — even the course’s instructors, anthropologist Graham Jones and visual artist Seth Riskin — settled around tables with their eyes closed, drawing giraffes.

Graham Jones "Paranormal Machines" class featured in Arts at MIT Video "MIT CAST: Cross-Disciplinary Classes"

Arts at MIT Newsletter

February 9, 2023

"A class like Paranormal Machines complements the educational mission of the Institute by giving students an opportunity to reflect critically and creatively on what science and technology do in these students lives." - Graham Jones

MIT Anthropology's Prof. Graham Jones among 2022 Bose Grant awardees

Aaron Braddock | Office of the Provost | MIT News

June 13, 2022

MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart has announced three Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grants to support bold research projects across diverse areas of study including biology, engineering, and the humanities.

Among this year's recipients are Graham Jones of the Anthropology Section and Arvind Satayanaryan of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Their “Magical Data Visualization” proposal uses performance magic to create new visualizations that are responsive to the users’ intent, potentially impacting how misinformation spreads. 

 

Teaching With Digital Technology Award winners recognized for their innovations

MIT Open Learning

August 3, 2020

Graham Jones and Stefan Helmreich are two of the thirty-one MIT instructors awarded.

The Meaning of Masks: Masks As Transformation

MIT SHASS, artwork by Jose-Luis Oliveras

July 3, 2020

The mask is one of the most important human artifacts in all of anthropology. It is a tool of transformation that allows its wearers to transcend themselves, taking on timeless roles in ritual dramas. Repositories of power, masks are sacred objects, crafted with ingenuity.

Graham Jones' new class, "Paranormal Machines" is featured on MIT News and SHASS News

November 4, 2019

Associate Professor Graham Jones and Seth Riskin, Manager of the MIT Museum Studio and Compton Gallery, are offering a new class, Paranormal Machines: Technologies of Enchantment in Science, Art, and Culture. The class "explores the human experience of the disconcerting and the uncanny in relation to technology" and how "people and cultures build stories and beliefs around out-of-the-ordinary experiences".

Links

Language and Technology Lab

"A magician’s imperial mission" (MIT News Office)

"Magic, a microcosm of modern culture" (MIT News Office)

"In search of a meaningful life" (MIT News Office)