Anthony Shelton

  • Professor
  • Director, Museum of Anthropology
  • (604) 822-5887 (MOA 214B)
  • anthony.shelton(at)ubc.ca
  • D.Phil., University of Oxford, 2002

Research Interests

Current research interests broadly correspond with four areas: (a) The theoretical foundation of the anthropology of art and aesthetics. (b) Critical Museology. The imitation and appropriation of nature from the early modern period through painting and the wunderkammer. The incorporation of pre-Columbian 'art' into western collections, the non-Western art market, museums and the construction of national identity, history of collecting and museums and post-colonial theory. (c) Mexican and Iberian visual cultures, particularly the relationship between Indo-American and Hispanic-American creative expressions. (d) The influence of evangelisation and politics on the visual cultures of Latin America from the colonial period to the present. Active research includes work on the development and institutionalisation of visual cultures in 19th and 20th century Yucatan, and currently I am prepering research design for a comparative project on the institutionalisation of visual cultures in mid 20th century and post-Salazar period Portugal. Comparative ethnography of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico, with special foci on the Huichol.

Recent Publications

  • 2004. The Performative Life of Narratives. European Chivalric Literature and the Dance of the Moors and Christians. In G. Ghulam Sarwar-Yousof (ed.), Asian-European Epics. Kualur Lumpur and Singapore, University of Malaya Press and the Asia Europe Foundation.
  • 2002. The Aztec Theatre State and the Dramatisation of War. In T.J. Cornell and T.B. Allen (eds.), War and Games. Rochester, The Booydell Press. 107-135.
  • 2001a. Theatres of Combat. Humiliation, Vindication and the Expression of Difference in Mexican Dance Dramas. Antropologia Portuguesa 18: 13-54.
  • 2001b. Museums in an Age of Cultural Hybridity. Folk. Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society 43: 221-49.
  • 2001c. (ed.). Collectors. Expressions of Self and Other. London and Coimbra. The Horniman Museum and Universidade de Coimbra.
  • 2001d. (ed.). Collectors. Individuals and Institutions. London and Coimbra. The Horniman Museum and Universidade de Coimbra.
  • 2001e. Rational Passions. Frederick John Horniman and Institutional Collectors. In A. Shelton (ed.) 2001c: 205-223.
  • 2001f. The Ethnographic Collections of the Horniman Museum. A Descriptive Survey. In A. Shelton (ed.) 2001d: 281-309.
  • 2000a. Museum Ethnography. An Imperial Science. In E. Hallam and B. Street (eds.), Cultural Encounters. Representing 'Otherness'. New York and London, Routledge. 155-193.
  • 2000b. Curating African Worlds. Journal of Museum Ethnography 12: 5-20.
  • 2000c. Los Tlocololeros. A Structuralist Interpretation of a Mexican Dance Drama. Antropologia Portuguesa.
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