Biography
Michael Dietler has conducted archaeological, ethnographic, and historical research projects in Europe and Africa. In addition to his work on alcohol, food, and feasting, a major theoretical focus has been colonialism, and he has been engaged for over 30 years in archaeological research in Mediterranean France on the indigenous “Celtic” societies of the region and their colonial encounters with Etruscans, Greeks and Romans during the first millennium BC, including long-term excavations at the port settlement of Lattes in Languedoc. His 2010 book, Archaeologies of Colonialism, provides the most recent synthesis of this material, approaching the process of colonial entanglement through analysis of consumption practices, urban landscapes, and violence. He is also engaged in research exploring the role of the ancient past in contemporary Celtic identities and imaginaries, in both modern ethno-nationalist and postmodern transnational contexts, and he is currently finishing a book on this subject entitled Celticism, Celtitude, and Celticity: Contemporary Ways of Being and Becoming Celtic. A third project is ethnographic research among the Luo people of Kenya, in collaboration with Ingrid Herbich, directed toward the socio-historical understanding of material culture, spatio-temporal concepts, and economics.
He also teaches courses on the Chicago Blues and has further ethnomusicological interests in Celtic and African popular musics. He was also director of the Migration, Material Culture, and Memory Program, a collaborative three-year project of joint research and graduate training between the University of Chicago and the University of Paris X – Nanterre financed by a grant from the Partner University Fund and the French American Cultural Exchange.