Dr. Michael Uzendoski

Associate Professor
(850) 644-4749
(850) 645-0032 (FAX)
E-mail: muzendos@mailer.fsu.edu
http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/?uzendoski

College: Arts and Sciences

Department: Anthropology

Dr. Uzendoski is an Associate Professor in the department. He first went to Ecuador in 1993, and has worked with Amazonian Quichua speakers of the Upper Napo since 1994. He has spent years learning and studying the Quichua language and has found it to be rich and poetic. One constant of his research has been finding ways to document and translate the poetics of Amazonian Quichua oral culture. While living among Quichua speakers, he became very aware that very basic philosophical assumptions (like the idea of a thing, a person, a plant, time, or substance itself) are quite different when one moves from secular Western to Amazonian social contexts. These differences have made his task of writing ethnography problematic, so he has experimented with humanistic ways of writing. His research and teaching continually emphasize that human worlds are defined by substances and things that cannot be divorced from the imagination. Consequently, the creation and reproduction of society moves through the physical and into such symbolic and imaginary realms. His subject area concentrations are Sociocultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Ethno-poetics, and Ethno-history. Dr. Uzendoski earned his B.A. in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts from the University of Chicago (1990), and his M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. (2000) in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. Please visit his web site for more information, including his curriculum vitae.


				Dr. Michael Uzendoski Associate Professor (850) 644-4749 (850) 645-0032 (FAX) E-mail: muzendos@mailer.fsu.edu http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/?uzendoski College: Arts and Sciences Department: Anthropology Dr. Uzendoski is an Associate Professor in the department. He first went to Ecuador in 1993, and has worked with Amazonian Quichua speakers of the Upper Napo since 1994. He has spent years learning and studying the Quichua language and has found it to be rich and poetic. One constant of his research has been finding ways to document and translate the poetics of Amazonian Quichua oral culture. While living among Quichua speakers, he became very aware that very basic philosophical assumptions (like the idea of a thing, a person, a plant, time, or substance itself) are quite different when one moves from secular Western to Amazonian social contexts. These differences have made his task of writing ethnography problematic, so he has experimented with humanistic ways of writing. His research and teaching continually emphasize that human worlds are defined by substances and things that cannot be divorced from the imagination. Consequently, the creation and reproduction of society moves through the physical and into such symbolic and imaginary realms. His subject area concentrations are Sociocultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Ethno-poetics, and Ethno-history. Dr. Uzendoski earned his B.A. in Fundamentals: Issues and Texts from the University of Chicago (1990), and his M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. (2000) in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. Please visit his web site for more information, including his curriculum vitae.