Professor Emeritus
Conrad Kottak, a cultural anthropologist, retired from the University in January 2011 as the Julian H. Steward Collegiate Professor of Anthropology. Now Professor Emeritus, he joined the Michigan faculty in 1968 and chaired our top-ranked anthropology department from 1996 to 2006. He has won teaching awards from the University and the state of Michigan and the American Anthropological Association. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, where he now chairs Section 51, Anthropology.
Conrad has done ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil, Madagascar, and the United States. The fourth edition of his highly readable book Assault on Paradise: The Globalization of a Little Community in Brazil, based on his continuing field work in Arembepe, Bahia, Brazil, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2006. His many other books include The Past in the Present: History, Ecology and Cultural Variation in Highland Madagascar (1980) and, with Kathryn A. Kozaitis, On Being Different: Diversity and Multiculturalism in the North American Mainstream.
Conrad’s articles have appeared in both academic and more popular journals, including Natural History, Psychology Today, and General Anthropology. He is the author of several best-selling textbooks in anthropology and cultural anthropology, including Anthropology: Appreciating Human Diversity, now in its 14th edition at McGraw-Hill.
His most recent research projects have investigated the emergence of ecological awareness in Brazil, the social context of deforestation and biodiversity conservation in Madagascar, and popular participation in economic development planning in northeastern Brazil. His areas of special interest include issues of environment, development, globalization, and media. His textbooks include chapters on the origins of domestication and civilization in the Middle East and other world areas.
His wife, Isabel, who accompanies him, is a Michigan alumna (MSW), as is his daughter Juliet (Inteflex—Medical School).
