Anthropologist elected to National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has elected to its membership Conrad Kottak, the Julian H. Steward Collegiate Professor of Anthropology.

Conrad Kottak, the Julian H. Steward Collegiate Professor of Anthropology, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. (Photo courtesy Conrad Kottak)

"I'm delighted," Kottak says. "This is the highest honor you can get in anthropology. I'm proud to be among the other distinguished faculty members in my department who have been elected in previous years." Four other current or emeritus faculty members have been elected.

Working in Brazil, Madagascar and the United States, Kottak has researched how local cultures interact with national and global forces.

He has chronicled a village in northeastern Brazil for decades and observed it adapt and globalize. On the other hand, he has seen areas of Madagascar become more isolated and impoverished, due in part to global warming.

Kottak also has examined popular culture in the United States and in Brazil. His most recent work is a study in Dexter, Mich., of how middle-class families use media in their daily lives. A book on the issue, co-authored with Lara Descartes, a research fellow at the Institute for Social Research, will be published in 2009.

Kottak, who chaired the Department of Anthropology from 1996-2006, has written a dozen books. His textbooks in anthropology, cultural anthropology and cultural diversity, published by McGraw-Hill, currently are in their 13th editions.

He has received several honors for teaching, including the American Anthropological Association/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has taught at U-M since 1968.