He attended Deep Springs College and graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in socio-cultural anthropology, and Johns Hopkins University with a Ph.D. in anthropology
Center for the Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship
British Academy Fellowship
Works
"Spectral Chains: Remembering the Great Leap Forward Famine in a Yi Community", Re-envisioning the Chinese revolution: the politics and poetics of collective memories in reform China, Editors Ching Kwan Lee, Guobin Yang, Stanford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8047-5853-6
"Dancing Fools: Politics of Culture and Place in a 'Traditional Nationality Festival.' Modern China 28(1). 2002.
The Age of Wild Ghosts. Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China, Berkeley: University of California Press. 2001, ISBN 978-0-520-22631-9
"Spectral Subversions: Rival Tactics of Time and Agency in China." Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(3): 458-481. 1999.
"The Poetics of Grief and the Price of Hemp in Southwest China." Journal of Asian Studies 57(4): 979-1008. 1998.
