Mark Auslander

Mark Auslander, a sociocultural anthropologist, has strong interests in museum studies and the cross-cultural study of art and aesthetics in diverse human societies, with an emphasis on the ritual and political dimensions of artistic practice and the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora. He has directed two university museums of science and culture; served as a senior fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art; served on the core content team of African Voices, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s permanent exhibition of African cultural history; and organized a wide range of exhibitions and installations in art, science, and history. He is the author of the prize-winning book, The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family (University of Georgia Press, 2011); co-editor, with Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston, of  In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropological Explorations in Multimodality, Deep Interdisciplinarity, and Autoethnography, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021); and has published widely in African Studies, the anthropology of art, slavery studies, and critical museum practice.
He is the founding editor of the blog, Art Beyond Quarantine: https://artbeyondquarantine.blogspot.com/

Selected Publications

	“Where Shall We Place Our Hope?” COVID-19 and the Imperiled National Body in South Africa’s “Lockdown Collection” Mark Auslander Pamela Allara and Kim Berman.) African Arts, 54, 2. Summer 2021
	In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropological Explorations in Multimodality, Deep Interdisciplinarity, and Autoethnography. coedited by Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston and Mark Auslander, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
	The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding and American Family. University of Georgia Press, 2021