| Richard Shapiro is Director and Associate Professor of the Graduate Anthropology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Professor Shapiro has been teaching at CIIS since 1986 and has held the position of Director of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Program since 1996. Using interdisciplinary and cross-cultural frameworks that draw on social thought, cultural studies, philosophy, history, and anthropology, Professor Shapiro has been involved in creating critical, emancipatory, activist and multicultural education. He is very much concerned with issues of social justice, ecological sustainability, cultural diversity, engaged spirituality, and the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality in local and global contexts. Professor Shapiro's passion and commitment to emancipatory education, has deeply influenced his perspectives on teaching, and his service to academic institutions and larger communities to which he belongs.
Professor Shapiro guided the shaping and rethinking the Anthropology M.A. and Ph.D. Program at CIIS since 1998, to create a very rare and successful program in postcolonial anthropology that combines critical inquiry with social action and ethical citizenship. He brings with him considerable experience, having been Director of Humanities, New College of California, from 1985-95, and through his path-finding work as an original member of Todos: The Sherover-Simms Institute for Alliance Building, a Bay Area organization that works with youth, social service organizations and universities, on issues of social oppression and cultural identity. Professor Shapiro's significant contributions to teaching, research, and program development have consistently redefined the boundaries of professional standards that seek to make graduate education relevant to diverse issues and worlds.
At CIIS, Professor Shapiro has created and taught core courses that have been intellectually innovative, such as 'Critical History of the Human Sciences', 'Self and Society: Building Alliances Across Differences', 'Reading and Writing Culture', 'Nietzsche/Foucault: An Archaeology of Western Culture', 'Cultural Notions of Self and Sexuality', 'Secular/Post-secular? Emancipatory Jewish Thought' and 'Critical Discourses on 'Religion'. Professor Shapiro's teaching, in content and pedagogy, is influenced by his study and work with philosophers Michel Foucault and Herbert Marcuse. His intellectual foci include the cross-cultural study of subjectivity, sexuality and gender, the history of European thought, secular Christianity, race, and national privilege in the United States, social movements, ecology and sustainable development, and anthropology as cultural critique.
Professor Shapiro is also interested in and involved with movements for environmental and social justice in India. His work in this field has created tremendous connections with anthropologists, activists, and scholars in India and South Asia, and provided research and cross-cultural exchange opportunities for students. Professor Shapiro has a B.A. with a double major in Politics and Modern Society and Social Thought from the University of California, Santa Cruz (1977), an M.A. in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research (1981), and is at the ABD stage, waiting to receive his Ph.D. Professor Shapiro has received support for this work from various organizations.
In the last decade, he has served on various international committees related to diversity and alliance building, ecology and sustainability that are based in the U.S., England, South Asia, and Sweden. Professor Shapiro has also facilitated various training workshops, seminars and group processes on cross-cultural alliance building and social justice in the U.S. and South Asia.
Selected Publications and Articles
Self, Community and Pleasure: Michael Foucault and Contemporary Sexual Politics (forthcoming book)
Talking
Tsunami: To Dissent This Time by Angana
Chatterji and Richard Shapiro. Published
in the Journal of Politics and Culture,
2005, Issue 2, Special Issue: The Politics
of Disaster.
Religion and Empire: Secular Christian Cultural Dominance in the United States. 2006. In International Journal of the Humanities. Peer Reviewed Article. Spring 2006, Volume 2, Number 3.
Investigating
Empire: Cultivating Resistance. Published
in Dissident Voice, October 2003.
Reflections
on the United States: Interrogating Dominance.
Published in Dissident Voice, November
2002.
Social
and Cultural Anthropology Program
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