Faculty Directory
Charles Zuckerman
Assistant Professor
Charles Zuckerman
Ph.D.
Contact
Campion 213
Email: zuckermc@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-4101-3428
Education
- Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- M.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- B.A., Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Expertise
- Cognitive and Social Development
- Formative and Whole Person Education
- Language Learning & Literacy
Department
Profile
Dr. Charles Zuckerman is a linguistic anthropologist who studies how cultural categories mediate ethical life in human interaction. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Formative Education at the Lynch School of Education & Human Development. Most of his long-term research has been in Laos, but over the past few years, he has become increasingly interested in how people across the world are using new communicative technologies to cultivate ethical dispositions.
His current book project explores the moral economy of gambling in Luang Prabang, Laos, and the social categories that make this moral economy legible and politically actionable.
The result is a rethinking of how scholars should understand the many roles that social categories play in our lives.
He is the founder and organizer of BC's new Forum on Semiosis, a space for collaboratively studying the details of communicative interactions. He thinks best and has the most fun when thinking aloud with others.
Select Publications
2023, Charles H. P. Zuckerman and N. J. Enfield, “The Limits of Thematization,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
2023, “Video Footage and The Grain of Practice,” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 13 (1): 128-145.
2022, “When Ethics Can’t be Found: Evaluative Gaps in Ordinary Life,” Cultural Anthropology, 37 (3): 450-485.
2022, Charles H. P. Zuckerman and John Mathias, “The Limits of Bodies: Gatherings and the Problem of Collective Presence,” American Anthropologist 124 (2): 345-357.
2021, “Figure Composition.” Signs and Society 9 (3): 263-299.
2021, “On the Unity of Types: Lao Gambling, Ethno-Metapragmatics, and Generic and Specific Modes of Typification.’” Language in Society 50 (4): 557-582.
2020, “‘Don’t gamble for money with friends’: Moral Economic Types and their Uses.” American Ethnologist 47 (4): 432-446.
2016, “Phatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 26 (3): 294-314.
Grants & Fellowships
- Wenner-Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2023-2024
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2022-2023
- Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, 2014-2016
- Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, 2013-2014
- FLAS Academic-Year Fellowship for Thai Language, 2011-2012
- Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Institute Fellowship, 2011
- FLAS Academic-Year Fellowship for Thai Language, 2010-2011
- FLAS Summer Fellowship for Lao Language, 2010