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Michelle Bigenho
Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology and Africana & Latin American Studies
Department/Office Information
Sociology and Anthropology, Africana and Latin American Studies, Native American StudiesAs a socio-cultural anthropologist, my specializations include indigeneity, law, music, and performance studies in the Andean region. Over the years, my projects have addressed several ethnographic inquiries:
- How do heritage-making projects provide a window through which to view the workings of a decolonizing state?
- What does it mean to labor as a musician in Bolivia?
- What is the value of Andean music in Japan?
- What does it mean to play someone else’s music?
- How do people experience music performances as representative of national and Indigenous identities?
Through these questions, my work engages Indigenous politics at intersections with alternative and participatory methodologies, cultural and intellectual property, heritage politics, racialization, performance politics, music globalization, and nationalism. Currently published in two monographs, one co-authored book, and multiple articles and chapters, my research has involved ethnography in Bolivia since 1993, each project engaging local communities in distinct ways. Music performance on the violin has formed an integral part of my ethnographic approach.
My most recent work, in collaboration with Henry Stobart (Music, Royal Holloway University of London), began in 2012 with a National Science Foundation-funded workshop on indigeneity, cultural property, and heritage within the context of Bolivia’s pro-Indigenous “process of change” and the implementation of the country’s 2009 Constitution. Following the workshop experience, Stobart and I began a related inquiry titled “Beyond Indigenous Heritage Paradoxes in Evo Morales’ Bolivia,” a project for which we received an . The results of this team effort have emerged in several articles and a book, (2025), which was featured in .
To download some of my publications, please see my .
I enjoy bringing my general research questions and practices into my teaching. In several iterations, and most recently in 2024, I offered a course on performing Bolivian music (ALST 204). Always taught in conjunction with a residency of Bolivian musicians from the ensemble Música de Maestros, this course has been featured in The and in this video:
- B.A., University of California, Los Angeles
- Magister, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
- M.A., Cornell University
- Ph.D., Cornell University
2024 "La interseccionalidad y el patrimonio: Marcado por el género, el canto de las mujeres como patrimonio," (H. Stobart co-autor) : 55-79.
2023 (co-author H. Stobart) Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
2022 "'¡Qué me entierran con poncho y sombrero!': Canto, género, y la constitución moderna," 224-248.
2022 (co-author H. Stobart) International Journal of Heritage Studies 28 (10): 1121-1135.
2018 (with H. Stobart and Richard Mújica Angulo) Trans-Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review21-22: 1-21.
2018 (with H. Stobart and Richard Mújica Angulo) Trans-Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review21-22: 1-21.
2018 (co-author, H. Stobart) Trans-Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review21-22: 1-13.
2018 (co-author H. Stobart)Trans-Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review21-22: 1-13.
2018 (co-author H. Stobart) Anthropological Quarterly 91(4):1329-1364.
2016 “Love, Protest Dance, Remix,” In , Matthew Gutmann and Jeffrey Lesser, eds., Pp. 114-127. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2016 (co-author H. Stobart) International Journal of Cultural Property 23 (2):141-166.
2015 “Playing Piano without a Piano in Bolivia,” In Ilana Gershon, ed. Pp. 102-113. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
2015 “La propiedad intelectual y las ambiguedades del dominio público: casos de la producción musical y la patrimonialización,” team-authored with Juan Carlos Cordero, Richard Mújica, Bernardo Rozo, and Henry Stobart) In , Gonzalo Rojas Ortuste, coord. Pp. 131-161. La Paz, Bolivia: CIDES-UMSA.
2015 (co-authored with Henry Stobart) Anthropology News, October.
2014 (co-authored with Henry Stobart) LASA Forum XLV (2): 22-25.
2012 “La música boliviana en la circulación global: nexos con el Japón,” Anales de la Reunión Anual de Etnología, 2009. Pp. 201-206. La Paz: MUSEF.
2011 Anthropology News, January, 12.
2010 “Note from the Editors: Performance, Revolution, Pedagogy: Theatre and its Objects,” (with Alberto Guevara), InTensions 4 (fall): 1-12.
2009 “Para repensar el mestizaje boliviano a través del folklore boliviano: la reorganización del espacio urbano compartido en la Revolución de 1952,” In Fernanda Wanderley, Coordinadora. Pp. 243-268. La Paz CIDES-UMSA.
2009 Diagonal: Journal of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music (on-line, UC Riverside). 2: 1-18.
2008 “Why I’m not an Ethnomusicologist: A View from Anthropology,” In , Henry Stobart, ed. Pp. 28-39. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press (Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities, No. 8).
2007 In Indigenous Experience Today, Marisol de la Cadena, Orin Starn, eds. Pp. 247-272. Oxford: Berg.
2006 Journal of Latin American Anthropology 11 (2): 267-293.
2006 Anthropological Quarterly 79 (4): 667-690.
2006 In Culture and Development in a Globalizing World: Geographies, Actors, and Paradigms, Sarah Radcliffe, ed. Pp. 107-125. London and New York: Routledge.
2005 “Making Music Safe for the Nation: Folklore Pioneers in Bolivian Indigenism,” In , Andrew Canessa, ed. Pp. 60-80.Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
2004 “Why They don’t All Wax Nostalgic: Comparing Modernities Through Songs from the Bolivian Andes,” In Quechua Verbal Artistry: The Inscription of Andean Voices/ Arte expresivo quechua: la inscripción de voces andinas, Guillermo Delgado and John Schechter, eds. Pp. 263-297. Bonn, Germany: Bonn Americanist Studies-BAS/Shaker Verlag.
2001 "Political Economy of Pleasure," co-authored with Bethany Ogdon, Political and Legal Anthropology Review 24 (1): 155-161.
2001 "Propiedad indígena, patrimonio, y la nueva tasa?" In Anales de la Reunión Anual de Etnología, 2000. Pp. 127-131. La Paz: MUSEF.
2001 "¿Por qué no todos sienten nostalgia? Letras de canciones e interpretaciones en Yura y Toropalca (Potosí, Bolivia)," In , Gisela Canepa Koch, ed. Pp. 61-92. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
1999 American Ethnologist 26 (4): 957-980.
1998 Political and Legal Anthropology Review 21 (1): 114-122.
1996 "Imaginando lo imaginado: las narrativas de las naciones bolivianas," Revista andina, Año 14 (2): 471-507.
1996 "Participación popular en el centro y sudeste de Potosí: una visión panorámica de las organizaciones territoriales de base, 'OTB's," (con Huáscar José Cajías) Anales de la Reunión Anual de Etnología, 1995 (tomo II). Pp. 198-206. La Paz: MUSEF.
1993 "El baile de los negritos y la danza de las tijeras: Un manejo de contradicciones," In Música, danzas y máscaras en los Andes. Raúl Romero, editor. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú-Instituto Riva Agüero/Proyecto Preservación de la Música Tradicional Andina, Pp. 219-251 (2nd ed. 1997).
2018 Dossier especial: Música y patrimonio cultural en América Latina, (co-edited with Henry Stobart and Richard Mújica Angulo) Trans-Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review 21-22.
2010 , co-edited with Alberto Guevara, on-line journal InTensions 4 (fall).
2014 “Repensando la creatividad, el reconocimiento, y el patrimonio indígena" bilingual (English/Spanish) website about workshop held in Coroico, Bolivia (2012) (curated with Henry Stobart), funded by National Science Foundation. (The hosting of this website is presently in flux. A link will be reintegrated when the problem is resolved.)
- American Council of Learned Societies Collaborative Research Fellowship (with H. Stobart) 2015-16
- National Science Foundation grant (Co-PI H. Stobart)(Law and Social Sciences), 2012
- Writing Prize for Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan. Asia and the Americas Section of the Latin American Studies Association, 2012
- Humanities Institute External Residential Fellowship, University of Connecticut, 2006-07
- Whiting Fellowship, 2003
- University of Cambridge Centre of Latin American Studies Visiting Fellowship, 1998
- Fulbright Hays 12-month Doctoral Dissertation grant, 1994
- Fulbright IIE fixed-sum 10-month grant, 1993
- Phi Beta Kappa
- Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (American Anthropological Association): appointed board member (mentoring committee) 2022-23; appointed board member 2011-2013; elected board member 2009-2011; elected board member 2001-2003
- Latin American Studies Association, appointed track co-chair for "Otros Saberes and Alternative Methods," 2017
- Latin American Studies Association, appointed track co-chair for "Culture, Power and Political Subjectivities," 2010
- Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Editorial board member, 1998-2018
- InTensions e-journal, Member, editorial collective member of 2009-present
My ethnographic work has involved music performance on the violin with a Bolivian music ensemble called (Rolando Encinas, founder and director). Musicians from this group co-teach with me “Performing Bolivian Music,” a course featured in the video on this site (ALST 204). Since 1993, I have participated in performances, tours and compact disc recordings with this orchestra, giving concerts throughout Bolivia and also in Colombia, France, and Japan.
- ߲ݴý University, 2014–present
- Hampshire College, 1998–2013
- ANTH 244: Who Owns Culture. This course goes to the heart of debates that motivate my most recent research on cultural heritage.
- ANTH 102 Culture, Diversity, Inequality
- ANTH 211 Investigating Contemporary Cultures
- ANTH 350 Theorizing Contemporary Cultures
- ANTH/ALST 357 Indigenous Politics of Latin America
- ANTH/ALST 365 Andean Lives
- ALST 199 Entangled Intimacies: Introduction to Africana and Latin American Studies
- ALST 410 Capstone: Intellectual and Community Empowerment
- Core 199C Bolivia