Dr. Kim Christen
NOTE: Kim recently completed an interview with the BBC on her research, specifically the Mukurtu archive, that was featured on its program, "Digital Planet." Learn the full details at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/digital_planet.shtm
For more information on this project:
ABC News Story
WSU Chronicle Article
WSU University Spotlight
Mukurtu Archive
Biography
Kim received her PhD from the History of Consciousness department at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2004. Her academic work focuses on contemporary global articulations of indigeneity. Specifically, since 1995, Kim has worked with Warumungu people from Tennant Creek, a remote town in the Northern Territory of Australia, on a range of community projects: writing a community history (Anyinginyi Manuku Apparr), producing digital video and audio recordings, and compiling archival data for use in the interpretive displays at the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre.
Publications
Her manuscript, Traditionally Modern: Indigenous Future-Making in a Remote Australian Town, examines cultural innovation and preservation in practice. Focusing on one community’s interactions with national indigenous policies, international debates concerning intellectual property rights and global shifts in cultural tourism, she traces the emergence of coexisting forms of aboriginality—through material objects, cultural discourses, and unexpected alliances. In Fall 2005, her article, "Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons" will be published in the International Journal of Cultural Property. In Summer 2006 the community history she compiled with a group of Warumungu people, Anyinginyi Manuku Apparr: Stories from Our Country, will be published by the Institute for Aboriginal Studies in Alice Springs, NT Australia.
Research Interests
Kim’s research interests include global issues such as sovereignty, land rights, cultural tourism, intellectual property rights and digital "remix" as they mutate and mingle with indigenous communities. Most recently she has been following the "free culture" movement as it has spread across college campuses and the lingering effects of its single-minded focus on what counts as culture (digital music mainly) and who "owns" that culture (i.e.-nobody, that is it should be "free").
Teaching Interests
Kim enjoys teaching a range of classes focusing on globalization, indigenous rights, cultural tourism, modernity and nationalism. Her classes stress critical thinking and getting up out of ones chair on a regular basis.
