Noah Coburn
Visiting Professor of Anthropology

EDUCATION

• PhD, Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University, 2010
• MA, Regional Studies, Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, Columbia University, 2004
• BA, Religion and Mathematics, Williams College, 2002

REGIONAL FOCUS

• Middle East and Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

• Political and economic anthropology, particularly local political and social structures and their relationship with violence and international intervention, including elections, local governance and dispute resolution.
  

COURSES

• AN-101 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• AN-252 Political Anthropology
• AN-252 Politics and Social Structures in the Middle East and Central Asia
• AN-351 The Anthropology of International Intervention
• AN-351 Violence 
  

PUBLICATIONS:

BOOKS

• Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town, Stanford University Press, 2011  
  

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

• Review of Afghanistan: A Political and Cultural History by Thomas Barfield (Princeton, 2010), ‘Nationalities Papers,’ September 2011
• ‘The Politics of Dispute Resolution and Continued Instability in Afghanistan,’ Special Report, The United States Institute of Peace, August 2010, Washington, DC
• ‘Undermining Representative Governance: The 2010 Parliamentary Election and its Alienating Impact,’ Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, with Anna Larson, February 2011
• ‘Parliamentarians and Local Politics in Afghanistan: Elections and Instability,’ Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, September 2010
• ‘Shaping Afghanistan: Traditional Pottery and Economic Reconstruction,’ with Ester Svensson and Ustad Honaryar, in Images of Afghanistan: Exploring Afghan Culture through Art and Literature, Arley Lowen and Josette McMichael, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 2010
• ‘Many Shuras do not a Government Make: International Community Engagement with Local Councils in Afghanistan,’ Peace Brief, The United States Institute of Peace with Shahmahmood Miakhel, September 2010, Washington, DC.
• ‘Losing Legitimacy?: Some Afghan Views on the Government, the International Community, and the 2009 Elections,’ Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, November 2009
• ‘Voting Together: Why the Afghan Elections of 2009 were (and were not) a Disaster,’ Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit with Anna Larson, 2009
• ‘Rebuilding Afghanistan Pot by Pot,’ Ceramics Today with Ester Svensson, 2006

FELLOWSHIPS

• Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan, 2011
• Presidential Fellow, Boston University, 2004-2010