George Marcus
came to the University of California, Irvine, eight years ago, after many years leading the Department of Anthropology at Rice University, especially through the transdisciplinary period (1980s-mid 1990s) of excitement about new theories and critiques of culture. All along and particularly now, he has been interested in the interfaces—some pursued, some imagined, some barely conceived—between art performance, in its various genres, and its affinities with the pursuit of anthropological research. These have been a key concern of the Center for Ethnography, which he founded when he moved to Irvine in 2005.