Andrew Causey

Andrew Causey’s first day of work in the Cultural Studies Program at Columbia College Chicago was September 11, 2001. This coincidence underlines some of his most pressing research questions: How do we react to visual information? How do visual images help create our senses of social identity? How do our notions of "truth" emerge from our understandings of visual information? How do we use visual images to develop our life narratives?

Dr. Causey's background is varied, but common threads in his fields of endeavor are his interest in expressive culture (be it art, music, or story-telling) and his fascination with odd cultural juxtapositions (could this be because he grew up in sight of Disneyland's Matterhorn?). He received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1979, a time when the school still prided itself on having no hierarchical grading system and on being a haven for the last generation of Hippies. His work there drifted between studies of non-western art history and ancient western cultures, but finally focused on Native American archeology.

He later continued in this field at the University of Texas, Austin where he intensified his focus on the archeology of the ancient Maya people of Central America, studying their hieroglyphic writing with internationally known scholar Dr. Linda Schele. He recieved his M.A. in Anthropology in 1985. After several years the away from academic studies, Dr. Causey reassessed his interests and goals, realizing that he had become increasingly drawn to the study of living cultures. A trip to Asia in 1989 convinced him to shift his research area, and when he returned to the University of Texas, it was to study the Toba Bataks of North Sumatra, Indonesia. With the help of a Fulbright scholarship he received his Ph.D. in 1997; he was fortunate to be awarded a Mellon Fellowship in 1998 to study historical documents related to his Sumatra research at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Causey has published several scholarly articles as well as chapters in edited volumes over the past few years, and his ethnographic monograph, Hard Bargaining in Sumatra: Toba Bataks and Western Tourists in a Souvenir Marketplace, was published by the University of Hawai'i Press in 2003. Since arriving at Columbia College Chicago, Dr. Causey teaches courses such as "Visual Anthropology," and "Voices, Gestures, and Silences: an Anthropology of Communication." He also collaborated with colleagues in forming the Cultural Studies B.A. degree, and initiated the development of the Cultural Re-Use Research Collaborative (www.culturalreuse.colum.edu).

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Causey is also active as a painter and sculptor.