A Conversation with Paul Friedrich

Paul Friedrich has played a distinctive and multifaceted role within and well beyond anthropology over the past 50 years. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics and on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Friedrich's research sites have ranged from southwestern Mexico to south India, as well as with Russians. He has also written extensively in historical linguistics, classics, and anthropological theory. Much of Friedrich's writing has focused on the interplay of the practice of poetry and poetically focused analyses of language and interaction. He has published extensively, producing numerous volumes of poetry as well as path-breaking scholarship.

On May 13, 2013, at the University of Chicago, Professor Friedrich was interviewed by Dr. Dale Pesmen, an anthropologist, Russian scholar, artist, and translator who received her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked closely with Professor Friedrich. She is the author of Russia and Soul: An Exploration (Cornell University Press, 2000). Their conversation explored the remarkably heterogeneous and imaginative range of Friedrich's work and career, as well as highlighting ongoing core underlying concerns and themes. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.