Laura Kunreuther

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Contact: [email protected], 845-758-7215
Program Affiliations: Asian Studies; Experimental Humanities; Human Rights; Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Laura Kunreuther began teaching at Bard in 2001. She completed her B.A. at University of Pennsylvania and finished her Ph.D. at University of Michigan in 2002. Prof. Kunreuther’s teaching and research interests center on themes such as cultural memory, urban public culture, postcolonial theory, technology and media, social suffering, affect, sound, and voice. She has conducted extensive research in Kathmandu, Nepal. In addition to thematic courses, she teaches classes on colonial India and ethnography of South Asia. Professor Kunreuther’s first book, Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu (Berkeley), traces the relation between public speech and notions of personal interiority during a moment of political upheaval in Nepal through a focus on two distinct formations of voice. She is currently engaged in two new projects that both explore sound, listening, and political subjectivity.  The first centers on the use of sound for political and artistic protest; the second centers on the role of interpreters deployed in field missions of the UN.  Other articles explore the intersection between state and domestic archives, media ideologies and the FM radio in Kathmandu. Her research has been supported with grants from Wenner-Gren Foundation, Council for American Overseas Research Centers, Fulbright-Hays Foundation; Mellon Foundation; Social Science Research Council; the Freeman Foundation. Prof. Kunreuther coordinates the ‘Sound Cluster’ through Experimental Humanities, and is additionally affiliated with Human Rights, Asian Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies programs at Bard.