Robert Rotenberg

Highlights

Name: Robert L. Rotenberg

Position
Vincent de Paul Professor of Anthropology
2343 N. Racine DePaul University, Chicago, IL.: 773 325-7460

Email: rrotenbe (at) depaul.edu

About Professor Rotenberg

Robert Rotenberg has taught at DePaul University since 1979. He has served as a professor in the Sociology department, the International Studies Program, and the Anthropology Department. He was director of the College of Liberal Arts and Science first-year Common Studies program from 1985 to 1988. He was director of the College of Liberal Arts and Science Study Abroad Program from 1989 to 2001. He was the director of the International Studies Program from its inception in 1989 to 2000. In 1995, the Master of Arts program was introduced helping make the International Studies Program one of the fastest growing majors in the College of Arts and Sciences. He served as the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Coordinator of Academic Advising form 2008 to 2010. He has served as chair of the Anthropology department since 2001. In 2004, he was named to the inaugural cohort of the St. Vincent DePaul Society, a university-level distinguished professorship for teaching.

His research interests have always been located in large cities. The question that guides his research projects is "What difference does it make in the way people think about their world and live their lives that they are located in a very large city instead of somewhere else?" He has written books, edited collections of articles, and published in scholarly journals. A list of his publications is available below. He frequently attends conferences and the text of some of his recent papers is now available through this web site. Because he writes about the cultural processes of very large groups of people, he is called in as a consultant on projects related to urban culture or large scale social movements.

He has recently published a book on university level teaching for new Ph.D.'s and beginning professors. It is called The Art and Craft of College Teaching; A Guide for New Professors.

Prof. Rotenberg is involved in three international scholarly networks. He is the past president and past secretary/newsletter editor for the Society for Urban, National and Transnational/Global Anthropology, a large section of scholars within the American Anthropological Association. This is a diverse group of over 750 scholars involved in understanding large complex social organizations and the inequalities of power, resources and information that they generate. He currently chairs the Leeds Book Prize committee of that organization. He remains an active member of the "space and place" network within this society. This is a network of anthropologists who are especially concerned with contributing the geographical issues in cultural processes. From 1993 to 2003, he was the co-convenor of the East European Anthropology Group and managing editor of the group's newsletter, the Anthropology of East Europe Review. This group is especially concerned with culture change issues in Eastern Europe. The newsletter publishes very current research reports from scholars who have just finished research in the region. Finally, he is a member of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, a large section of scholars within the American Anthropological Association. Until 1999, he serves as a councilor of this organization. These anthropologists are primarily concerned with European ethnology and contribution that the study of European cultural processes can make to our understanding of the human condition. He has twice contributed to the Society's luncheon round table discussions on the European urban landscape during the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, and has organized paper panels on European urban issues for the society.

Course Syllabi

The course syllabi from Prof. Rotenberg's classes are available on the Desire 2 Learn site during the term they are being offered. To access the site, sign on a guest and search for the course.

ANT 102 Cultural Anthropology

ANT 109 Food and Culture

ANT 204 Lineages of Culture Theory

ANT 317 Language, Power and Identity

ANT 356 Urban Ethnography

ANT 386 Cultural Analysis

HON 206 Introduction to Cognitive Science

Publications

Monographs

The Art and Craft of College Teaching: A Guide for New Professors and Graduate Students Chicago: Active Learning Books. 2005 and Second Edition, Left Coast Press. 2009.

Landscape and Power in Vienna. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995. Winner of the Barbara Jelevich Prize for Habsburg History, 1996, Winner of the Austrian Cultural Center (New York) Book Prize for the best book on an Austrian topic in English, 1997, and a Leeds Prize Honor Book, Society for Urban, National and Transnational/Global Anthropology.


: Time and Order in Metropolitan Vienna: A Seizure of Schedules. Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution Press. 1992.

Edited Volumes.

Metropolitan Spaces and the Production of Histories and Identities in East-Central Europe.” City and Society Annual Review, 1996. Washington D.C.: Society for Urban Anthropology (American Anthropological Association).

The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space. Amherst: Bergin and Garvey. (Co-edited with Gary McDonogh) Authored the introduction to the volume and contributed the chapter "On the Salubrity of Sites." 1993.

Articles in Specialized Journals or Books. (Selections)

Space, Place, Site and Locality: The study of landscape in cultural anthropology. In Simon Bell, Ingrid Sarlov Herlin, and Richard Stiles (eds.) Exploring the Boundaries of Landscape Architecture. Informa UK. 2011

Toward a Genealogy of Downtown. In M. Peterson and G McDonogh (eds.), Global Downtowns, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2011

Udders, Penises and Testicles. Special Issue: The Elevation of Trash Food. Ethnology 47 (2):123-128. 2009.

On the Sublime of Nature in Cities. In Peggy Barlett, ed., Urban Place: Reconnections with the Natural World. MIT Press (2005)

Metropolitanism and the Transformation of Urban Space. American Anthropologist, 103 (1): 7-15. March, 2001

Le Pensée Bourgeois in the Biedermeier Garden: Reflection on Aristocratic-Bourgeois interactions in Garden Art between 1683 and 1848 in Vienna, In Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art. Michel Conan, ed., Dumbarton Oaks Studies in Landscape Architecture 1999 Symposium. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks/Harvard University Press. 2003

Extraordinary Vienna. City and Society: Annual of the Society for Urban, National and Transnational Anthropology. 1997.

The Metropolis and Everyday Life. In G. Gmelch and W. Zenner, eds., Urban Life. Third Edition. Waveland Press. 1995

Austria, The Development of a National Culture. In M. Ember and C. Ember, eds, Portraits of Culture. New York: Prentice Hall 1994.

Judging the Adequacy of Shelter: A Case from Lincoln Park. Journal of Architecture and Planning Research 1994 (With Charles S. Suchar)

The Power to Time and the Time to Power. In Henry Rutz (ed.) The Politics of Time. American Ethnological Society Monograph #4. Washington: American Anthropological Association. 1992. Pp. 18-36.

Unpublished Conference Papers

Text versions of these papers are available for downloading. Click on your choice. Save the file under a title of your choice. Print the file in any wordprocessor.
Prof. Rotenberg retains the copyright on these papers. They may be used under the "fair use" doctrine for educational purposes. For any other purpose or to photocopy more than twenty copies for class use, contact Prof. Rotenberg.

Price and Status in Vienna's Naschmarkt. Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C. November 20, 1994.



: Form Matters: The Language of Civic Aesthetics in Design Review Hearings. Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C. November 20, 2010.