Dr. Gordon Gray

Associate Professor of Media and Culture
At Berea Since 2011

Contact Information

Draper Building, 314B
CPO 2124
Email: grayg@berea.edu
Phone: 859-985-3367

Spring 2022

Office Hours

Mon/Wed: 11 a.m. – 12:30
Tue/Thur: noon – 1:30 p.m.

Dr. Gordon Gray

Class Schedule

  • AST 206  (Mon/Wed: 4:00 pm – 5:50 pm)
  • THR 286 GG (Tue/Thur: 10:00 am – 11:50 am)
  • THR 332  (Mon/Wed: 12:40 pm – 2:30 pm)

     

Degrees

  • MA First Class Social Anthropology University of Edinburgh, 1996 (Hons.)
  • PhD. Napier University, 2002, Dissertation: Malaysian Cinema and Negotiations with Modernity: Film and Anthropology.

Biography

Born and raised in the southwest corner of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Gordon grew up on a ranch before beginning a career as a cook and then chef. After approximately 8 years of working in restaurants and hotels, he moved to Scotland where his father had been born.

While in Scotland, he completed an undergraduate degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh and a doctorate at Napier University (also in Edinburgh). Gordon was awarded his PhD in 2002; his PhD dissertation was on Malaysian cinema.

Since graduation, Gordon has worked as a visiting assistant professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada) and Temple University (USA) before coming to Berea College in 2011.

His fields of interest include modernity, globalization, kinship, gender, urbanism, visual culture and media and an area specialization in Southeast Asia.

The focus of his work, both written and filmed, is on understanding the relationship between grand political/philosophical concepts (like modernity), the real-world political and economic manifestations of those concepts, and people’s daily lives.

Publications

2010 Cinema: A Visual Anthropology. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers.

2010 ‘Shame and the Fourth Wall: Some considerations for anthropology of the cinema,’ in Yeoh Seng Guan (ed.) Media, Culture and Society in Malaysia, Malaysian Studies Series. Routledge Press.

2010 “Where is the Audience? An ‘Anti-audience’ Study of Malay-language Cinema,” in J.C.H. Lee (ed.) The Malaysian Way of Life, Kuala Lumpur: Marshall Cavendish Editions.

1999 ‘Urbanism: The Symbol of Malay(sian) Modernity,’ in Bozidar Jezernik (ed.) Urban Symbolism and Rituals: Proceedings of the International Symposium Organised by the IUAES Commission on Urban Anthropology. Oddelek za etnologijo in kulturo antropolgijo, Filozofska fakulteta: Ljubljana.

Affiliations

Association of Asian Studies
ASIANetwork
American Association of Anthropology
Semiotics Society of America