Dr. Stephen A. Brighton
Report from 2006 Irish Rural
Lifeways Field School
Assistant Professor Stephen Brighton joined the Department of Anthropology
in 2005, and organizes an archaeological field school each summer
in rural Ireland. He completed a B.A. in Anthropology at Montclair
State University, New Jersey, in 1992, and received his Ph.D. from
Boston University in 2005. His dissertation, An Historical Archaeology
of the Irish Proletarian Diaspora: The Material Manifestations of
Irish Identity in America, 1850-1910, is an anthropologically based
study on the transnational history and historical archaeology of
pre-Famine rural Ireland and Irish immigrant and Irish-American
communities in New York City and Paterson, New Jersey. Dr. Brighton’s
research areas include northeast North America, Ireland, and the
Scottish highlands, with specializations in anthropologically based
approaches to the archaeology of diaspora, colonialism, the emergence
and influence of capitalism and urbanization, immigration history,
social identity (i.e., race, class, ethnicity, gender, and age)
and heritage formation and nationalism, material culture studies,
vernacular architecture, and contemporary theory in archaeology.
In 2002 he was awarded the Helen G. Allen Humanities Award by the
Humanities Foundation of the College of Arts and Sciences and Graduate
School of Boston University, and in 1998 he was awarded a research
fellowship working on Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vernacular
Architecture of Massachusetts for the Department of Preservation
at Boston University.
Dr. Brighton contributed two chapters to Unearthing Hidden Ireland:
Historical Archaeology in County Roscommon, edited by Dr. Charles
Orser, Jr. He also wrote “Symbolism, Myth-Making, and Identity:
The Red Hand of Ulster in Nineteenth- Century Paterson, New Jersey,”
for the International Journal of Historical Archaeology (8 [2],
2004); “Prices That Suit the Times: Shopping for Ceramics
at the Five Points,” in Historical Archaeology (35 [3], 2001);
and “The Rhetoric of Temperence,” (with Paul Reckner)
in Historical Archaeology (33[1], 1999).
In addition to his published work Dr. Brighton has presented over
15 papers at conferences and public fora and has produced 5 technical
reports based on his field work in Ireland and in New York City.
Dr. Brighton's research interests are social histories and physical
evidence of the Irish Diaspora and Irish-American
heritage.
Follow this link for a searchable copy of Dr. Brighton's CV.
A PDF version is also available.
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