BOJKA Tanhofer MILICIC portrait
  • Associate Professor (Lecturer), Anthropology Department
801-581-6251

Research Summary

I am a cultural anthropologist. My main geographic areas are Europe, the Mediterranean region, the Andean region, and India. I have done fieldwork in Croatia, India, and Peru. My topics of research are kinship, gender, and cognitive anthropology.

Education

  • Master of Arts, Anthropology, University of Utah . Project: Master's Thesis: Menstruants, Mothers, Mourners, and Murderers: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Relationship between Taboos of Menstruation, Childbirth, Mourning, and Manslaying
  • PhD, Anthropology, University of Utah. Project: PhD Dissertation: Vines of Kinship, Fields of Lavender: Kinship, Gender, and Production in a Mediterranean Community

Biography

A native of Croatia, I studied ethnology and indology at the University of Zagreb. I earned my MA and PhD in anthropology at the University of Utah.

Topics:
 Family, kinship, marriage; gender; ethnohistory; network analysis
; symbolic anthropology: symbolism of the body, menstrual beliefs and taboos, color symbolism; the structure of cosmological systems; cognitive anthropology: modularity of the mind; origin of language; children's acquisition of language; literary theory; travel writing as genre
 
Methodology: Graph theory: application of graph-theoretic models on trade networks, symbolic systems, kinship structures, gender and intra-family relationships; network analysis; qualitative research.

Languages

Croatian, native speaker

French, fluent

Italian, functional

German, functional

Spanish, functional 

Portuguese, functional

Mandarin, basic

 

 

Selected Publication

PUBLICATIONS


Books and Book Chapter

2019. "Formal Analysis in Kinship Studies: The Application of Algebraic Models and Graph Theory" In: Algebra Rodstva. Vladimir Popov, editor,  Sankt Peterburg. pp. 59-70.

2018. Creeping Plants and Winding Belts: Cognition, Kinship, and Metaphors. In: Hal Scheffler and Current Kinship Studies. Warren Shapiro, editor. Canberra: Australian University Press http://press.anu.edu.au/publications/focality-and-extension-kinship

2011a. (with Douglas Jones, eds.) Kinship, Language, and Prehistory: Per Hage and the Renaissance in Kinship Studies. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.http://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/kinship-language-and-prehistory/

2011b. Is there a Kinship Module? Evidence from the Acquisition of Kinship Terms in Pitumarca, Peru. In: Kinship, Language, and Prehistory: Per Hage and the Renaissance in Kinship Studies. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

2006b. “Božanska glad” Slavenke Drakulić: Imaginarno ostvarenje (ne)mogućeg. ("Divine Hunger" by Slavenka Drakulic: Imaginary realization of the impossible"In: Čovjek, prostor, vrijeme: Antropološki pogled na hrvatsku književnost.(Man, Space, Time: Anthropologoical view of Croatian Literature) Z. Benčić-Primc i D. Fališevac, eds. Zagreb: Ljevak.

1998. The Grapevine Forest: Kinship, Status, and Wealth in a Mediterranean Community, In: Kinship, Networks, and Exchange: New Directions in Kinship Studies, 15-35. T. Schweizer and D. White, editors. Cambridge University Press.

http://admin.cambridge.org/se/academic/subjects/anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology/kinship-networks-and-exchange?format=PB#TBUdGIHP1oOwq858.97

 

Papers

"What Do You Think, Younger Sibling Older Then I? Kinship and Cosmology among the Tewa",  In preparation.

2023. “Sex, Love, Incest, Death, and Succession: Beyond Basic Biology” Kinship UCLA Vol. 3, Issue 2.15-28. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/66b883gp

2014. "Zapisano na vodi: Hong Kong, Macau i Zmajev zaljev"(Written on Water: Hong Kong, Macau and Dragon's Bay), Hrvatska revija http://www.matica.hr/hr/434/zapisano-na-vodi-hong-kong-macau-i-zmajev-zaljev-23996/

2013. ‘Talk is not Cheap: Kinship Terminologies and the Origins of Language’  Structure and Dynamics 6(1): E-Journal of Anthropological and Related Sciences, http://escholarship.org/uc/imbs_socdyn_sdeas/6/1

2010. "Изучение родства, символическое мышление и преистория в антропологии XXI века". Stratum plus, N 2: 15-21

2009. ‘Kinship Studies, Symbolic Thought, and Prehistory in the 21st Century Anthropology’ Reports of Prehistoric Research Projects 9.

2006a. ‘Per Hage (1935-2004)’ In L’Homme 1-2: 409-411.


2004. ‘The Proto-Numic Kinship System’ (P. Hage, B. Milicic, M. Mixco, and J.P. Nichols). Journal of Anthropological Research, 60: 359-377.https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/jar.60.3.3630755

1996. ‘Tattooing, gender, and social stratification in Micro-Polynesia’ (with P. Hage and F. Harary). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute incorporating Man 2 (2): 335- 350.http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3034099.pdf

1996b. ‘Hierarchical Oppositions Revisited’. (with P. Hage and F. Harary) Oceania 67: 152-155.

1995a. ‘The Structure of Cross-sibling Relations: A Mediterranean case’. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 5(1): 129-143.

1995b. ‘Hierarchical Oppositions’ (with P. Hage and F. Harary). Oceania 65(4): 347- 354.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40331540?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

1993. ‘Exchange and Social Stratification in the Eastern Adriatic: A Graph-theoretic Model. Ethnology 32 (4): 375-395.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/i291043

1991. ‘Consumption and Conservation: Disposal and Gender in a Mediterranean Community’. Proceedings of the Conference on Gender and Consumer Behavior. Janeen Costa, ed. Salt Lake City, Association for Consumer Research, Department of Marketing, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, 277-83.

1989. ‘A Group Model of Ndembu Color Symbolism’, Semiotica 73 (1-2): 121-13

http://degruyter.com/view/j/semi.1989.73.issue-1-2/semi.1989.73.1-2.121/semi.1989.73.1-2.121.xml

 

BOOK REVIEW:

2013. Leaf, Murray and Dwight Read’: Human Thought and Social Organization: Anthropology on a New Plane’. Reviewed in Anthropos: International Review of Ethnology and Linguistics 108 (2): 679-680.