Invisible Contrarian

Essays in Honor of Stephen O. Murray

Regna Darnell, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496243218
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Social Sciences

In Invisible Contrarian Regna Darnell and Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz have assembled scholars to memorialize and celebrate the prescient vision and interdisciplinary contributions of the late Stephen O. Murray (1950–2019), who did pioneering research in ethnolinguistics and anthropology of gender and homosexuality. His socially relevant work continues to provide a cogent example of an emergent, forward-looking anthropology for the twenty-first century. Murray’s wide-ranging work included linguistics, regional ethnography in Latin America and Asia, activism, history of anthropology in relation to social sciences, and migration studies.

Along with a complete list of his publications, Invisible Contrarian highlights Murray’s methodological innovations and includes key writings that remain little known, since he never pursued a tenured research position.  Murray’s significant, prolific contributions deserve not only to be reexamined but to be shared with contemporary and future audiences. Ideal both as a primer for those who have not yet read Murray’s work and as an in-depth resource for those already familiar with him, this volume demonstrates the wide-ranging accomplishments of a man who modeled how to be an independent scholar outside an academic position.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface by Peter M. Nardi
• Part 1
• Introducing Stephen O. Murray as Invisible Contrarian
• 1. Stephen O. Murray in His Own Words
• Part 2
• 2. The Breadth and Depth of Creativity in Stephen O. Murray’s Research and Publications
• 3. Stephen O. Murray as Collaborator
• 4. Thinking through Area in the History of Anthropology
• 5. “AIDS and the Social Imaginary” Thirty Years Later
• Part 3
• 6. Stephen O. Murray’s Legacy in the Comparative Study of Homosexualities
• 7. Stephen O. Murray’s Contributions to Homosexuality Studies in Latin America
• 8. Stephen O. Murray and the Development of Queer African Studies
• Part 4
• 9. John Gumperz in Context: 1977 and 1992 Interviews
• 10. Doing History of Anthropology
• 11. What Is a Conversation (in Anglo America)?
• 12. Introduction to Male Sexual Subjectivities
• 13. What Had Been
• Source Acknowledgments
• Appendix
• Contributors
• Index
• About Regna Darnell
• About Wendy Leeds Hurwitz
• Series List