Visiting Faculty
Expertise: Semiotics; linguistic anthropology; alienation; compassion and empathy; religion; Japan
Berman holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California San Diego and a master’s degree in social sciences from the University of Chicago. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. He previously held positions at the University of California, San Diego, CUNY Hunter College, CUNY City College, and the University of Tokyo.
Michael Berman researches the relationship between compassion and alienation as aspects of governance, broadly understood. His research links questions about the nature of form, relations, generality, language, and history to questions posed at the level of experience and interaction. More specifically, he asks why it is sometimes difficult to sustain meaningful relationships despite the desire to do so; how the processes involved in creating a form of relations, like a religion or humanitarian movement, sometimes lead to its undoing; and why many people come to feel isolated despite being surrounded by other people in their daily lives.
Michael has published multiple translations, including Yuki Masami’s book Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers (2015), and recently completed a draft of his first book manuscript, Heart of a Heartless World. His original work has appeared in several top-tier journals, including American Ethnologist, Language and Communication, and positions: asia critique.
Expertise: Climate justice; environmental justice; anthropology of climate change; sustainability & resilience; political & postcolonial ecology; race & ethnicity; gender & sexuality; religion; Southeast Asia; Philippines; Indonesia
Cardozo received his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in December 2022, with a dissertation titled “Coal Is Not the Answer--Renewable Energy for the People Now!”: The Struggle for Climate Justice in the Philippines. His work sits at the intersection of climate justice, colonialism, and displacement, with a regional focus on the Philippines and the Transpacific more broadly. His research and teaching interests also include Filipinx and Asian American experiences, indigenous sovereignty in the Transpacific, and U.S. militarism in the Transpacific and Global South more broadly.
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