Peer Reviewed Articles by Julia L Offen
Four Tulips, 2025
Creative Anthropological Essay won Honorable Mention in a "New Beginnings" contest in a Literary ... more Creative Anthropological Essay won Honorable Mention in a "New Beginnings" contest in a Literary Journal; topic of growing older
Green Mountains Review, 1999
Translating Multisensory Experience: An Introduction
Anthropology News, 2009
Portrait of a circus girl
Ethnography, 2010
Portrait of a Circus Girl
Ethnography, 2010
Drawn from many months of ethnographic research with a classic European Circus in Switzerland, th... more Drawn from many months of ethnographic research with a classic European Circus in Switzerland, this narrative traces the author’s close contact and experience with one young circus woman over a 24-hour period. Through this brief portrait witnessing one particular individual’s story, larger themes — language, hierarchy, family, circus/town divides, belonging and exclusion, performance, gender roles, national identity, and more — all arise as key practices and performances for understanding the experience of European circus life. ‘Alessandra’ is a real person, a friend, and to those who know her in or out of the circus world, a compelling character. Not an explicit reflection on, nor analysis of, ethnographic experience, this ‘tale from the field’ is instead in-the-moment narration and commentary written to immerse the reader, engaging them in the ethnographic imagination, evoking lived experience, and inviting as many worthwhile questions as it may answer.
C.P.S. Cubicle Chatter
Anthropology and Humanism, 2017
Rum Punch Press, 2018
Short short creative nonfiction ethnography, based upon experience with a European traveling circ... more Short short creative nonfiction ethnography, based upon experience with a European traveling circus.
Circus Payday: an ethnography
Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, 2020
Creative ethnography triptych.
No One Looks Up
Orca Literary Journal, 2021
(Literary Fiction, short story)
SAGE Handbook of Cultural Anthropology, 2021
Original contribution to the SAGE Handbook of Cultural Anthropology, in Ch. 11: Humanistic Anthro... more Original contribution to the SAGE Handbook of Cultural Anthropology, in Ch. 11: Humanistic Anthropologies: Diverse Weavings about the Many Ways to be Human by David Syring, with additional contributions by Paul Stoller, Leah Zani, and Julia L. Offen.
Short creative prose employing titles of winning Victor Turner Prize Books from 1990-2020.
Anthropology and Humanism, 2022
An event unfolds via detailed annotation of its cast of characters in
this playful creative nonf... more An event unfolds via detailed annotation of its cast of characters in
this playful creative nonfiction story. Swiss, German, Moroccan, Polish, Italian, and
American workers in a European circus gather at a sidewalk café in Switzerland. Beers
are drunk, orders are given, transgressions occur. The afternoon’s social drama devel-
ops. Details and meanings reveal themselves without explication. Celebrating the pos-
sibilities of creative ethnographic storytelling, this is a play without acts, a narrative
without narrative structure. The characters and events portrayed are nonfiction, with
all names and some identifying features changed to protect the individuals’ privacy.
The Weight of History
Urban People / Lidé Mésta, 2022
This is a short work of creative ethnographic prose that relies solely upon crafted narrative to ... more This is a short work of creative ethnographic prose that relies solely upon crafted narrative to show rather than explain its message. In the mid 1990s, I spent two years doing ethnographic fieldwork with European traveling circuses. One troupe I worked in for a considerable amount of time included members of 16 different nationalities. They had a posted rule banning the display of national flags or symbols within their circus community, and – other than some fleeting heated moments during World Cup soccer – seemed to keep conflicts by nationality group to a minimum. Nonetheless, historical tensions rested barely under the surface. Although none of the people portrayed here were alive for the events of WWII, that conflict still echoed down into everyday life in the circus over 50 years later. This story is based upon actual characters and events the author experienced, although all individuals’ names and some identifying characteristics have been changed.
Keywords: creative ethnography; narrative; Europe; nationality; war; circus; history
Lidé města
This is a short work of creative ethnographic prose that relies solely upon crafted narrative to ... more This is a short work of creative ethnographic prose that relies solely upon crafted narrative to show rather than explain its message. In the mid 1990s, I spent two years doing ethnographic fieldwork with European traveling circuses. One troupe I worked in for a considerable amount of time included members of 16 different nationalities. They had a posted rule banning the display of national flags or symbols within their circus community, and – other than some fleeting heated moments during World Cup soccer – seemed to keep conflicts by nationality group to a minimum. Nonetheless, historical tensions rested barely under the surface. Although none of the people portrayed here were alive for the events of WWII, that conflict still echoed down into everyday life in the circus over 50 years later. This story is based upon actual characters and events the author experienced, although all individuals’ names and some identifying characteristics have been changed.
Humanistic Anthropologies: Diverse Weavings about the Many Ways to Be Human
Beyond the ring : the European traveling circus
Anthropology News, Apr 1, 2009
As Jonathan Marion and Julia Offen note below, "more than just ways of thinking and being, cultur... more As Jonathan Marion and Julia Offen note below, "more than just ways of thinking and being, cultures are also fields of sensation," and both cultural transmission and cultural understanding depend on experiential engagement. Recognizing this, many contemporary anthropologists seek to explore the variety of media through which multisensory experiences and knowledges can be communicated ethnographically by making use of emergent and established technologies. AN staff thank Jonathan Marion for his assistance in developing both In Focus series in this issue.
Empathy and dialogue: Embracing the art of creative review, 2024
Creative work, like traditional scholarship, thrives on exchange, and peer review, is not just a ... more Creative work, like traditional scholarship, thrives on exchange, and peer review, is not just a procedural task. It is an act of co-creation, a chance to enter into conversation with the work and its creator, to shape and be shaped by the process. What if we could reimagine peer review not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a space for creative and intellectual growth—for both the reviewer and the reviewed? This is where we begin: with the idea that peer review, when applied to creative anthropology, can be a transformative practice, one that pushes beyond the rigid confines of conventional academic evaluation and into something more expansive, more generous. But how do we get there? How do we move from skepticism to possibility, from critique to collaboration?
Chapters by Julia L Offen
Performing Women in Classic European Circuses
The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance, 2023
Celebrating the rich possibilities of creative ethnographic storytelling to explore the intimacie... more Celebrating the rich possibilities of creative ethnographic storytelling to explore the intimacies of both staged and everyday performances, this narrative collage takes the reader inside the ethnographer’s experiences during two years of research in European traveling circuses. Simultaneously art, life, and the liminal zone in between, these villages-on-wheels embody staged performance and all the flesh-and-blood representatives within and surrounding that spectacle. For these troupes, both are the performances of everyday life. A particular story of acceptable femininity plays out in and around the lighted ring. Within the context of roles and cultural understandings, the performing body speaks. These narrative selections show rather than tell the careful packaging of staged circus performances. And on the back lot, they illustrate the structure of gendered rules for work and relationships. The characters and events portrayed are nonfiction, with names (except the ethnographer’s) and some identifying features changed to protect the individuals’ privacy.
Chapter 18 in The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance. Lauren Griffith and David Syring, eds. London & New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 286-297.
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Peer Reviewed Articles by Julia L Offen
Short creative prose employing titles of winning Victor Turner Prize Books from 1990-2020.
this playful creative nonfiction story. Swiss, German, Moroccan, Polish, Italian, and
American workers in a European circus gather at a sidewalk café in Switzerland. Beers
are drunk, orders are given, transgressions occur. The afternoon’s social drama devel-
ops. Details and meanings reveal themselves without explication. Celebrating the pos-
sibilities of creative ethnographic storytelling, this is a play without acts, a narrative
without narrative structure. The characters and events portrayed are nonfiction, with
all names and some identifying features changed to protect the individuals’ privacy.
Keywords: creative ethnography; narrative; Europe; nationality; war; circus; history
Chapters by Julia L Offen
Chapter 18 in The Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance. Lauren Griffith and David Syring, eds. London & New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 286-297.