Dan Birchok

Dr. Birchok is an anthropologist of religion interested in religion and public life, especially Islam in Indonesia. His research focuses on everyday engagements with religious concepts, and he is especially interested in genealogical authority, religious temporalities, and ritual. Currently, when he is not teaching or taking students on field trips in southeast Michigan, he is writing about a group of Sufis (Islamic mystics) who reside on the west coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province, with special attention to how their changing forms of genealogical authority and evolving notions of orthodoxy reflect the place of religion in the Indonesian state.

Fields of Study: Historical Anthropology, Islam, Indonesia, Aceh, Southeast Asia

Dr. Birchok teaches the following classes: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology; Social Theory; Anthropology of Religion; Anthropology of Islam; The Indian Ocean World; Anthropology of Political Violence; Anthropology of Value and Exchange; Culture, Personality, and Beyond