Orin Starn

Who is Orin Starn?

Orin Starn is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and History and Chair of the Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke University.

Starn is the author of Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last Wild Indian; his other books include Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes and he is co-editor of The Peru Reader, Between Resistance and Revolution, and Indigenous Experience Today. His newest book, The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal, explores the famous golfer’s place in American culture and society.

He has appeared on many radio and television programs, and writes for newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and Chronicle of Higher Education. Starn teaches courses about Latin America, Native American culture and politics, human rights, and sports and society, among other issues. Starn won Duke University’s Robert B. Cox Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004 and was awarded the Sally Dalton Robinson Distinguished Professorship effective July 1, 2005. Starn has directed the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and been the faculty director of the Duke Human Rights Center.