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Karin
Kamb: Program Coordinator (1995-97)
 Karin
Kamb joined the Anthropology Dept. as a research assistant in
1991 to conduct fieldwork with Hmong communities in California's
Central Valley. She collected oral histories from Hmong textile
artists and documented Hmong New Year celebrations. She also completed
an urban ethnography project within the local Indonesian community.
After
completing her MA thesis, "Ethnic Entrepreneurs: A Case Study
of Hmong Textile Artists," she received her master's degree
in cultural anthropology from San Francisco State University (1995),
and accepted the position of Traditional Arts Coordinator at the
Academy.
During
her tenure at CAS, Karin compiled The Directory of Ethnic Organizations
in the San Francisco Bay Area, through a grant from the Fund for
Folk Culture in Santa Fe, and produced a teaching kit on Hmong
storycloths for grades 1-5. She organized a special five-month
series of ritual folk art demonstrations in conjunction with the
exhibit "Circle of Life," including the supervision
of ten student interns. Fieldwork included the documentation of
All Saints' Day in the Mam Indian village of Todos Santos de Cuchamatan
in Highland Guatemala.
Since
leaving the Academy, Karin has continued to work with folk artists
in Mexico through the cultural education organization, Tecolotl
Productions. In the last five years, she has conducted fieldwork
throughout Mexico with several indigenous groups--Huichol, Seri,
Mayo, Yaqui, Cora, Zapotec, Mixe--in preparation for a book on
their folk art traditions. Karin's work focuses on aspects of
applied anthropology, in that she takes an active role as cultural
broker and mediator between indigenous groups and the general
public, encouraging artists to preserve their traditions and helping
them with marketing and production issues so they can successfully
sell their work in the international economy.
In August
of 2002, Karin began interning at the Global Fund for Women in
San Francisco, translating grants from French and Spanish into
English. She also began a project analyzing the Economic Opportunity
Initiatives grants from Latin America to assess their success
rate within women's cooperatives.
Since
September 2003, Karin has lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, working at
Mujeres Artesanas de las Regiones de Oaxaca (MARO), a women's
folk art cooperative. Her goal is to assist in getting a technical
support grant to develop a national catalog of products as well
as a web page for international sales. She has interviewed and
photographed all the key artists within the coop and produced
educational write-ups (signage) for the various folk art genres.
You can
reach Karin at karinkamb@yahoo.com.
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Jenny Michael joined the Academy
of Science's Traditional Arts Program in May of 1999. She grew
up in the Bay Area, where she completed undergraduate work at
Stanford and a master's degree in Folklore at the University of
California at Berkeley. Her studies then took her to Philadelphia,
where she earned a doctorate in Folklore & Folklife from the
University of Pennsylvania. After holding teaching positions at
Penn and Indiana University, Jenny returned to the Bay Area, where
she is currently a lecturer in the American Studies Program at
U.C. Berkeley. 
Jenny's particular interests lie in the adornment, manipulation,
and transformation of the body, in women's cultural expression
and material culture, especially dress and foodways. Much of her
research has focused on ethnic communities in the United States
and abroad, including dissertation fieldwork on the women's costume
tradition in Arles, France, several years working in urban neighborhoods
as a staff folklorist for the 
Almudena
Ortiz received her BA in Art History from the Instituto de Cultura
Superior in Mexico City in 1983 and her MA in Folklore from the
University of California at Berkeley in 1989. Her master's thesis,
Fiesta de Quinceañera: Queen for a Day, focused on the
coming-of-age ceremonies for 15-year-old girls in Mexican communities
in the United States and Mexico. Almudena also studied at the
Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara and completed
an internship in museum studies at the Academy in 1991.