Awards

MacArthur Fellow - 1991

About Steven Feld

Steven Feld received a B.A. (1971) from Hofstra University and a Ph.D. (1979) from Indiana University. He is an anthropologist and an ethnomusicologist whose work incorporates linguistics, acoustics, ecology, and ornithology to achieve an anthropology of sound.

His ethnographic research involves the Kaluli people of Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. He established the Bosavi People’s Fund, a nonprofit organization to assist the Kaluli to maintain the integrity of their culture and environment. Feld has been a professor of anthropology and music at the University of New Mexico since 2003. He previously held appointments at Columbia University, New York University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Feld has written a book, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression (1982; 2nd ed., 1990). He has also produced a soundscape recording, Voices of the Rainforest (1991), which portrays the relationship between the sounds of the rain forest and human song. He is working on a multi-CD project on the worldwide history and culture of bells.