Kathleen M. Adams

Kathleen M. Adams is a cultural anthropologist, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and Professor Emerita at Loyola University Chicago,. Adams is known for her research on cultural transformations in island Southeast Asia, (especially Toraja society in Indonesia), and her contributions to critical tourism studies, heritage studies, Indonesian art, and museum studies. Her award-winning books include Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia and The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (coedited with N. Leite and Q. Casteneda). She has written four other books, co-edited special journal issues and published articles on topics ranging from tourism research ethics to globalization and the politics of Indonesian arts.

Adams received her B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Washington. Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola University Chicago, Adams held the Mouat Family Endowed Chair for Junior Faculty at Beloit College. In Chicago, she was also an Adjunct Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History. She has held fellowships and visiting appointments at various universities. She was the Isaac Manasseh Meyer Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore's Centre for Advanced Study (1999), a visiting professor at Loyola University Chicago's John Felice Rome Center (2008-2009), Ateneo de Manila University (2016), and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (2016), and a Visiting Fellow at The Center for Tourism Research at Wakayama University (2020-2023). She has also taught on several University of Virginia Semester at Sea voyages.

Adams' research has been supported by the Fulbright, the American Philosophical Society, the Henry R. Luce Foundation and other foundations. She has received several book prizes and was awarded Loyola University's Sujack Master Researcher Award twice (2016, 2020), Loyola University Chicago's 2007 Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence, and recognition by Princeton Review as one of the "300 best professors" in the US and Canada in 2012. In 2024 she was listed on Redwood High School's Avenue of Giants.

Books

 * 2023 Intersection of Tourism, Migration, and Exile. (Co-edited with Natalia Bloch). Routledge.
 * 2022 Seni Sebagai Politik. (Translated by Anwar Jimpe Rachman). Penerbit Ininnawa.
 * 2019 Indonesia: History, Heritage, Culture Key Issues in Asian Studies Series. Association for Asian Studies Press.
 * 2019 The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (Co-edited with N. Leite and Q. Casteneda). Rowman and Littlefield.(Winner of the 2020 American Anthropological Association ATIG award for best 2nd and beyond book in the Anthropology of Tourism. ).
 * 2011 Everyday Life in Southeast Asia. (Co-edited with Kathleen Gillogly). Indiana University Press.
 * 2006	Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism, and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press. (Winner of the 2009 Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award, best in Social Sciences 2007-2009)
 * 2000 Home and Hegemony: Domestic Service and Identity Politics in South and Southeast Asia. (Co-edited with Sara Dickey). University of Michigan Press.

Significant articles

 * 2020 "(Post-) Pandemic Tourism Resiliency: Southeast Asian Lives and Livelihoods in Limbo." Tourism Geographies.
 * 2020 "What Western Tourism Concepts Obscure: Intersections of Tourism and Migration in Indonesia." Tourism Geographies.
 * 2018 "Revisiting "Wonderful Indonesia": Tourism, Economy, and Society". The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia. Abingdon on Thames: Routledge.
 * 2018 "A Room with a View: Local Knowledge and Tourism Entrepreneurship in an Unlikely Indonesian Locale.” (Coauthored with D. Sandarupa), Asian Journal of Tourism Research. 3(1): 1-26.
 * 2018 "Leisure in the 'Land of the Walking Dead': Western Mortuary Tourism, the Internet, and Zombie Pop Culture in Toraja, Indonesia." In Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death and Dying. Boulder: Univ. of Colorado Press.
 * 2015 "Families, Funerals and Facebook: Reimag(in)ing and Curating Toraja Kin in Translocal Times.” TRaNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia, 3(2).
 * 2015 Guest Editor of Special Issue "Back to the Future? Emergent Visions for Object-Based Teaching in and Beyond the Classroom.” Museum Anthropology, Vol 38(2).
 * 2012 "Love American Style and Divorce Toraja Style: Lessons from a Tale of Mutual Reflexivity in Indonesia,” Critical Arts 26(2).
 * 2010 "Courting and Consorting with the Global: The Local Politics of an Emerging World Heritage Site in Sulawesi, Indonesia.” In Heritage Tourism in Southeast Asia, NIAS Press.
 * 2008 “The Janus-Faced Character of Tourism in Cuba: Ideological Continuity and Change.” Annals of Tourism Research, 35(1):27-46. Coauthored with P. Sanchez.
 * 2005	“Public Interest Anthropology in Heritage Sites: Writing Culture and Righting Wrongs.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 11(5):433-439.
 * 2005 “Generating Theory, Tourism & “World Heritage” in Indonesia: Ethical Quandaries for Practicing Anthropologists.” Natl. Assoc. for the Practice of Anthropology Bulletin, 23:45-59.
 * 2004 “The Genesis of Touristic Imagery: Politics and Poetics in the Creation of a Remote Indonesian Island Destination.” Tourist Studies, 4(2):115-135.
 * 1998 "Ethnic Tourism and the Renegotiation of Tradition in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi (Indonesia)." Ethnology, 309-320.
 * 1984 "Travel Agents as Brokers in Ethnicity." Annals of Tourism Research 11(3):469-485.