Dr. David Guss

Programming Committee Director, and Trustee

David Guss is Professor Emeritus at Tufts University Department of Anthropology.  He is a writer, scholar, researcher, poet, folklorist, organizer, performer, and dancer. 

A specialist in Latin America, festivals, rituals, and performances, David has conducted research in many parts of Latin America and the United States.

In 1976, he began a decade-long project with Venezuela’s Yekuana Indians in the headwaters of the Orinoco.  His next project explored the ways festive behavior is used to negotiate and constitute identity. This book, The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism as Cultural Performance established him as one of the world’s leading authorities on festive behavior. In 1994, he extended this research to Bolivia where, in another decade-long study, he looked at intersections of colonialism, placemaking, and festive forms in the largest indigenous celebration in the Americas. 

Contact him at: David.Guss@Tufts.edu