Research Interests
Intercultural Skills Acquisition and Assessment
Anthropology of Media and Technology
Southeast Asian Studies
Visual Anthropology
Short-Term Study Abroad
Best Practices in International Education
High-Impact Pedagogy
Technology and Ethnographic Methods
Representation of Islam
Ethnographic Filmmaking
Above: The Pacific TV Manado broadcast tower and satellite reception dishes. The station was a case study in my research on regional, Indonesian television in non-Muslim-majority areas of the country.
My research is focused on different intersections of neoliberalism and cultural representation in and of Southeast Asia. My earlier work focused on mass media producers in Indonesia, and how they negotiate that country's deep divisions, particularly religious cleavages, to associate national or regional identity with consumption. My current work examines short-term study abroad at U.S. universities, and has focused on market-driven representation of culture, the role of provider agencies in shaping curricula and framing, related administrative exigencies in higher ed, the construction of intercultural competence and related metrics, as well as pedagogical best practices.
An updated list of my publications along with full-text copies can be found on my Academia profile here.
Selected Publications
2023 – Barkin, Gareth and Lauren Collins. “Rubric Shopping in the Regimes of Assessment: Navigating the Fuzzy Positivism of Study Abroad Evaluation Tools” in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad Vol. 35 No. 1 (April, 2023).
2021 – Barkin, Gareth. “The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad: Provider Agencies, Liminality, and the Mediation of Cultural Difference” in Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience, Edited by John J. Bodinger de Uriarte and Michael A. Di Giovine. New York: Lexington Books.
2020 – Barkin, Gareth. “Zooming to Indonesia: Cultural Exchange without Study Abroad” in Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic, Edited by David Kenley: 109-119. New York: Columbia University Press
2018 – Barkin, Gareth. “Either Here or There: Short Term Study Abroad and the Discourse of Going” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 49(3), 296-317.
2016 — Barkin, Gareth. “Undergraduate Research on Short-Term, Faculty-Led Study Abroad.” Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly v. 36, No. 4: 26-33.
2015 — Barkin, Gareth. “In the Absence of Language: Modeling a Transformative, Short-Term Abroad Experience” Teaching Anthropology, v.4, No. 1: 51-64.
2014 — Barkin, Gareth and Vanessa Hildebrand. “Midwife Radio: The Entangled Trajectories of Global Health Programming, Broadcast Media, and the Indonesian State.” Anthropological Quarterly v.87 No.4: 1105-1136.
2014 — Barkin, Gareth. “Commercial Islam in Indonesia: How Television Producers Mediate Religiosity Among National Audiences.” The International Journal of Asian Studies v.11, No. 1, 1-24.
2013 — Barkin, Gareth. “Reterritorialization in the Micromediascape: Indonesian Regional Television amid the Rise of Normative Media-Islam.” Visual Anthropology Review v. 29 No. 1, 42-56.
2008 — Barkin, Gareth. “The Foreignizing Gaze: Producers, Audience and Symbols of the ‘Traditional'” In Entertainment Media in Indonesia, [revised from Asian Journal of Communication] edited by Mark Hobart and Richard Fox. 1-19. New York: Routledge.
2006 — Geoff Childs and Gareth Barkin. “Visualizing Reproduction: Population Control and Tibetan Exile Media.” in Visual Anthropology Review v.22, No 2: 34-52.
2006 — Barkin, Gareth. “The Foreignizing Gaze: Producers, Audience and Symbols of the ‘Traditional'” In Asian Journal of Communication v.16, No. 4.
2004 — Barkin, Gareth. Producing Indonesia: The Derivation and Domestication of Commercial Television. Ph.D. Dissertation, Washington University. John R. Bowen, advisor. 346 p.
2004 — Barkin, Gareth. “Fieldnotes as a Website: Integrating Multimedia into Anthropological Documents” in Field Methods v.16, No.2: 1-12.
2002 — Barkin, Gareth. “Oldest Trick in the Book: Interactivity and Market Interests in Indonesian Television” in M/C a journal of media and culture v.25, October.
2000 — Barkin, Gareth and Glenn Davis Stone. “Blurring the Lines and Moving the Camera: The Beginnings of Web-Based Scholarship in Anthropology” in Social Science Computer Review v. 18, no. 2: 125-132.
Updated June, 2023
Research and Publications in Development
Field research completed; currently writing – Barkin, Gareth and Lauren Collins. “Intercultural Assessment Tools and the Extractive Lens: Imagining a Collaborative Approach to Short-term Study Abroad.” For submission to Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad.
In development – Barkin, Gareth and John Bodinger de Uriarte (editors) “That Makes Me Uncomfortable: The Pathologization of Discomfort in Higher Education and its Implications for Field-Based Learning.” Edited volume in development with University of New Mexico Press.
In development — Barkin, Gareth [and collaborating artist]. “Arriving Where We Started: Tales of Study Abroad” for University of Toronto Press’s ethnoGRAPHIC: Ethnography in Graphic Form book series.
Selected Recent Conference Presentations and Invited Lectures
2023 - “Decolonizing the Study-Tour Revisited: Short-Term Study Abroad at the University of Puget Sound” at the University of Puget Sound Alumni Summit, June 9.
2022 – “Virtually Anywhere: Unsettling the Landscape of Study Abroad” panel organized and chaired, at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Seattle, November 9.
2022 – “Unsettling Geographies of Power and Un-COIL-ing Virtual Study Abroad” presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Seattle, November 9.
2022 – “Un-COIL-ing Virtual Study Abroad” presented at the Pacific Alliance of Liberal Arts Colleges (PALAC) meeting at Soka University, June 4.
2021 – “The Imperative of Access in Short-Term Study Abroad: Provider Agencies, Liminality, and the Mediation of Cultural Difference” presented at the American Anthropological Association conference in Baltimore, November 20.
2021 — “Asal Usul Sinetron Ramadhan Indonesia di era pasca-Suharto” at Pusat Pengkajian Islam dan Masayarakat (PPIM): "Wajah Islam di TV Indonesia: Karakter Program dan Narasi Keagamaan," May 25 2021.
2021 – “Zooming to Indonesia: Cultural Exchange without Study Abroad” presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in Seattle and online, March 25.
2020 – “Zooming to Indonesia: Cultural Exchange without Study Abroad” presented as part of the Association for Asian Studies Digital Dialogue Series, December 14.
2019 – “Decolonizing the Study-Tour: Ethics and Orientation of Short-Term Study Abroad in Asia” presented at the ASIANetwork Annual Conference in San Diego, April 14.
2018 – “Decolonizing the Study-Tour: Imagining a Collaborative Approach to Short-term Study Abroad” presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in San Jose, November 16.
2017 – “Commercial Islam: Ramadan Soap Operas and Religion as Consumption in post-New Order Indonesia” invited talk at the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Los Angeles, April 13.
2017 – “Recurrent Reintegration: Accessibility and Liminality in Short-Term Study Abroad” presented at the American Ethnological Society conference at Stanford University, April 1.
2017 – “The Extended Semester: Integrating Short-Term Study Abroad into Long-Term Courses” presented at the The Forum on Education Abroad Annual Conference, Seattle, March 30.
2016 – “Recurrent Reintegration: Accessibility of Short-term Study Abroad and the Undermining of Liminality” presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Minneapolis, November 20.
2016 – “Commercial Television and Radical Islam in Post-New Order Indonesia” invited lecture at the University of Washington Southeast Asian Studies Symposium on Radicalization and Inter-faith Dialog, sponsored by the Indonesian Consulate General, Seattle, October 18.
2016 – “Commercial Islam in Indonesia: Ramadan Soap Operas and Religion as Consumption in Post-New Order Indonesia” invited lecture at the Passau Research Colloquium on Southeast Asia, University of Passau, June 1.
2015 – “Either Here or There: Short Term Study Abroad and the Institutionalized Provider Economy” presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Denver, November 19.