Pratt Institute

Education

Ph.D., Indiana University; Anthropology and African Studies
M.A., Indiana University; Anthropology and African Studies
M.A., Committee on International Relations, University of Chicago
B.S. in Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Biography

Ed DeCarbo has earned 2 degrees in international relations and 2 others in anthropology and African studies. His field research is in West Africa with a focus on aesthetics, the place and practice of the arts in everyday life. At Pratt he teaches non western arts (African, Oceanic, and pre-Columbian), as well as courses that look across those fields and the perspectives of western scholarship toward them at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and the first art history survey. The work at Pratt, if it is “work” at all, benefits from two essential and important elements: the material and the students. The arts of the worlds beyond the West are rich, engaging, and fully demonstrative of aesthetics lives and alternatives. At Pratt the students who inspect those objects, acts and events are bright, curious, and demanding of themselves and of their peers in both studio and research focused settings. Of course, the opportunities of those pursuits in the context of New York, its galleries, museums, private collections, and the populations and voices of the entire globe transcend both enumeration and imagination. It is difficult to find a more challenging and fulfilling setting for such important work. The only limitation is in the inability of some to frame the question.

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