Mark Auslander, Ph.D., is a sociocultural and historical anthropologist, who works at the intersection of political theory, ritual practice, kinship, race, and art history, with particular emphasis on Africa and the African Diaspora. Mark’s award winning book The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family (University of Georgia Press, 2011) re-reads American racial politics under slavery and post-slavery through structuralist approaches to mythology and kinship. Dr. Auslander has directed museums in Washington state and Michigan, and organized a wide range of exhibitions on art, environmental crisis, race, gender, and memory politics. He is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Mount Holyoke.