Kristin Kant-Byers

Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

College of Liberal Arts

kmkgss@rit.edu

Office Location

EAS-3163

Kristin Kant-Byers

Lecturer

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

College of Liberal Arts

Bio

I am a Cultural Anthropologist trained in the four-fields approach to Anthropology and its study of people. My research specializes in the political and economic dynamics of visual media, especially the roles art and tourism play in the formation of identities and cultural spaces. My geographical research area is North America with a concentration on Southern Appalachia. Topical areas of study I mostly focus on include heritage and tourism studies, globalization, the anthropology of art, material culture and collecting, ritual and performance studies, race and ethnicity, anthropological research methods, North American ethnography, and Appalachian studies.

Soon after earning my PhD in Anthropology, I realized how much I love teaching and love being in the classroom interacting with students. As an adjunct professor and now lecturer, I bring cutting edge research in anthropology to students of various majors. I do this in order to equip my students with skills to interact in meaningful ways with humans throughout their lives.

kmkgss@rit.edu

Select Scholarship

Peer Reviewed/Juried Poster Presentation or Conference Paper

Kant-Byers, Kristin. "Painting the Appalachian Sky: an exploration of the sky icon in Appalachian tourist destinations." Proceedings of the Dark Skies Appalachia Symposium, Colgate University, April 6, 2024. Ed. NA. Hamilton, NY: n.p..

Invited Keynote/Presentation

Kant-Byers, Kristin. "Getting to Know Our Gen Z Students (and Getting Them to Know Us)." RIT Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Summer Institute + AI Symposium. RIT. Rochester, NY. 15 May 2024. Conference Presentation.

Kant-Byers, Kristin. "Producing Anthropological Knowledge from Tourist Art: Techniques for Learning and Teaching about Visual Culture." American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. American Anthropological Association. Washington, D.C.. 5 Dec. 2014. Conference Presentation.

Kant-Byers, Kristin. "Measuring the Known Realities of Regional Icons from the Possible Imaginings of Appalachian Art: Techniques for Learning and Teaching about Appalachian Art." Thirty-Seventh Annual Appalachian Studies Conference. Appalachian Studies Association. Huntington, WV. 28 Mar. 2014. Conference Presentation.

Currently Teaching

ANTH-102

Cultural Anthropology

3 Credits

Human beings across the globe live and work according to different values and beliefs. Students will develop the tools for acquiring knowledge, awareness, and appreciation of cultural differences, and in turn enhance their abilities to interact across cultures. The course accomplishes these aims by examining the relationship between individuals and their communities, and the dynamics of ritual, religious, political, and social life in different parts of the world.

ANTH-210

Culture and Globalization

3 Credits

By exploring critical issues of globalizing culture, we examine how ideas, attitudes, and values are exchanged or transmitted across conventional borders. How has the production, articulation, and dissemination of cultural forms (images, languages, practices, beliefs) been shaped by global capitalism, media industries, communication technologies, migration, and tourist travels? How are cultural imaginaries forged, exchanged, and circulated among a global consumer public? How has the internationalizing of news, computer technologies, video-sharing websites, blogging sites, and other permutations of instant messaging served to accelerate cultural globalization? Students will be introduced to anthropological perspectives on cultural globalization, the transmission of culture globally, and the subsequent effects on social worlds, peoples, communities, and nations.

ANTH-328

Heritage and Tourism

3 Credits

Tourism is a global industry and an important part of the human experience. There are many forces within tourism that act upon people’s lives, and in particular their environments, economies, cultural heritage, and identity. This course will explore tourism and its many dimensions. Beginning with an examination of kinds of tourism, this course unpacks tourism’s ancient trade and pilgrimage roots as well as its class dynamics of post-industrialization. Other aspects of tourism to be explored include strategies and effects of tourism development and production, nationalism and cultural identity, commoditization and marketing of culture and the ethics of development, labor and infrastructural changes, social inequalities, ecological impact, sustainable tourism, the experience of tourists, ritual and authenticity, and the relationship between tourists and tourism workers. This course provides opportunities for cross-cultural analysis of tourism sites, for participant-observation of the tourist experience, and for evaluation and recommendation of tourism site development in and around Rochester.