Cyberthirdspace

This is Robertson Allen's website, and here are a few facts about me:

I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Washington.

I love playing/listening to music from around the world, and play the Highland bagpipes, penny whistle, saxophone, and piano, along with lots of other instruments that I have collected from various countries. I can be content listening to pretty much any genre of music except for contemporary Christian music, and anything that sounds like Slipknot--I just can't take it. I love hymns, though;

I am especially interested in Japanese culture, having lived there for three years teaching English at a public junior high school in Yamanashi-ken, the prefecture which claims half of Mt. Fuji. Japan is my second home--Tennessee is my first and Seattle my third;

I am a keen traveler and have been to over 30 countries--I try to make it out at least once a year;

I am a sci-fi/fantasy literature fan, but I know how to distinguish good from bad stuff (I think), and I feel that these genres are some of the most powerful tools available for cultural critique;

I study video games--among other things--and am interested in using anthropology to examine video games and the varying practices that are involved in their development, marketing, and consumption. I am currently doing my dissertation research in sociocultural anthropology on the institutions and communities surrounding the development of the US Army's online video game America's Army. The game is used as a public relations device by the Army, and applications of the game are also being used in modeling weapons systems and training soldiers in the Army for specific work-related functions. There are also millions of players worldwide who play the game as a form of socializing;

I am a Tennessean born and bred, a whiskey-sippin bluegrass lover who always yearns for his home but seems to always be away from it;

And I am a history buff, having majored in that in college, and I can talk about the minutiae of the Scottish enclosure movement, or the elements of Greek architecture in Japan's Shin-Yakushiji temple, for hours, if only you would let me. I participated in an archaeological dig a few summers ago in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria and absolutely loved it.