Draft:Sharon Bohn Gmelch

Sharon Bohn Gmelch (born 1947 in Panama) is an American anthropologist best known for her research on Irish Travellers, tourism, and visual anthropology. She is an emeritus professor of anthropology at Union College and the University of San Francisco and is married to fellow cultural anthropologist, and frequent collaborator, George Gmelch.

Academic Career

During her career at Union College, she was at different times director of the Women's Studies Program (1990-98) and The Roger Thayer Stone chair of the Anthropology Department (2004-08). At USF, she and George Gmelch established and jointly directed the Anthropology program (2008-20). She has also held visiting professorships at New Mexico State University, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, University of New Orleans-University of Innsbruck, Austria, and Maynooth University, Ireland, and was a Research Anthropologist for the National Museum of Man's Center of Folk Cultures Studies, Ottawa, Canada .

Research

Irish Travellers

In 1970, while a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Gmelch participated in a National Science Foundation anthropology field school in Ireland, living in a small county Kerry village. While there, she became aware of Irish Travellers, an indigenous nomadic group little known outside Ireland. Together with George Gmelch, she bought a horse and barrel-top wagon and moved into a Traveller camp, staying for one year. So began a decades-long personal and professional relationship with Irish Travellers, resulting in numerous articles, a documentary film, three books, and a major award.

The first book, Tinkers and Travellers (O'Brien Press and McGill-Queens University Press, 1975/76) was written to heighten Irish public awareness of the realities of Traveller life and was illustrated with photographs by George Gmelch and Pat Langan. It won Ireland's Book of Year Award in 1976. This was followed by several more years of research and the publication of a Travelling woman's biography. Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman (W.W. Norton, 1986), which was a finalist for the American Anthropological Association's Margaret Mead Award.

In 1981-82 Gmelch, together with George Gmelch and David Smith, conducted  applied research for the British Department of the Environment on the U.K.'s "long-distance" Travellers, both Irish Travellers and Romanichal (English Roma). This study is described in In the Field: Life and Work in Anthropology (University of California Press, 2018). In 2001 she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to Ireland where she began exploring the use of photographs in interviews with Traveller informants. In 2011 she and George Gmelch returned to Ireland to explore culture change and the settlement of the once nomadic Travellers. An Irish film crew shadowed the Gmelchs during part of this research, resulting in an acclaimed two-part Irish TV documentary  "Unsettled – from Tinker to Traveller" (2012).  Their book based on this research, Irish Travellers: The Unsettled Life (University of Indiana Press), was published in 2014.

Visual Anthropology

In the 1990s Gmelch began long-term research among the Tlingit people of southeast Alaska. First was an analysis of the work of photographer Elbridge W. Merrill who documented life in Sitka, Alaska between 1899-1929, during a period of rapid change (e.g., the government-mandated "last potlatch" of 1904; boarding school life). This research led to an historical study of all early photography of the Tlingit.  In The Tlingit Encounter with Photography (University of Pennsylvania Museum Press, 2008). During this period, Gmelch also co-produced a documentary film with filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein on the cultural revitalization of Sitka's Tlingit.  A Matter of Respect: Alaska Natives Balance the Past and Present (New Day Films, 1992) explored the Tlingits' efforts to revive their language, arts, and subsistence practices and pass them on to the younger generation. The film won several awards including a Silver Apple from the National Educational Film and Video Festival, was screened at the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and aired on PBS.

Tourism

Gmelch is the editor of the collection Tourists and Tourism, soon in its fourth edition (with co-editor Adam Kaul, Waveland Press, 2025). She has also done research on wine tourism in the Napa Valley with George Gmelch.  In 2011, they published Tasting the Good Life: Wine Tourism in the Napa Valley (Indiana) which examined the history and impact of tourism in the Napa Valley, the wine "tasting" experience, and the working lives of wine and tourism workers, from vineyard field workers and winemaker to tasting room designer, tour guides and others. It won the 2012 Gourmand International Award for the best book on wine tourism.

Additional Applied Research

In 1983 she and George Gmelch carried out a major study of resource use and subsistence (fishing, hunting, and gathering for household use) in Sitka, Alaska for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's (ADF&G) Division of Subsistence.  At the time most research on subsistence had been conducted in villages with majority Native populations. The ADF&G wanted to broaden its understanding by examining the role of subsistence in the lives of Alaskans in an "urban"setting. The study found subsistence to be central to Sitka's economy, culture and way of life for both Natives and non-Natives.

Cultural Anthropology Field Schools

During her more than forty years of teaching, Gmelch directed and co-directed sixteen semester-length anthropology field schools in Barbados (1983–2000), Tasmania (2004-10), and Tanzania (2012) along with conventional terms abroad in Japan (1989, 1996) and Vietnam (2002); and ten summer field schools in Argentina (2007) and Alaska (2006, 2012-24).  She and George Gmelch have written extensively about the positive impacts of field schools and cultural immersion on students.

Selected Publications

In the Field: Life and Work in Cultural Anthropology (with G. Gmelch) University of California Press, 2018. Gmelch, George; Gmelch, Sharon Bohn (2018). ISBN 978-0-520-28962-8. JSTOR 10.1525/j.ctv6p467.

Irish Travellers: The Unsettled Life (with G. Gmelch). Indiana University Press, 2014

Tasting the Good Life: Wine Tourism in the Napa Valley. (with G. Gmelch). Indiana University Press, 2011

The Tlingit Encounter with Photography. University of Pennsylvania Museum Press, 2008

Tourists and Tourism. Waveland Press, 2004; 2^/e, 2010, 3^/e (with Adam Kaul), 2018; 4^/e (with Adam Kaul), 2025.

Gender on Campus: Issues for College Women. Rutgers University Press, 1998

The Parish Behind God's Back: History and Culture in Rural Barbados (with G. Gmelch) The University of Michigan Press, 1997; Waveland Press, 2/e, 2012

Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman. W.W. Norton, 1986; Souvenir Press (UK), 1986; Pavanne (Pan Books, UK), 1987

"Groups that Don't Want In: Gypsies and Other Artisan, Trader and Entertainer Minorities" Annual Review of Anthropology 15:307-30, 1986.

Resource Use in a Small Alaskan City – Sitka. (with G. Gmelch) Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Division of Subsistence, Technical Paper 90, 1985.

Irish Life and Traditions. Syracuse University Press and The O'Brien Press, 1986; originally published as Irish Life, 1979.

Tinkers and Travellers: Ireland's Nomads (photographs by Pat Langan and George Gmelch). The O'Brien Press, 1975; McGill-Queens University Press, 1976.