Phillip McArthur

Phillip H. McArthur is an American folklorist and anthropologist at BYU-Hawaii. McArthur's scholarly work focuses on the Marshall Islands. McArthur has spent much of his career documenting and analyzing Marshall Islander narratives, mythology, songs, and performances.

Background

Education

McArthur initially travelled to the Marshall Islands as a missionary for the Mormon church, returning for his PhD research. He would later study under folklorists and scholars Richard Bauman and Beverly J. Stoeltje. He obtained an associate degree in psychology from Ricks College, a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University in anthropology, and both master's and Ph.D. degrees in folklore studies and cultural anthropology from Indiana University.

Research

McArthur's work in the Marshall Islands closely examines social power and indigenous epistemologies with special attention to the tumultuous relationship with the United States. McArthur's research emphasizes social theoretical and semiotic approaches to traditional narrative (i.e. myth, oral history), cultural performance (ritual, ceremony, festival, spectacle), history, cosmology, and local cultures within the contexts of decolonization, nationalism and globalization. This includes a deepening attention to political and economic forces, and their relationship to social power and practice. With a geographical specialization in Oceania, he additionally includes comparative studies on cultures of Asia, Native America, Africa and the Classical world. He also integrates deep interests in comparative philosophy, the history of ideas, dialogic ethnography, and traditional arts.

Publications

Representative Publications:

• Dialogues with a Trickster: On the Margins of Myth and Ethnography in the Marshall Islands. 2024. University of Hawai'i Press.
• "The Church in the Marshall Islands: A Cultural History". In "Battlefields to Temple Grounds: Latter-day Saints in Guam and Micronesia" 2023. R. Devan Jensen and Rosalind Ram, eds. Religious Studies Center, BYU. pp. 67-100.
• "Oceania." In A Companion to Folklore 2012. Regina Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem, eds. Wiley-Blackwell Press. pp. 248–264.
• "Ambivalent Fantasies: Local Prehistories and Global Dramas in the Marshall Islands" 2008. Journal of Folklore Research 45(3): 263-298.
• "Modernism and Pacific Ways at Knowing: An Uneasy Dialogue in Micronesia." 2007. Pacific Rim Studies 1(1):7-24
• Introductory Note "Folklore, Nationalism, and the Challenge of the Future", in The Marrow of Human Experience: Essays in Folklore, William Wilson. Ed. Jill Terry Rudy. Logan: Utah State University Press. 2006
• "Narrative, Cosmos, and Nation: Intertextuality and Power in the Marshall Islands". 2004. Journal of American Folklore 462: 1.
• "Oceania: An Overview". In CultureGrams: World Addition, Vol. IV (Asia and Oceania). 2002. Lindon: Axiom Press.
• "Narrating to the Center of Power in the Marshall Islands". 2000. In We are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in the Construction of Ethnic Identity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Paul Spickard and W. Jeffrey Burroughs, eds.
• "More Than Meets the Ear: A Marshallese Example of Folklore Method and Study for Pacific Collections". 1997. PIALA: Identifying, Using and Sharing Local Resources. pp. 49–71. University of Guam.

External links

• The Pacific Institute
• The American Folklore Society
• BYU-Hawaii
• Indiana University
• Indiana University, Folklore Dept.