 Michael A. Di Giovine is an anthropologist and former tour operator whose
research in Europe (Italy, Spain) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam and Cambodia) focuses
primarily on heritage discourses and practices, global mobilities
(tourism/pilgrimage/diaspora), religious movements and cults, development and
revitalization, and foodways. He is currently Assistant Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and an Honorary Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Possessing nearly a decade of experience with the travel sector, Michael is also a consultant and a Research Fellow for Slover-Linett Strategies, an audience research and planning firm specializing in museums and arts organizations. A dual Italian and United States citizen who has translated numerous scholarly works in the social sciences, Michael's dissertation examined the emergence and development of the cult of the immensely popular 20th century stigmatic and
Catholic saint, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, and the ways in which diverse forms
of pilgrimage, devotion, and notions of heritage associated with the saint have
served as revitalizing forces in the sociocultural, religious, political, and
economic spheres of the turbulent 20th and 21st
centuries. A former tour operator, Dr. Di Giovine is the author of the heralded volume, The Heritage-scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism (Lexington Books 2009), which thoroughly examined the interconnection of UNESCO’s World Heritage program and global tourism. With David Picard, he co-edited Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference (Channel View Press), as well as the forthcoming The Seductions of Pilgrimage: Sacred Journeys Afar and Astray in the Western Religious Tradition; and Edible Identities: Food and Foodways as Cultural Heritage with Ronda Brulotte (Ashgate). He edited special issue of The International Journal of Tourism Anthropology on the theme, “Sites of Pilgrimage, Sites of Heritage,” and is collaborating with architect and historian Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes on a forthcoming special issue of The International Journal of Tourism Anthropology entitled, "Sites of Pilgrimage, Sites of Heritage." With Noel Salazar, he is the co-editor of the book series, Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility and Society (Lexington Books).
Michael earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago, an A.M. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a B.S. cum laude in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Michael currently serves as an expert member on the International Committee on Cultural Tourism at the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), UNESCO's historic preservation advisory body; as a regional representative in the tourism sector of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Scientists (IUAES); and as a member of the American Anthropological Association's Presidential Task Force on Cultural Heritage. He is also the Program Chair of the American Anthropological Association's Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group (ATIG), as well as the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network, both of which he is a founding member; he is also on the editorial board of The Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change and The International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, and is the Book Reviews Editor of Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing. Michael is a member of Phi Alpha Theta International History Honor Society, Theta Alpha Kappa International Theology and Religious Studies Honor Society, Delta Phi Epsilon Professional Foreign Service Fraternity, The International Commission for Ethnological Food Research, The Society for Humanistic Anthropology, The Society for the Anthropology of Religion, the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and the American Anthropological Association. |