Prof. Eitan Wilf

Wilf
Prof.
Eitan
Wilf
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Room 3513, Social Sciences

Eitan Wilf is a cultural and semiotic anthropologist whose research interests focus on the institutional transformations of creative practice in the Western world. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the development and use of art-producing computerized algorithms and sociable robots, the work of business innovation consultants, and the institutionalization of jazz music in academic programs. He is the author of The Inspiration Machine: Computational Creativity in Poetry and Jazz (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Creativity on Demand: The Dilemmas of Innovation in an Accelerated Age (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institutionalized Creativity (University of Chicago Press, 2014), and the co-editor of Designs and Anthropologies: Frictions and Affinities (University of New Mexico Press, 2021). His articles appeared in different journals such as American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Current Anthropology, and Annual Review of Anthropology. Wilf holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago.