John Traphagan - Career

Career

Traphagan was an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Anthropology (1996); an instructor at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for International Studies (1997); an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan Department of Anthropology (1999); a research affiliate in the University of Michigan Population Studies Center (1999–2001); and an assistant professor of anthropology at California State University, Fullerton (1999–2001).

Traphagan also received several fellowships, including Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships for summer language study in Japan in 1992 and for the academic year in 1993, a University of Pittsburgh Nippon Sheet Glass Summer Intensive Language in 1994, and a 3-year Boren (NSEP) Area and Language Studies Doctoral Fellowship, beginning in 1994. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo Institute of Oriental Studies in 1995–1996; a visiting researching at Iwate University, Morioka, Japan, in 1998; a National Institute on Aging postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center from 1997 to 1999; and a teaching fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Anghtropology in 1994. In 1995–1996 he was a Fulbright Scholar to Japan. All together, Traphagan spent 4 years doing ethnographic research in Japan, with a focus on the elderly population.

From 2001 to 2006 Traphagan was an assistant professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. From 2004 to 2007 he was Director of that university's Center for East Asian Studies. Since 2006, he has worked as Associate Professor of Asian Studies, Anthropology, and Religious Studies at the University of Texas.