About

Robert M Oppenheim is a professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. His academic interests include Korean Anthropology and History, Science/Tech/Society, Heritage, Objects/Materiality, and the History of Anthropology. The information provided indicates his involvement in these fields, reflecting a focus on cultural and historical aspects of Korean society, as well as the broader intersections of science, technology, and heritage within anthropological contexts.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Paleontology
• Geology
• Sociology
• Psychoanalysis
• Anthropology
• History
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Transpacific, Undisciplined

  Pacific Affairs · 2026-03-05

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Thinking through Area in the History of Anthropology

  2025-06-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Die elektronische Aktie nach dem Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz – Eine neue Form der Begebung von Aktien

  Zeitschrift für Bankrecht und Bankwirtschaft · 2024-04-15 · 1 citations

  article

  Zusammenfassung Bis vor Kurzem war die Begebung elektronischer Aktien in Deutschland nicht möglich. Durch die Verabschiedung des Gesetzes zur Finanzierung von zukunftssichernden Investitionen (Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz – ZuFinG) hat sich dies geändert. Dieses sieht die Möglichkeit vor, elektronische Aktien (eAktien) zu begeben. Damit ist ein großer Schritt in Richtung Digitalisierung des Kapitalmarktes in Deutschland getan. Im Detail werfen die neuen Regelungen zur eAktie aber dennoch Fragen auf. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt den Weg von der „klassischen“ verbrieften Aktie zur nunmehr funktionell verbrieften, elektronischen Aktie und ordnet die eAktie in das bestehende aktienrechtliche und wertpapierrechtliche System ein. Sodann beleuchtet der Beitrag die Möglichkeiten der Übertragung und Verfügung über die eAktie aus rechtlicher und praktischer Perspektive, bevor abschließend ein Exkurs zum viel beachteten Verbot der Krypto-Inhaberaktie erfolgt.

  PublisherDOI

• The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia, written by Sheila Miyoshi Jager

  The Asian review of World Histories · 2024-02-07

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Kendall, Laurel. Mediums and magical things: statues, paintings, and masks in Asian places. xx, 228 pp., illus., plates, bibliogr. Oakland: Univ. of California Press, 2021. £27.00 (paper)

  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 2024-10-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Bearable Lightness of Being LiNK: Anti-Aesthetic Banality and Student Humanitarianism Concerning North Korean Refugees

  Anthropological Quarterly · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article considers the student humanitarianism of an undergraduate university chapter of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) toward a reconsideration of political aesthetics within the anthropology of humanitarian activity. Via what the organization describes as a “modern-day underground railroad,” LiNK aims to assist North Korean refugees within China in transiting to safer havens in third countries, from which they may in turn seek permanent settlement, usually in South Korea. In service to this purpose, it sponsors a network of chapters or “rescue teams” that mostly aim to enroll collegiate or high school youth in the United States and beyond for fundraising as well as parallel goals of advocacy and the building of “awareness.” Focusing on one such group, and drawing on other considerations of the domestic subjects of wide-ranging humanitarian activity, my ethnographic examination explores what I refer to as the “anti-aesthetic aesthetics” of student LiNK, its refusal of the aesthetics of empathy common within other humanitarian practice. Chapter members did not by and large practice the sympathetic magic of much humanitarianism, for instance through the performance of asceticism in homage to the suffering North Korean refugees endure or through the transmission of tokens of care. The overall tone of LiNK student activity was instead quite light, to the point of sometimes being ethnographically jarring. I argue that this affective lightness should not be overlooked or dismissed, for it helped to form an emotional and conceptual armature for student activists’ recognition of North Koreans fleeing the country as “just like” themselves, a recognition present also in the use and reception of LiNK media. Ultimately, this political imagination of similarity between LiNK students and their population of concern suggests a critique of the anthropological critique of humanitarian subjectivities as based on a foundational bifurcation of modes of human being.

  PublisherDOI

• SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

  2023-07-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

  2023 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Geology
  PublisherDOI

• Series Editors’ Introduction

  2022 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Geology
  PublisherDOI

• An Interview with Stephen O. Murray on Stephen O. Murray as Historian of Anthropology (and More)

  2021 · 1 citations

  • Sociology
  • Anthropology
  • History
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sumit Guha

  The University of Texas at Austin

  314 shared

• Johan Elverskog

  Southern Methodist University

  314 shared

• A. Azfar Moin

  Southern Methodist University

  314 shared

• Norbert Peabody

  Southern Methodist University

  294 shared

• Eleanor Newbigin

  SOAS University of London

  294 shared

• Iza Hussin

  University of Cambridge

  294 shared

• Régna Darnell

  Western University

  6 shared

• Jennifer Munger

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  3 shared