'Eric Michaels was a pioneering visual anthropologist who conducted a reception study long before other anthropologists were thinking about audiences and the media. His work on Australian Aboriginal media is likewise ahead of its time. He died of AIDS at the age of 40 in 1988. Born in Philadelphia just after World War II, Eric led an adventurous life that lead him to become a member of a commune in Taos and one of the editors of Screw magazine. Michaels returned to Temple University in Philadelphia to finish a BA in anthropology then moved to the University of Texas where he received a Masters' degree in anthropology and finally in 1982 a Ph.D. in anthropology and international communications.
Immediately upon finishing his doctorate he accepted a research position in Australia to study the impact of television on remote Aboriginal communities. He completed the field research in 1986 and served as a lecturer in Media Studies at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia. He published his findings in a number of scholarly and popular outlets and was most known for two monographs, The Aboriginal Invention of Television in Central Australia and For a Cultural Future: Francis Jupurrurla Makes TV at Yuendumu. When Michaels discovered he was HIV positive he began to keep a journal that was published posthumously as Unbecoming (1997 Duke University Press).
A collection of his essays including For a Culture Future have been edited by Paul Foss and published as Bad Aboriginal Art (1994 University of Minnesota Press).'
(Source: Eric Michaels website)
