Faculty Directory
Courtney Handman
Visiting Professor
Courtney Handman
Ph.D.
Contact
Email: handman@bc.edu
Education
- Ph.D., University of Chicago
Courses
Technologies of Self and Society
Communicating with Non-humans
Research Interests
Linguistic anthropology; anthropology of AI; anthropology of Christianity and missionization
Expertise
- Formative and Whole Person Education
- Language Learning & Literacy
Department
Profile
Courtney Handman is a visiting professor for Fall 2026 from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a linguistic anthropologist who specializes in how people create communicative connections using different media and technology. She has studied the effects of Bible translators; the communicative infrastructures of colonialism and decolonization; and now the way that people are living and working with AI. She is the author of two books and dozens of articles in linguistic anthropology, the anthropology of Christianity and missionization, and the anthropology of AI. She has conducted research in Papua New Guinea and the United States.
Select Publications
- Handman, C. "Animal Translations: AI and the Intelligibility of Nonhuman Worlds." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. (April 2026). https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70132
- Handman, C. "The Chatbot’s Real Self: On the Archaeology of Artificial Personas." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 36, no. 1 (May 2026). https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70040
- Handman, C. (2025). Circulations: Modernist Imaginaries of Colonialism and Decolonization in Papua New Guinea. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
- Handman, C. "Defying Predictions: Global bureaucracy and the art of not making guesses about the future of New Guinea." Oceania 94, no. 2 (July 2024): 55-72. https://doi.org/10.1002/ocea.5402
- Handman, C. "Language at the Limits of the Human." Comparative Studies in Society and History 65, no. 4 (October 2023): 726-750. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417523000221
- Handman, C. "The Language of Evangelism: Christian Cultures of Circulation beyond the Missionary Prologue." Annual Review of Anthropology 47 (October 2018): 149-165. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102317-050331
- Handman, C. "Walking like a Christian: Roads, translation, and gendered bodies as religious infrastructure in Papua New Guinea." American Ethnologist 44, no. 2 (May 2017): 315-327.
- Handman, C. "Figures of History: Interpreting Jewish Pasts in Christian Papua New Guinea." HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 237-260.
- Handman, C. (2015). Critical Christianity: Translation and Denominational Conflict in Papua New Guinea. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
- Handman, C. (2007). "Speaking to the Soul: On Native Language and Authenticity in Papua New Guinea Bible Translation." In Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies, Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin, eds. (pp. 166-188.) Oxford University Press.
Awards
- Jack Goody Prize—Honorable Mention, Comparative Studies in Society in History (2024)
- Faculty Fellow—Humanities Institute, University of Texas, Austin (2022-2024)
- Faculty Program Development Fellow—Women's and Gender Studies, University of Texas, Austin (2015-2016)
- Junior Fellow—Martin Marty Center, Divinity School, University of Chicago (2007)
- Roy D. Albert Prize for most distinguished master's paper—Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago (2003)