Ivan Karp during his research in Kenya, 1969.

Ivan Karp published nearly 100 articles and reviews in journals and edited volumes. Their diverse topics range from museums and exhibitions, to public scholarship, to concepts of personhood and agency, to the social theory of Anthony Giddens, to Iteso cookery and marriage ceremonies. When he died in 2011, Karp was doing research for new papers and books on the history of social thought and the history of anthropology in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.

The archive organizes Karp’s articles into four themes, though his papers often cross and combine these categories: Museums, Exhibitions, and Public Scholarship; Social Theory and African Systems of Thought; African Philosophy; and The Iteso People of Kenya.

Karp was a generous collaborator and worked on joint papers and projects with many colleagues throughout his career. He co-authored several early papers with Patricia Karp, Martha Kendall, and Kent Maynard. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he wrote essays and edited books with William Arens, Michael Jackson, and Steven D. Lavine. From the 1990s through the 2000s, Karp did collaborative research and writing with both Corinne A. Kratz and Dismas Masolo, producing books and a series of articles with each. He found the discussion, debate, and exchange of collaborative work to be an invigorating spur to creative thinking. This was one of the ways Karp developed new directions and interdisciplinary approaches that nonetheless drew on his deep grounding in social theory and social anthropology.