Staff Profile
Director of Academic and Public Programs, Division Head and Research Curator
david_odo@harvard.edu / 617-495-0765
D.Phil., University of Oxford
M.Phil., University of Oxford
A.B., Columbia University
David Odo oversees the museums’ academic and public programs, working closely with colleagues from all divisions of the museums and faculty from across the university to provide academic and public audiences opportunities to engage with the collections. This includes Harvard University course collaborations, student programs, and public education at the museums. He is a visual and material anthropologist, with primary research and teaching interests in the anthropology of art, especially early Japanese photography; the body in art and material culture; and the intersections of art and medicine. An expert on 19th-century Japanese photography, Odo has published and lectured widely on museum pedagogy and early photography. He teaches occasionally in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, Summer School, and Extension School and is a founding editorial board member of Trans-Asia Photography Review, an international journal devoted to the discussion of historical and contemporary photography from Asia.
Recent Publications
“Nagasawa’s Ogasawara.” In The Bonin Islanders, ed. Nagasawa Shinichiro. Tokyo: Akaaka Art Publishing, 2021.
Hyun, Hyewon, David Odo, Ed Krupat, and Steven Seltzer. “Art Education for Nuclear Medicine and Radiology Residents.” Medical Education 54 (5) (March 22, 2020): 457–58.
David Odo and Heather Pesanti. “On the Ethics of Art and Anthropology: A Conversation.” In The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art & the Anthropological Turn. Santa Fe, N.M.: Radius Books; Austin, Tex.: The Contemporary Austin, 2019.
The Journey of “A Good Type”: From Artistry to Ethnography in Early Japanese Photographs. Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum Press, 2015.
“Curating ‘A Good Type.’” In Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, ed. Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien, 165–80. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2014.