Frédéric Keck

Professor Frédéric Keck of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales was the 2022–23 Dornsife-EHESS Visiting Professor at USC, in residence starting March 2023. Frédéric Keck is Professor (directeur de recherche) at the CNRS, affiliated with the Laboratoire D’anthropologie Sociale at the EHESS. Keck studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published on the history of French anthropology in its relations with philosophy, particularly Comte, Lévy-Bruhl, Durkheim, Bergson, and Lévi-Strauss. Keck’s work sits at the crossroads of the history of science, the sociology of risk, and the anthropology of nature, with particular interests in standards of “biosecurity” applied to humans and animals and to the forms of anticipation they produce with regard to health and ecological disasters. After joining the CNRS in 2005, Keck carried out ethnographic surveys on health crises linked to animal diseases: BSE, SARS, “avian” and “swine” flu.  He was a laureate of the Fyssen Foundation in 2007, a CNRS bronze medalist in 2011, a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in 2015, and served as head of the research and teaching department of the musée du quai Branly (2014-2018) and director of the Social Anthropology Laboratory (2019-2020).

Professor Keck is being hosted by the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life, which has organized the following programs as part of the visit:

• “Planetary Health”
  Friday, March 24
  Invited workshop co-sponsored by the Berggruen Institute.
• “The Visual Culture of Microbes”
  Thursday, March 30, 12:30-1:45 pm
  Public event co-sponsored by the Visual Studies Research Institute.
• “Rumors of Biosecurity: from the Pandemic in China to the War in Ukraine”
  Monday, April 10, 12:00-1:30 pm
  Public lecture co-sponsored by the USC Anthropology Department.
• Observing Birdwatchers
  Friday – Saturday, April 21-22
  Field trip to the Owens Valley to coincide with the annual “Bird Festival,” in collaboration with the 2022–23 Mellon Sawyer seminar, “Precarious Ecologies.”

Header image: “Le Plus Grand Reseau du Monde,” Lucien Boucher,
Air France, 1964, David Rumsey Map Center