Charles L. Briggs is the Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor in Folklore at the University of California at Berkeley. He focuses on linguistic and medical anthropology, social theory, modernity, citizenship and the state, race, and violence. His books include Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality (with Richard Bauman, 2003) and Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare (with Clara Mantini-Briggs, 2003).