Amy J. Staples is Senior Archivist of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives,
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.

She has a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness (U. of California, Santa Cruz, 2002) and a M.A.
in Visual Anthropology (Temple University, 1989).

Her dissertation focused on independent travel and expeditionary films produced in Africa, New Guinea and South America during the 1930s-1950s. She has published essays in African Arts, American Anthropologist, Visual Anthropology, Film History and The Moving Image journals.