Erik Mueggler is a cultural anthropologist who works mainly with indigenous peoples in Southwest China. His books include Songs for Dead Parents: Corpse, Text and World in Southwest China (University of Chicago Press, 2017); The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet (University of California Press, 2011), and The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China (University of California Press, 2001). Currently, he is completing a book titled The Book of Cunning and Treachery: Slavery, Writing, and Sovereignty in an Indigenous Domain, Qing China. Mueggler is Katherine Verdery Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.