Alan Klima is Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. A student of Thai Buddhism, politics, and economic culture since 1989, he is currently studying the cultural dimensions of the financial crash in Thailand and the subsequent reorganization of religion, finance, and fantasy. He is the author of The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand (Princeton, 2002), co-winner of the 2003 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing.

His documentary film, entitled Ghosts and Numbers, will be shown at 7:30 pm on Friday, April 29th, in 101 Armory Building with comments afterwards.