About Me

Portrait of Dustin M. Wax

Dustin M. Wax is currently the Executive Director at the Burlesque Hall of Fame, recipient of the 2018 “Best of Las Vegas” Bronze Medal from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He has also served on the boards of Las Vegas’ Contemporary Arts Center, Cultural Corridor Coalition, and Blackbird Studios, and currently serves on the Nevada Museums Association board as its webmaster and social media coordinator.

A cultural anthropologist by training, Dustin has taught anthropology and women’s studies at both the community college and university levels. His research interests include artistic production, the history of anthropology, gender roles and sexual identity,  and the representation of culture and identity in scientific literature, museums, and the mass media. He has worked extensively in the museum and nonprofit worlds, with stints at the UNLV Barrick Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Jewish Museum. Dustin is an amateur photographer who has shown at several local galleries, including Blackbird Studios, the Arts Factory, the UNLV Barrick Museum, and the Las Vegas Mayor’s office. He has also published two books, Don’t Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College and Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War: The Influence of Foundations, McCarthyism, and the CIA.

Dustin has also been active in attempts to use the Internet to improve and broaden research and education, and is a founding contributor to the anthropology site Savage Minds, selected as one of the 20 Best Science Blogs by Nature in 2006. From 2007-2010, he was the managing editor at the personal productivity site lifehack.org, a Technorati Top 100 blog, where he wrote about writing, learning, studying, project management, technology, and other topics in personal development. During the same period, he wrote dozens of short- and long-form articles as a freelancer in the technology industry.

For more information on his teaching, research, and writing, please check out his portfolio at this site.