Why I Study Human-Animal Relations as an Anthropologist

Anthropology is the study of humans, or as Dr. Jon Marks says: “the study of who we are and where we come from.” I consider it to be the study of humans and the variety of relationships humans have. These relationships include some of the most obvious: kinship, communities, institutions, businesses, and religions. It also…

Digging for Birds

My partner and I bought a house in 2019 and moved to San Antonio, TX, in service of my pursuit of a Ph.D. in anthropology. One thing that was abundantly clear to us—we are both from the East Coast and accustomed to a different climate—was that it is dry and gets very hot! Following the…

“A student and a professor remember the UNC Charlotte mass shooting three years later”: NPR WFAE Charlotte: Sarah Delia

I have not done many interviews on the subject. Here is an NPR article in which I am featured alongside one of my students about the shooting in the classroom three years ago: “A student and a professor remember the UNC Charlotte mass shooting three years later” https://www.wfae.org/charlotte-area/2022-04-29/a-student-and-a-professor-remember-the-unc-charlotte-mass-shooting-three-years-later

Reflecting Three Years After the UNCC Mass Shooting

Every year at this time, I reflect on the shooting that occurred in my classroom on April 30, 2019, that took the lives of two students, injured four others, and traumatized countless others, both in the classroom and across campus. That day changed my life forever, and three years on, I still have to contend…

A Rat’s Journey There and Back Again

In early August of this year, my partner and I took a much needed vacation to South Padre Island. While visiting, we decided to go snorkeling in Laguna Madre, one of only six hypersaline lagoons in the world. We saw many small fish, lots of large black drums, maybe a barracuda, and tons of hermit…

Fieldwork Diary July 8-9, 2021

I am conducting research across Texas on Human and javelina relations. I am interested in how humans and other animals negotiate space at sites of encounter. During this trip out to one of my fieldsites in the Texas Hill Country, I wanted to document the quality of javelina bedding sites (which you can see in…

Qualifying Exams Reading List: Javelinas and Texas through Space and Time

Altrichter, Mariana. “The sustainability of subsistence hunting of peccaries in the Argentine Chaco.” Biological Conservation 126, no. 3 (2005): 351-362. Bement, Leland C. Hunter-gatherer mortuary practices during the Central Texas Archaic. University of Texas Press, 1994. Bleicher, Sonny S., and Michael L. Rosenzweig. “Too much of a good thing? A landscape-of-fear analysis for collared peccaries (Pecari tajacu) reveals…

Qualifying Exams Reading List: Power and Politics Within and Beyond the Human

Adamson, Joni. “Indigenous Literatures, Multinaturalism, and Avatar: The emergence of Indigenous cosmopolitics.” American Literary History 24, no. 1 (2012): 143-162. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press, 1998. Appadurai, Arjun. “Putting hierarchy in its place.” Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1988): 36-49. Atkinson, Will. Bourdieu and After: A Guide to Relational Phenomenology. Routledge, 2019. Bennett,…