The world has taken notice that the United States of America is in crisis. In solidarity with the plight of Black Americans, protests have cropped up in many other countries. Black Americans and their allies are currently under assault by militarized police at the direction of the state. I am having a hard time articulating…
Category: Blog
Revisiting the Past: Some Thoughts on the UNCC Shooting
Today is April 27, 2020. April 30 will mark one year since a gunman walked into my LBST 2213 class on the last day of the semester. I’ve written about the experience and ideas and insights in the subsequent months and was featured in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. This last year…
Now on Youtube
You can visit my YouTube channel: Anthropology 365. I am currently working on content that covers a field examination of the use of anthropogenic (human-made) spaces by reptiles and amphibians. I plan to also include anthropological discussions and other fieldwork in the future.
COVID-19 and the Failure of Neoliberalism in the Face of Crisis
We are firmly set in the middle of a global pandemic at the moment. As it currently stands, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting just under 300,000 confirmed cases and 13,000 deaths as of March 22 with no sign of slowing down. This pandemic has demonstrated severe flaws in the system in the United…
Becoming Inia and Dolphin
The Amazon River Basin is one of the richest river systems in the world, covering more than 7-million square kilometers. This system contains more than 5600 species of fish and is home to large predators such as caiman, giant otters, and arapaima. Many of the species that occupy the Amazon River and its tributaries are…
AES 2020 Abstract: Mediating Multispecies Relations Through Western and Indigenous Conservation
Western notions of modernity have situated human society apart from nature, which encompasses those spaces and beings that are unmodified and unsullied by human activity. The Western conception of nature/society can be contrasted with that of the Cofán—an Indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador and Colombia—who identify as tsampini can’jen’sundeccu (dwellers of the forest). The Cofán…
Science as an Orientalizing Field
Science is a Western form of knowledge production and can be divided into three forms: 1) science as a set of methods for investigating the world we inhabit, 2) the pool of knowledge containing the data and conclusions drawn by science, and 3) a social institution through which empirical studies of the world are carried…
The Liminality of Grief in Trauma
As time continues to press forward after the April 30 shooting at UNCC, I have continued to reflect, think about my experience, and discuss the experiences with others that were there and beyond. The summer is over and I am required to be around people more frequently. I am in a new city, meeting new…
White Men and Their Toxic White Fragility
It has been several months since the shooting in my classroom at UNC Charlotte where two of my students were killed, four were physically injured, and an untold amount of long-term mental, emotional, and spiritual harm was perpetrated. It is terrifyingly wide-spread the consequences of the shooting have been. It hasn’t just affected me; my…
