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…
Category: Blog
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,…
Qualifying Exams Reading List: Multispecies Connections
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. Vintage, 2012. Archambault, Julie Soleil. “Taking love seriously in human-plant relations in Mozambique: Toward an anthropology of affective encounters.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 2 (2016): 244-271. Barla, Josef, and Christoph Hubatschke. “Technoecologies of Borders: Thinking with Borders as Multispecies Matters of Care.” Australian Feminist Studies 32,…
Making a Multispecies Community: A Personal Journey
Since the start of the pandemic, my partner and I have worked to transform our San Antonio, TX backyard to a wildlife-friendly space. It began with a small garden pond just outside of our dining room picture window. The pond has been a hit! We have mosquito fish that are friendly and keep the mosquito…
My Reflections Two Years After Surviving a Classroom Shooting
Today marks two years since a classroom shooting happened while teaching my final class at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Six students were shot, two of which did not make it. I wrote about my thoughts and experience a few days after it occurred: The Story of a Mass Shooting Survivor and Anthropologist I’ve…
A Brief Lindbergh Update
One of my more popular posts of late has been The Fall and Rise of Lindbergh: A Javelina Story. In that post, I tell the story of a javelina in one of the groups that I work with in the Texas Hill Country. In brief, Lindbergh was outcast from their group and I recount the…
The Fall and Rise and Lindbergh: A Javelina Story
I have been working with javelinas in Texas for nearly a year. My first encounter with them occurred at Big Bend National Park and I have since visited groups all over Texas. The group that I am currently most fond of–partially because they are easiest to hang out with and partially because of the wonderful…
Insurrection, Accountability, and Reconciliation
Note: This piece is merely a stream of conscious as I watch and think about the impeachment. Last week, we Americans watched a violent insurrection unfold at the US capital and challenge the very basis of American democracy in support of keeping Donald Trump in office despite losing a fair election. Embolden by calls from…
Shadows, Ambiguity, and More-Than-Human Politics
I am currently working on a manuscript exploring the ways that both literal and metaphorical shadows produce ambiguity in more-than-human communities. In order to be participating members of these communities, we have to find ways to engage in a politics that bridges evolutionary, ontological, and perceptual barriers. I attempt to do so through the ethnographic…
Anthropology 365 