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…
Speaking for the Dead: Narratives of Genomics and Colonization
This is a paper that I wrote for a Ph.D. course: Nature and Capitalism. I’ve been sitting on it and I don’t think I am going to do anything else with it. It’s a bit long but I figured this is the place to put it. In Speaker for the Dead (1986)—the sequel to the…
Fall 2020 Epidemics and Society Syllabus
Epidemics and Society (LBST 2101) UNC Charlotte, Fall 2020 Online/Asynchronous This syllabus contains policies and expectations I have established for this course. Please read the entire syllabus carefully and refer to it regularly throughout the semester. Course Description This section of LBST 2101 will explore the historical relationship between society and epidemics. Specifically, this section…
