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…
Abstract: Of People and Peccaries: Perception and Politics in the Texas Hill Country
I am giving a talk in October for the Royal Anthropological Institute: https://www.therai.org.uk/conferences/anthropology-and-conservation/panels#10866 Here is the abstract for my talk based on original research at one of my fieldsites in the Texas Hill Country. Javelinas (Pecari tajacu) are porcine-like mammals that range from the southwest United States to northern Argentina. While common in west and…
Fall 2021 Syllabus: Introduction to Anthropology
(NOTE: SOME OF THE FORMATTING IS OFF IN TRANSLATION FROM WORD TO THE BLOG. I HAVE MADE THE PDF AVAILABLE BELOW) ANTH 103: Introduction to Anthropology Virginia Commonwealth University, Fall 2021 Location: Canvas/Zoom Time: Mondays and Wednesdays 7:00pm-8:15pm Instructor: Adam Johnson Email: Office Hours: By appointment This syllabus contains policies and expectations I have established…
My Most Recent Publication on Faculty and Student Mental Health
You can read the article here: “Mental health in academia: Hacks for cultivating and sustaining wellbeing” Johnson and Lester 2021
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,…
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…
Anthropology 365 