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…
Tag: culture
Qualifying Exam Essay: Javelinas in SPAAAACE and Time
I have passed my qualifying exams and so am making my essays available on my blog. The other essays can be found: Attending to Animals in Anthropology and Power and Politics Within and Beyond the Human. Question: How have different disciplines placed javelinas in cultural, ecological, historical, archaeological, and other frameworks within and beyond Texas?…
Qualifying Exam Essay: Power and Politics Within and Beyond the Human
I have passed my qualifying exams and so am making my essays available on my blog. The other essays can be found: Attending to Animals in Anthropology and Javelinas in SPAAAACE and Time. Question: In Society against the State (1989), Pierre Clastres argues that a serious failing of Western philosophy and social theory is an inability to…
Qualifying Exam Essay: Attending to Animals in Anthropology
I have passed my qualifying exams and so am making my essays available on my blog. The other essays can be found: Power and Politics Within and Beyond the Human and Javelinas in SPAAAACE and Time. Question: In a recent essay, Laura Ogden argues “that the biological species is a limited lens for understanding the…
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…
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…
Big Bend: Narratives of Isolation
“Splendid Isolation, the Big Bend…” is how the National Parks Services introduces Big Bend National Park on its website. My partner and I recently took a several day trip to Big Bend and, I have to say, it was truly splendid. Many of the sights and experiences I had were unlike anything I had experienced…
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…
