Area of Study / Keywords

Lowland South American anthropology; Gran Chaco; ethnohistory; shamanism; disability; vulnerability; care work; radical feminism

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About

I coordinated the fall 2020 launch of the Canadian chapter of the Women's Declaration International, about which you can learn more here. The University of Alberta has reacted punitively to my outspoken criticisms of trans activism and gender ideology. In 2021, I was invited to a feminist conference to give a talk about this experience, which you can watch here (in Spanish).

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Research

My 2020 book, Shamanism and Vulnerability on the North and South American Great Plains, addresses the fact that Indigenous shamanism in the Americas has often been treated as a technology predicated on predatory masculine power rather than as a relational practice predicated on the shared vulnerability of women, men, families and communities.  I am currently at work on a new book that asks why the anthropology of women has over the past several decades systematically been replaced by putatively feminist anthropologies of everything but women: genders, bodies, species, and ontologies. As a part of this project I have begun collaborating with radical feminist scholars doing skeptical work on AI, robotics, and the substitution of human relations with technological objects.

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Teaching

Anthropology 101 Introduction to Anthropology

Anthropology 207 Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology

Anthropology 235 Anthropology of Disability 

Anthropology 286 Indigenous South America

Anthropology 324 Economic Anthropology

Anthropology 332 Anthropology of Science

Anthropology 350 Kinship and Social Organization

Anthropology 420 / 520 Anthropology and the Twentieth Century

Anthropology 487 / 587 Anthropology of Women

The Undergraduate Association of the University of Alberta, along with my colleague Dr. Kisha Supernant, have widely circulated a defamatory open letter about me which you can find here. My response is as follows:

As to my "denying the continuous existence of a Blackfoot cultural identity that has existed for thousands of years", I urged an honors student who was using literature written about contemporary Blackfoot cultural practices to interpret archaeological data from around 1,000 years ago to be more cautious and nuanced in directly applying contemporary inferences to the past. Just as it would be inappropriate to directly infer from contemporary settlement and subsistence patterns in France the settlement practices and subsistence practices of people living on that same territory in the year 1020, it is similarly inappropriate to do so when interpreting the Indigenous Canadian past.  It is vitally important not to treat Indigenous cultures ahistorically, as if they were static and unchanging across hundreds (let alone thousands) of years. This is a basic tenet of anthropological and archaeological knowledge.

 

As to my "trivializing the lived experience of a Venezuelan student", in this instance the student in question was writing about the experience of Venezuelan immigrants to Canada who work specifically in the oil industry, a community he characterizes as a "cerebral exodus" from Venezuela and to which his family belongs. In an early draft of the thesis the student was using literature about the very recent experience of Venezuelan refugees in Brazil and Colombia and the discrimination they face there to interpret the experience of Venezuelan petroleum engineers who left Venezuela 10 or more years ago to come to work in Alberta. I pointed out that recent Venezuelan refugees in Brazil and Colombia are overwhelmingly poor and non-white and face a very different situation to that of the relatively affluent, mostly white Venezuelan immigrants to Alberta focused on in his study, though both groups undoubtedly face discrimination. Again, I urged that a more nuanced contextualization of the literature cited was necessary in the context of the thesis.

ANTHR 101 - Introductory Anthropology

Introduction to past and present anthropological approaches through the study of human diversity.

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ANTHR 302 - History of Anthropological Theory

Major theoretical trends in social and cultural anthropology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prerequisites: ANTHR 207 or 208 (or ANTHE 207 or 208) or consent of Department. Not open to students with credit in ANTHR 415.

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ANTHR 324 - Economic Anthropology

Introduction to the literature and controversies within the field, emphasizing systems of exchange. Offered in alternate years.

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ANTHR 420 - Anthropology and the Twentieth Century

The relationship between the development of anthropological theory across the twentieth century and the emergence of new social movement organized around anti-colonialism, anti-racism, feminism, ethnicity, the environment, gender, sexuality, disability, and identity. Prerequisite: ANTHR 207 (or ANTHE 207) or consent of Department. Offered in alternate years.

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ANTHR 520 - Anthropology and the Twentieth Century

The relationship between the development of anthropological theory across the twentieth century and the emergence of new social movements organized around anti-colonialism, anti-racism, feminism, ethnicity, the environment, gender, sexuality, disability, and identity. Offered in alternate years.

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