Recent Alumni Publications
In the Company of Horses: Rhythm and Suffering in Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy, 20, 2024
Jen Van Tiem, PhD
Equine-assisted psychotherapy is considered a form of talk therapy that depends upon differences between species as venues for therapeutic work. These differences in kind reveal the presence of an order that allows us to re-think what counts as talking and how we recognize it. At stake in these interactions is not the production of signs, intelligible as marking disease, but rather the assembly of rhythms, capable of producing a sense of accord.
Journal: Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies
Kin-Work among Black Transit Migrants in Tapachula, Mexico: Tracing Acts of Love against Anti-Black Immigration Governmentality, 65, 2024
Darlène Dubuisson, PhD
In this research report, I explore how Black transit migrants in Tapachula, Mexico, use “kin-work”—the merger of labor and love—to sustain their lives against processes of hate and death. I specifically argue that love plays a crucial role in nurturing the kinships (whether official or unofficial) of Black transit migrants, allowing them to enable futures against “anti-Black immigration governmentality”—that is, the intersection of (im)migration policing and control and anti-Black racism. Guided by the insights of bell hooks, I consider love as an intention and set of actions that foster possibility. This article thus aligns with Robbins’s “anthropology of the good,” which Walker and Kavedžija have defined as inquiries into what gives individuals a sense of purpose or guidance and how people strive to find the most fulfilling ways to live, even in difficult and adverse circumstances. I elaborate on anti-Black immigration governmentality in Mexico and then propose a way to theorize the love in kin-work. I then draw on ethnographic findings to clarify my central argument and conclude by advocating for recruiting love to an anthropology of the good.
Journal: Current Anthropology
Whoosh Goes the Market: Algorithms, Automation, & Alienation, 2024
Daniel Scott Souleles, PhD
The traders Souleles shadows have mostly moved out of the pits and now work with automated, glitch-prone computer systems. They remember the days of trading manually, and they are suspicious of algorithmically driven machine-learning systems. Openly musing about their own potential extinction, they spend their time expressing fear and frustration in profanity-laced language. With Souleles as our guide, we learn about everything from betting strategies to inflated valuations, trading swings, and market manipulation. This crash course in contemporary finance vividly reveals the existential anxiety at the evolving front lines of American capitalism.
“Watering-Down” Strict HIV Testing Quotas on Chinese Men Who Have Sex with Men Community-Based Organizations, 2023
Andrew Wortham, PhD 2021
The Chinese Center for Disease Control employs Community-Based Organizations (CBO) to conduct mass testing on “hidden” Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). Testing MSMs is intended to make risky bodies legible to the state and discipline the CBOs around narrow health goals. However, detailed ethnographic fieldwork with MSM CBOs in southwest China demonstrates that pressures to achieve HIV testing quotas produce the need to “water-down” or manipulate data. This distorts the identities and practices of MSMs from state surveillance and builds collusive partnerships between CBOs and low-level government officials to mitigate the disciplinary impacts of strict audits.
Journal: Medical Anthropology
Accumulated Funds of Knowledge Among Privileged Maasai: An Emphasis on Virtues and Morals in Parenting Practices, 2023
Serah Shani, PhD 2010
Indigenous knowledge systems evolve and sometimes can be repurposed to address the challenges of living in an interconnected world. Despite the impact of globalization and the spread of Western ideas, such knowledge systems can still play a vital role in Indigenous societies. This ethnographic research examines the moral values and virtues college-educated Maasai parents instill in their children, enabling them to flourish in the global market economy.
Journal: Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Capoeira Connections: A Memoir in Motion, 2023
Katya Wesolowski, PhD 2007
Originating in the Black Atlantic world as a fusion of dance and martial art, capoeira was a marginalized practice for much of its history. Today it is globally popular. This ethnographic memoir weaves together the history of capoeira, recent transformations in the practice, and personal insights from author Katya Wesolowski’s thirty years of experience as a capoeirista.
Capoeira Connections follows Wesolowski’s journey from novice to instructor while drawing on her decades of research as an anthropologist in Brazil, Angola, Europe, and the United States. In a story of local practice and global flow, Wesolowski offers an intimate portrait of the game and what it means in people’s lives. She reveals camaraderie and conviviality in the capoeira ring as well as tensions and ruptures involving race, gender, and competing claims over how this artful play should be practiced. Capoeira brings people together and yet is never free of histories of struggle, and these too play out in the game’s encounters.
In her at once clear-sighted and hopeful analysis, Wesolowski ultimately argues that capoeira offers opportunities for connection, dialogue, and collaboration in a world that is increasingly fractured. In doing so, capoeira can transform lives, create social spheres, and shape mobile futures.