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Joined the faculty in 2011
B.A., Cultural Anthropology, Hampshire College, 1996
M.A., Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University, 2004
Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University, 2010
B.A., Cultural Anthropology, Hampshire College, 1996
Thesis: "Going Native with Disposable Chopsticks: The Public Culture of Eating Out in Ethnic Restaurants"
M.A., Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University, 2004
Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology, Boston University, 2010
Environmental Anthropology, Ecology, History
South-Central/Southern Africa
Dissertation: "Weathering the Commons: Resilience and Heterogeneity in an Inland Fishery Mweru-Luapula Zambia"
Environmental Anthropology, South-Central/Southern Africa
Current scholarly interests:
My research focuses on the relationship between an ethnically heterogeneous population and an ecologically dynamic fishery in South-Central Africa. I am particularly interested in how communities adapt to variable environments and the effectiveness of management and legislation of these areas. I study a multiethnic highly mobile population of fishers traders and farmers in northern Zambia and southern D.R. Congo. I examine how people living on this fishery maintain its sustainability as a shared natural resource; how external constraints such as laws governance and historical circumstances affect constituent behaviors and choices; and how this ecologically dynamic fishery constrains some human communities but politically endows others.
I have also begun a long-term project studying funeral cultures and mourning rites in Zambia. Early indications suggest that funerals provide not just social healing, but also economic development and national identity. Funerals are an institution that is being severely tested by the tremendous spike in the death rate of 25-40 year-old Zambians to AIDS-related diseases.
Recent Publications
Navigating Constricted Channels: Local Cooption, Coercion, and Concentration under Comanagement, Journal of Political Ecology, 16: 34-48, 2009.
"GM or Death": Food and Choice in Zambia," Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, 4(2): 16-23, 2004.
Historiography on the Luapula: Historicizing Cunnison's "Fishing Area." In J. Gewald et al., eds. Living the End of Empire: Politics and Society in Late Colonial Zambia. Leiden: Brill (In press).
"Legislating 'Liverpool": The Role of Law in the Development and Conservation of the Mweru-Luapula Fishery. In A. Seidman et al., eds. Africa's Challenge. Trenton: Africa World Press, 175-220, 2007.
Work in progress: "Your Neighborhood Is Your Family: Village Urbanites and Environments of Strangers in South-Central Africa" (book-length manuscript).
Previous teaching experience:
Visiting Assistant Professor, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL, 2010-2011
Adjunct Professor, Emmanuel College, Boston, MA, 2009
Lecturer, Boston University, Summer Term, 2006-2009
Non-Academic Field Experience
Rural development through fishpond production, U.S. Peace Corps, Zambia, 1997-1999.
Native American advocacy, Tees Toh, Navajo Nation, 2000
Courses Routinely Taught:
Culture and Environment
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Cultures of Africa
Anthropological Field Methods
Anthropology of Global Commons
Anthropology of Food
Human Behavioral Biology and Evolution
Personal Statement:
I realized I wanted to be an anthropologist while sitting on a rocky plateau in Central Africa that offered a stunning view of a river valley shared by Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. At that time I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in a nearby village. I had long flirted with the idea that I could actually make a living by studying different cultures but it took this moment of wonder and curiosity to seal my decision. I recognized that in order to truly understand the world around me I needed to see it through anthropology's cross-cultural lens and study it by following its mandate: that to know one has to go (there). I've since logged five years on the ground in South-Central, Southern and East Africa as well as the Navajo Nation and Barbados for fieldwork. I am excited to teach at Hobart and William Smith because students share my curiosity about exploring the world. Not all students have traveled extensively yet all exhibit virtual wanderlust when we go on intellectual excursions around the world each class session. They show me they understand that the life of the mind is so often explored in a pair of worn boots. Or as the Zambian proverb states "Umwana ashenda atasha nyina ukunaya." The child that does not travel thinks his mother's cooking is the best.