We met as “baby anthropologists” in graduate school and have stuck together ever since. With Jada’s training in genetic anthropology and Gabriel’s training in cultural anthropology, we’ve accompanied each other to our various field sites throughout the Caribbean, Spain, and the US Midwest. Aside from our book, each of us has authored many peer-reviewed publications, including an award-winning article in the journal Human Biology. Though we both have our own independent research agendas, our interests overlap on several topics including genetic ancestry. Our different anthropological training and our mutual love for our discipline always makes for interesting perspectives on a variety of topics.
This book flips what you’ve learned about evolution on its head. Cooke provides solid explanations about how androcentric biases have impacted the way that evolution is understood and taught. While the basic science about evolution holds, Cooke’s explanation of evolution through the lens of female organisms really helps to show how culture deeply influences the questions scientists ask and the interpretations of what they find.
Krimsky lays out contemporary debates about the development and use of genetically modified foods. His perspectives are evidenced-based, informative, and are useful for critically thinking about genetically modified foods. After reading this book, we felt confident about making up our own minds regarding the creation, use, and ingestion of genetically modified foods.
The debate over genetically modified organisms: health and safety concerns, environmental impact, and scientific opinions.
Since they were introduced to the market in the late 1990s, GMOs (genetically modified organisms, including genetically modified crops), have been subject to a barrage of criticism. Agriculture has welcomed this new technology, but public opposition has been loud and scientific opinion mixed. In GMOs Decoded, Sheldon Krimsky examines the controversies over GMOs—health and safety concerns, environmental issues, the implications for world hunger, and the scientific consensus (or lack of one). He explores the viewpoints of a range of GMO skeptics, from public advocacy groups…
Keith Basso wrote an anthropological masterpiece by taking many, many years to listen to his Western Apache interlocutors. The result is a sharp and ethnographically rich analysis of how wisdom and knowledge are embedded in places, placenames, and stories about places. Basso’s prose is smooth yet theoretically rich, and he gives plenty of space for showcasing the diverse voices of Western Apache people. It is not common to pick up an academic book that is difficult to put down, but this is an exception.
This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.
Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences…
Alex Chávez is a cultural anthropologist, but he is also a musician, and his artistic abilities are on full display in this beautifully narrated and analytically sharp ethnography of huapango arribeño across the US-Mexican social spaces. Chávez allows us to reimagine Mexican migrants as much more than the protagonists of the social problem of migration. Instead, we can see how expressive culture is a significant aspect of migrant lives. This book is also a theoretical heavyweight for those looking for more than a beautifully crafted ethnographic description.
In Sounds of Crossing Alex E. Chavez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and poetics of huapango arribeno, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. Following the resonance of huapango's improvisational performance within the lives of audiences, musicians, and himself-from New Year's festivities in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico, to backyard get-togethers along the back roads of central Texas-Chavez shows how Mexicans living on both sides of the border use expressive culture to construct meaningful communities amid the United States' often vitriolic immigration politics. Through Chavez's writing, we gain an intimate look at…
This recommendation is a work of fiction. Overall, Allende is an incredible storyteller whose characters seem so real that by the end of the book, you feel like you know them in the same way you know family or an old friend. Island Beneath the Sea, set in 18th - 19th century Haiti then in New Orleans, is a story that illustrates the beautiful messes we create in our lives through those that we love and those that we hate. Drawing on the chaos of American slavery and the Haitian Revolution, Allende’s book draws on themes related to slavery, politics, history, and family drama all of which illustrate what can happen when cultural values (i.e. social constructions of race) are attached to specific bodies (i.e. Black and White women).
From the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the lavish parlors of New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century, Isabel Allende's latest novel tells the story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny in a society where that would seem impossible.
Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue - now known as Haiti -Tete is the product of violent union between an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage.
When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it's…
Genetic Ancestry discusses the promises and pitfalls of genetic ancestry testing. Written by a genetic and a cultural anthropologist married duo, our book discusses the social, historical, and cultural impacts of genetic ancestry testing. Drawing on our anthropological adventures together across the Caribbean as well as pop culture, the book shows how genetic ancestry testing can lead to wrong ideas about race and biology, but it can also be a source of community empowerment.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
