Since
the mid-1990s, I have conducted ethnographic research on urban
“restoration” in relation to national histories and racial politics in
Brazil. This gave rise to my first book, Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy.
In addition to ongoing work on heritage, race, and ethnographic
approaches to history and historicity in Latin America, I am currently
involved in two new projects. The first, Under English Eyes, examines
the ways Africans who arrived on the final slave ship to dock in the
city of Salvador, Bahia experienced Brazil's 19th century transition to
ostensibly free labor. The second, Hunters of the Sourlands, is a
somewhat iconoclastic foray into human-animal relations and the
politics of property and nature in the contemporary U.S. The project is
based on experiences with hunters of white-tail deer, state game
officials, and scientists involved in wildlife biology and planning in
central New Jersey. I seek to understand more clearly how recent
political economic changes have altered landscapes in ways that affect
both national politics and the ecology of North American woodlands.
This project articulates closely with my ongoing examination of U.S.
imperial politics, which gave rise to my most recent book, a volume
co-edited with Carole McGranahan and entitled Ethnographies of U.S. Empire
(Duke University Press, 2018). It has also led to increased
international cooperation, in the form of an ongoing research project
on interspecies relationships conducted with Prof. Jorge Mattar Villela
and his graduate students at Brazil’s Federal University of São Carlos.
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Research
Focus:
Courses Taught:
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2018. Ethnographies of US Empire. Durham: Duke University Press (Co-edited with Carole McGranahan).
2016. Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life and the PCC in Brazil. University of North Carolina Press. (John Collins' translation and new edition of the ethnography by anthropologist Karina Biondi and published originally in Brazil as Junto e misturado: uma etnographia do PCC).
2015. Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian "Racial Democracy." Duke University Press. (awarded the Leeds Award for exemplary book in anthropology)
2014. "Policing's Productive Folds: Secretism and Authenticity in Brazilian Cultural Heritage." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 19(3):473-501.
2012. "Reconstructing the 'Cradle of Brazil:' The Detachability of Morality and the Nature of Cultural Labor in Salvador, Bahia's Pelourinho World Heritage Site." International Journal of Cultural Property 19(3): 423-452.