About Me
I am a cultural anthropologist specializing geographically in Canada and the United States, especially within the Great Lakes region. Since 1992, my research and teaching have focused on Indigenous communities - including topics such as urban identity, issues of aging, and environmental injustices - in the past (mainly the 20th century) as well as the present. Since 2007, I have expanded my focus to explore disproportionate effects of industrial production and waste on workers, small-town residents, and farming communities. Drawing on a variety of fields and perspectives -- including cultural geography, political ecology, Canadian studies, midwestern studies, history, and semiotics -- my research emphasizes lived experiences of environmental injustice in North America, as well as the political-economic structures that perpetuate these conditions.
My current project is a book manuscript under the working title, "Disturbances in the Waters: Recognizing Environmental Injustice in US-Canada Borderlands of the Great Lakes."
I earned all three of my degrees (B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.) in anthropology at the University of Michigan. Following a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the National Institutes on Aging at the U-M's School of Social Work, I held a series of visiting teaching gigs before landing a tenure-track position at Earlham College in 2000.
At Earlham, I have created new courses in anthropology and environmental studies as my research interests have changed and developed over the years. Examples include: The Social Construction of Aging; The Cultural Politics of 'Environment': Great Lakes Region; Indigenous Peoples & Environmental Justice; Environmental Racism & Community Health; and, Sensory Experience & Embodiment. In addition to these regularly offered courses, I had the opportunity to create unique one-time only courses, including: a special research class titled Living Downstream from the Tar Sands: The Case of Fort Chipewyan, in which students used cyber-mediated ethnographic techniques to learn about effects of tar sands extraction on a small indigenous community; and a concentrated May term course titled Extreme Extraction & Community Consequences, which included a field trip to Southern West Virginia where we toured a mountaintop removal site with local anti-MTR activists. In June of 2019, I transitioned from my teaching position into the role of research professor at Earlham.
Smiling woman with glasses and colorful scarf.
"Cultural Politics of Environment: Great Lakes Region" class with Sierra Club Activist Rhonda Anderson on a toxic tour of Southwest Detroit, March 2012.
"Extreme Extraction and Community Consequences" class at a mountaintop removal site with anti-MTR activist Junior Walk, May 2015.