A Birthday Present
Georgia, my middle daughter of three, is a combination of my DNA and identity release[1] donor #2817[2]. Unlike her sisters who both have the advantage of knowing their sperm donors in real time (both friends of mine), Georgia’s donor can only be revealed to her next year when she turns 18. There is a …
A gigantic balloon—pink and glistening—billows up overhead. It is like a womb, or a tumor, filling the huge atrium at the entrance to Patricia Piccinini’s biggest show to date: Curious Affection at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), in Australia. I meet Patricia under this sculpture and she escorts me into a dark room where there is a field of …
Nature Culture Now!, an upper division anthropology lecture course at the University of Michigan, traces the trajectory of nature/culture debates in American anthropology through modules on race, sex, and health and disease. The course is co-taught by a biological anthropologist, and myself, a cultural/medical anthropologist. The impetus for Nature/Culture Now! came from a formative experience I had as an undergraduate …
November 5 & 6, 2015 – Conference Program and Videos
The two-day conference ‘Comment penser l’anthropocène?’ (‘How to think the Anthropocene?’) at the Collège de France in Paris brought together numerous scholars from natural and political sciences, from philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history and law. It was chaired by Catherine Larrère and Philippe Descola with the support of the patronage committee …
Without Offending Humans: A Critique of Animal Rights
by Élisabeth de Fontenay (trans. William Bishop)
University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 168 pages.
In the opening paragraph of Without Offending Humans, Élisabeth de Fontenay describes the first time she saw her mentor Jacques Derrida speak at the Collège de philosophie:
…I reacted, all things being relative, as Malebranche did
The Enculturated Gene:
Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa
Princeton University Press, 2011. 368 pp.
What is the role of cultural analysis in confronting genetic phenomena? Over the past few decades, cultural anthropologists have striven to contest or hold at bay genetic explanations for race, gender, and sexuality. Their analytical approach was …