This book forum brings together seven scholars and artists to discuss Todd Meyers’s All That Was Not Her (Duke 2022). A profoundly introspective and original book, All That Was Not Her traces a relationship between an anthropologist and his interlocutor that equally verges on friendship and antagonism. Eschewing well-trodden anthropological approaches which focus on identity or suffering, Meyers delves into …
On May 25, 2022, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed into law the strictest ban on abortion to date, a policy that prohibits the termination of any pregnancy “from the moment of fertilization.” This law endows an embryo, no matter the stage—long before it has discernible heartbeat—with the same legal status as an unborn child. Almost exactly one month later, on …
Plastic litter at the outskirts of a village. Plastics in the oceans. Beaches littered with plastics. Images of whales and cows with plastics in their bellies. Calls for citizens not to litter, to throw away trash responsibly, to join clean up drives, to recycle. In the public imagination, the problem of plastics has largely become one of litter.
Plastic litter …
“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”
“I can, but your head is cut off. I just see your neck. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. There, is that better? Can you see me now?”
“Yes, that’s good.”
“Ok, good. I’m glad I have a head.”
“Me, too–it makes things much easier. How have things been for you?”
Such is the awkward start to …
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It was one of those early spring evenings where the sun was warm and the air fresh. My friends and I were at the park, in what has become a pandemic ritual. Seeing people of all ages running, reading, talking, walking their pets, and enjoying themselves while we also traded the confines of our small apartments for …
When I ask Willow, an Afro-Puerto Rican young woman in her 20s, if quarantine has helped reduce the stigma of mental illness, she responds:
…I think it will because now we have something to compare it to. When we’re talking about having a hard time or feelings of not being able to escape ourselves, we can say, “Well, how was