September 12
Brett Walker
History and Philosophy, Montana State University
“Animals and the Intimacy of History”
September 19
Mukulika Banerjee
Anthropology, University College London
“Kinship, Cultivation, and Communism: Perceptions of Democracy in West Bengal, India”
September 26
Graeme Barker
Archaeology, University of Cambridge
“Footsteps and Marks: Transitions to Farming in the Rainforests of Island Southeast Asia”
October 3
Mark Cioc
History, University of California/Santa Cruz
“Hunting, Agriculture, and the Quest for International Wildlife Conservation during the Early 20th Century”
October 10
Nancy Langston
Forest Ecology and Management, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin/Madison
“Modern Meat: Synthetic Hormones, Livestock, and Consumers in the Post-WWII Era”
October 17
Percy Schmeiser
Wheat farmer, Bruno Saskatchewan, Canada
“Ownership of Seed, Plants, and Food through Patents on Higher Life Forms”
October 24
Peter C. Perdue
History, Yale University
“Is Pu-er in Zomia?: Tea Cultivation and the State in China”
October 31
Sara Gregg
History, Wilson Presidential Library
“Hill People: Appalachian Culture and the American State”
November 7
Steve J. Stern
History, University of Wisconsin
“Staging Dirty War Memory: Notes on Human Rights and Film in Post-Dictatorship Chile, 1990–2004”
November 14
Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
Hispanic Studies, Vassar College
“Caribbean Environmentalisms: Rediscovering Agrarian Cultures in Endangered Ecologies”
November 21
Rebecca Scott
Sociology, University of Missouri
“Coalfield Whiteness: White People, Black Coal”
December 5
Susanne Freidberg
Geography, Dartmouth College
“On the Longue Durée of Short Shelf Life”
*paper no longer available online
January 16
Irus Braverman
Law School, State University of New York, Buffalo
“Planted Flags: Trees, Territory, and the Law in Israel/Palestine”
January 23
Eduardo Kohn
Anthropology, McGill University
“Form’s Effortless Efficacy: A Multispecies Amazonian Account”
January 30
David Ekbladh
History, Tufts University
“Liberalism’s Spine: ‘Modernisation’ to meet the Challenge of Totalitarianism, 1933–1944”
February 6
Mark Hineline
History, University of California, San Diego
“Extraordinary Tourists: The Transcontinental Excursion of 1912”
February 13
Roderick McIntosh
Anthropology, Yale University
“Middle Niger Niche Specialization: The Prehistorian’s Deep-time Dilemma”
February 20
Anne Meneley
Anthropology, Trent University
“A Tale of Two Itineraries: The Production, Consumption, and Global Circulation of Italian and Palestinian Olive Oil”
February 27
Kathleen Morrison
Center for International Studies, University of Chicago
“Dharmic Projects, Imperial Reservoirs, or New Temples in India? An Historical Perspective on Dams in India”
March 6
Piers Vitebsky
Geography, University of Cambridge
“Repeated Returns to the Field: From Mythic First Encounter to Continual Historical Change”
optional background reading: “Loving and Forgetting: Moments of Inarticulacy inTribal India”
March 27
Alessandro Monsutti
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
“Local Power and Transnational Resources: An Anthropological Perspective on Rural Rehabilitation in Afghanistan”
April 3
Nandini Sundar
Sociology, Delhi School of Economics
“Interning Insurgent Populations: The Buried Histories of Indian Democracy”
April 10
Keely Maxwell
Earth and Environment, Franklin & Marshall College
“Making Machu Picchu: Embedding History and Embodying Nature in the Peruvian Andes”
April 17
Laura Sayre
Independent Scholar
“Georgic Apocalypse: From Virgil to Silent Spring”
optional background reading: Excerpts from Virgil and Rachel Carson