Tag: Bodies

Podcasts

Working Skin: An Interview

Joseph D. Hankins’s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock, Texas to Tokyo, India, and back again, Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan (University of California Press, 2014) brings a diverse range of ethnographic experiences to bear on understanding the … Continue reading Working Skin: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Native American DNA: An Interview

Bringing together STS, Native American and Indigenous Studies, histories of science and race, ethnography, and cultural studies, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) traces a genealogy of “Native American DNA” as an object, an instrument, and an idea. Gripping and important on many levels, Kim TallBear’s book situates the emergence of genetic notions of racial and … Continue reading Native American DNA: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Interview

Janet Gyatso’s new book is a masterfully researched, compellingly written, and gorgeously illustrated history of medicine in early modern Tibet that looks carefully at the relationships between medicine and religion in this context. Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015) looks carefully at the “double movements” of medicine and religion from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries: … Continue reading Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

The Multispecies Salon: An Interview

Eben Kirksey’s wonderful new volume is an inspiring introduction to a kind of multispecies ethnography where artists, anthropologists, and others collaborate to create objects and experiences of great thoughtfulness and beauty. Growing out of a traveling art exhibit of the same name, The Multispecies Salon (Duke University Press, 2014) curates a collection of works that explore three major questions: “Which beings flourish, and which fail, when natural … Continue reading The Multispecies Salon: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Homesickness: An Interview

Carlos Rojas’s new book is a wonderfully transdisciplinary exploration of discourses of sickness and disease in Chinese literature and cinema in the long twentieth century. As its title indicates, Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation in Modern China (Harvard University Press, 2015) focuses particularly on what Rojas calls “homesickness,” a condition wherein “a node of alterity is structurally expelled from an individual or collective body in order … Continue reading Homesickness: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Good Science: An Interview

Charis Thompson’s Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013) is an important book that explores the “ethical choreography” of the consolidation of human embryonic stem cell research in the first decade of the twenty-first century, drawing important implications for the possible futures of stem cell research by looking carefully at its past and developing an approach to what Thompson calls “good science.” You … Continue reading Good Science: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Stories

Translating Recipes Part 10 & 11: Recipes, Time, Space, and “After”

The most recent parts of a multi-part series exploring time and space in (Manchu) recipe literature and in translation were just posted at The Recipes Project. You can find them here and here. This one focuses on exploring the work of “after”-ness in recipe literature, and it includes a relevant translation of our multiply-translated Manchu recipe. Links to the entire Translating Recipes series (so far) can be found on the … Continue reading Translating Recipes Part 10 & 11: Recipes, Time, Space, and “After”

Carla Nappi
Stories

Translating Recipes 9: Recipes in Time and Space Part 3 – IF

The third part of a multi-part series exploring time and space in (Manchu) recipe literature and in translation has just been posted at The Recipes Project. You can find it here. This one focuses on exploring the work of “if”-ness in recipe literature, and it includes a kind of Choose Your Own Adventure translation of our multiply-translated Manchu recipe. Later posts in this series will take on other prepositional attitudes … Continue reading Translating Recipes 9: Recipes in Time and Space Part 3 – IF

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Banking on the Body: An Interview

How did we come to think of spaces for the storage and circulation of body parts as “banks,” and what are the consequences of that history for the way we think about human bodies as property today? Kara W. Swanson’s wonderful new book traces the history of body banks in America from the nineteenth century to today, focusing especially on milk, blood, and sperm. We had … Continue reading Banking on the Body: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Chromatic Algorithms: An Interview

Carolyn L. Kane’s new book traces the modern history of digital color, focusing on the role of electronic color in computer art and media aesthetics since 1960. Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art, and Aesthetics after Code places color at the center of media studies, exploring some amazing works of art and technology to understand the changing history of the relationship between color as embodied in machine … Continue reading Chromatic Algorithms: An Interview

Carla Nappi