Now a PhD Candidate, I am spending 2011-2012 conducting fieldwork in coastal South Carolina and teaching as an adjunct instructor at the College of Charleston. Recent publications, current research projects, teaching style, and involvement in the Political Ecology Working Group are described below.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
with Hurley P T and Halfacre AC (2011). ‘‘I Still Have the Old Tradition’’: The co-production of sweetgrass basketry and coastal development. Geoforum 42, 6: 638-649
with J L Stephens (2011) Wigfall v. Mobley et al.: Heirs’ Property Rights in Family and in Law. Disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory, 20.
Halfacre, AC, Hurley PT, and Grabbatin B (2010) Sewing Environmental Justice into African-American Sweetgrass Basket-Making in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Southeastern Geographer 50 (1): 147-168.
Invited Articles
(2011) Political ecology: an interdisciplinary bridge Anthropologies [special issue: Anthropology & Geography] 6, September. Available online at: http://www.anthropologiesproject.org/
Book Reviews
(2011) Review of In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's botanical legacy in the Atlantic worldby Judith A Carney and Richard N Rosomoff. Southeastern Geographer 51, 3: 497-499
(2011) Review of Lawscape: property, environment, law by Nicole Graham. Environment and Planning A 43, 8: 1999-2000
ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS
Heirs’ Property
My dissertation research explores heirs’ property ownership, land that is held by family members as tenants in common. I am currently conducting ethnographic and archival fieldwork in several African American communities along the South Carolina coast, where this form of collective ownership is common. With co-advisers (Richard Schein and Morgan Robertson) and help from the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation, this research will shed light on the cultural practices involved in this alternative form of property ownership, the environmental landscapes it produces, and its economic importance for African American landowners in the context of changing social formations.
Non-Timber Forest Products
My master’s research explored the impacts of land-use change on sweetgrass basket-makers in Mount Pleasant South Carolina. I continue to write on this topic with Patrick T. Hurley, Angela Halfacre, and Cari Goetcheus who are conducting additional research on other Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in and around Mount Pleasant.
Non-equilibrium Ecology
Jairus Rossi and I are writing about the theoretical and practical implications of non-equilibrium science for bridging the divide between human and physical geography.
TEACHING
My instructional approach is an intersection of styles that require students to build conceptual frameworks, challenge those frameworks, and reflect on their experiences. I apply this approach in both physical and human geography courses. Physical geography students have taken a self-guided field trip of the Kentucky Arboretum and an instructor guided field trip at McConnell Springs. Human geography students are required to keep up with national and international news sources, assess exhibits and historic sites near campus, and participate in debates where they must argue the positions of powerful political figures as well as marginalized communities. These assignments require students to take fieldnotes, conduct experiments and library research, create their own maps, and analyze the data they have collected.
POLITICAL ECOLOGY WORKING GROUP
The Political Ecology Working Group (PEWG) at the University of Kentucky organizes paper sessions at national conferences, brings guest speakers to campus, creates graduate student reading groups and white paper sessions, and has collaborated on book review forums. These efforts bring together an interdisciplinary group of nature-society scholars on the UK campus. We also organize an international conference, that in 2011 brought 125 scholars together for two days of paper sessions, field trips, and panel discussions. The 2012 conference, scheduled for April 13-15, is accepting session proposals and presentation abstracts, please visit our website for more details: Dimensions of Political Ecology Conference.
