B.A., Anthropology, University of Texas at San Antonio, summa cum laude, 1997
M.A., Anthropology, Unviersity of Texas at San Antonio, 2000
M.A., Anthropology, Emory University, 2003
Ph.D., Anthropology, Emory University, 2008
Dissertation: The Political Economy of Local Currency: Alternative Money, Alternative Development and Collective Action in the Age of Globalization
Courses:
Research Interests: Economic Anthropology; globalization, development, sustainability, money and finance, consumption, social mobilization, virtual communities, cyberspace; Latin American and the United States.
Short Bio: I first joined the anthropology faculty of GSU in the fall of 2008 as a visiting instructor. I liked this department so much that I did my best to stop Visiting, and as of this year I am the department's Lecturer in sociocultural anthropology, where I will be teaching four-field and cultural anthropology, the anthropology of globalization, ethnograpic methods, and I am also hoping to develop further coursework in economic anthropology, and an introduction to anthropological linguistics. I will also be supervising internsthips. I received my Ph.D. in anthropology from Emory University, and have previously taught at Emory, and held an A.W. Mellon Teachign Fellowship at Agnes Scott College in 2007-2008.
My interests gravitate to the construction and negotiation of materiality in late capitalism. Thus, my research, which began with an examination of small-scale responses to neoliberal development policies and discourse in Mexico, shifted toward questions of sustainability, consumption, local-global interactions, social mobilization and economic and social alternativity, strung together by that highly elusive gent-premier of modernity, money and finance. An article on currency and its role in trade, consumption, and alternative economic mobilization titled "Fair Money, Fair Trade: Tracing Alternative Consumption in a Local Currency Economy" is set to appear in a forthcoming volume on economic fairness and the Fair Trade movement, with the New York University Press. Meanwhile I have been working on a piece on the representations of value through standard and alternaitve money, and initiating follow-up research on local currency in Ithaca, NY, while investigating a new field site in Greece. My other interests include virtual economies and communities, as well as food, sustainable and otherwise. In that vien, I have done collaborative work on local food in Atlanta, producting a publication on the availability, accessibility and affordability of healthful foods in Southern DeKalb county. In terms of other professional involvement, I edit the newsletter of the Society for Economic Anthropology. Also, I have a Balinese step-cat name Persephone. She is awesome.