Grass Trilogy
If you missed the “Introduction to Grass Trilogy,” you can find it here. By Ochirbatyn Dashbalbar Translated by Jessica Madison Pískatá 1. Grass O grass—presently my dear father,…
Tag: place
Introduction to Grass Trilogy
The sacred mountain Altan Ovoo rises in the Dariganga region of eastern Mongolia. Jessica Madison Pískatá I first arrived in eastern Mongolia in August 2011 by way of…
i. will. cross.
I wrote my poem “i. will. cross.” at a site called the Line of Control, the ceasefire line that exists as a de facto border between Indian- and…
Why Poetry + Anthropology?
[no-caption] Kim Herbst When a barbed-wire de facto border lights up but throbs with blood, when a lynching memorial veins into memories and questions of the soul, when…
The Fish Trap
An equatorial moon arcs above the Upper Rio Negro region of Brazil. Glenn H. Shepard Jr. The U.S. poet-physician William Carlos Williams once described a poem as a…
What Modern Extremes Taught Me About Noise in the Ancient World
Today the cacophony of modern life makes it difficult to find, much less achieve, true silence. In our electrified world, there is always a rattle or hum somewhere.…
The Server Souvenir: Taking Home Remnants of Virtual Worlds
“It’s amazing to think those little circuits that we can carry around were an entire world to us.” –Diana*, interviewee “We might say that this capacity of objects…
Rahul Advani on page 99 of his dissertation
Page 99 of my dissertation is the first time in the dissertation that I provide an ethnographic example of how marginalized educated young men native to Pune assert…
Digging Up Woodstock
The 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair left behind garbage and other materials that can be traced by archaeologists. Bettmann /Getty Images On a cloudy morning in October 2017,…
“It’s a lot of sand”: An anthropological take on Trump’s Syrian withdrawal
That Syria has “a lot of sand” is meant to stand in for its lack of value. As a place that is sandy, it is not worth US…
A Tale of Two Ruins
I’ll show you a place, high on a desert plain / Where the streets have no name … —U2, The Joshua Tree, 1987 I recently flew over two…
Florida’s Indigenous Heritage Faces a Watery Grave
Six ancient Native American mounds lie in Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park near Tallahassee, Florida. Ebyabe/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Co…
Sweating Through a Gym’s Gender Barriers
For women, powerlifting gyms can be hostile territories. Westend61/Getty Images As I walk into the gym, my nostrils flare at the smell of sweat and old iron. My…
Are Mixed-Income Neighborhoods the Best Answer for Public Housing?
The Plan for Transformation brought new mixed-income developments to Chicago, such as those shown here, as a novel solution to public housing. Elizabeth Svoboda When Juanita Stevenson mov…
Why Land Acknowledgments Matter
[no-caption] Fred Harvey/Library of Congress This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. In Toronto, before singing “O Canad…
Making, Holding, and Guarding as Spatial Politics of Healing
“I wouldn’t want anyone to get attached to a space. But if, for the sake of an example, there is going to be a space, then it needs…
Upon This Break, I Build My House
[pquote]There is a way that we exist among ourselves, nestled securely into our knowing, oyster knives in hand. [/pquote]I have a quite uncomfortable visceral reaction when I am…
What Google Maps Don’t Show You
When I was a boy, my father and I used to plan road trips together. We would go to our local American Automobile Association (AAA) office and get…
Regulating Physical Places with Digital Code
Editor’s Note: This is the seventh and final post in our Law in Computation series. At first, I was perplexed by the K5 by Knightscope, a “fully autonomous security…
In the Land of the Mammoth Eaters
[no-caption] Sarah Gilman In the oaken hills of central Texas between Austin and Waco, a spring rises along a tangled fence line, watercress waving downstream. Water comes up…
How Fracking’s Appetite for Sand Is Devouring Rural Communities
[no-caption] “Do you want to see the mine?” asks Harlan*. “Of course,” I reply. He fetches his boots. We head outside with his wife Edith and follow a…
A Brexit in the World, and How It Found Its Place
On the relocation of the UK in a time of populist instability. [pquote]Once the formal Brexit process is completed, Britain will no longer be in the same place…
Why the “Big, Beautiful Wall” Is Doomed to Fail
The barriers that are already in place along hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico border have done little to stem the flow of migrants into the United States.…
The Transformation of One of New York City’s Most Famous Squats
When the Lower East Side’s 155 Avenue C—known as C-Squat—was legalized, many of its squatters became homeowners of sorts. Konstantin Sergeyev I was surprised when I first met…