Academic Appointments
Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities, California State University-Los Angeles, August 2024-present
Lecturer in Liberal Studies, California State University-Los Angeles, January 2018-August 2024
Lecturer in American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, June 2015-May 2017
Podcast Host and Digital Media Producer for The Range Podcast, Foodways Texas, Austin TX, periodically
Education
Ph.D. American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 2015
Dissertation: Science, Animals, and Profit-Making in the American Rodeo Arena
M.A. American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 2009
B.A. English, Minor in History, Vassar College, 2005
Current Research and Writing
Locust. Under contract with Reaktion Books to appear in its popular Animal Series. Manuscript in progress. See Locust Tidbits for just that (but forgive me for my extreme inattention to regular updating!).
A Few Serious Publications in the Wild
Most recent publications are on this website’s home page!
2018 “How to Make a Horse Have an Orgasm,” a piece of ethnographic fiction in the book Living With Animals: Bonds Across Species.
Buy it from Cornell University Press here.
2018 “A Question of Sex: Cloning, Culture, and Legitimacy Among American Quarter Horses.” Humanimalia 10:1, Fall 2018.
Read it here.
2018 “Pageants, Po’Boys, and Shrimp on a Stick: Documenting the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival,” a photoessay co-authored with Emily Roehl, in the Spring 2018 issue of Southern Cultures.
Read it here. (Paywalled)
2017 "From Hoof to Highway." Food and City 3: Fall 2017.
Read it here.
2016 "Animal Sex Work." CASTAC (Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing) blog.
Read it here.
2015 “A Matter of Meat and Democracy: A Crisis in Veterinary Public Health.” University of Minnesota Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine: web.
Read it here.
2014 “Dead Horses.” The End of Austin, Issue 5: web.
Read it here.
2013 Materia Medica: Technology, Vaccination, and Antivivisection in Jazz Age Philadelphia. American Quarterly vol. 65, no. 3: 575-594.
Read it here, if you have access to Project Muse.
Podcast
Episode 1: Beans. The inaugural episode of The Range, a Foodways Texas podcast.
Episode 2: Ranching Below the Nueces. The second episode of The Range, a Foodways Texas Podcast.
Reviews
Recent reviews upon request!
2017 Review of The Perfect Horse: The Daring US Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped By The Nazis, Elizabeth Letts. Equine History Collective.
Read it here.
2015 “Contingent Existence.” Review of Ghost Bird, Educational Edition. DVD. Scott Crocker, 2010. Antennae: A Journal of Nature and Culture, Spring 2015.
Read it here.
2013 “All Hat, No Cattle.” Review of Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo: Breaking Away From the Ties of Sexism and Racism, Tracey Owens Patton and Sally M. Schedlock. Humanimalia 4, no. 2.
Read it here.
Teaching Experience
California State University-Los Angeles
LBS 2400, Intro to Environmental Humanities
LBS 3680, Gender in Science
LBS 4200, Cultures of Science
LBS 3010/3020, Interdisciplinary Investigation and Writing the Interdisciplinary Essay
LBS 3600, Knowledge and Institutions
LBS 4890/4900, Capstone Seminar and Senior Project
University of Texas
AMS 370, The Civil War and American Culture
AMS 310, Introduction to American Studies
AMS 356, Main Currents In American Culture Since 1865
AMS 311s, The Cowboy Mystique in American Culture
Recent and Current Conferences
Living With Animals 5, Richmond, Kentucky, March 2023
Animals and Epidemics, Berlin, Germany, March 2022
American Studies Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, November 2019
Australasian Animal Studies Association, Christchurch, New Zealand, July 2019
Minding Animals Conference, Mexico City, January 2018
Agricultural History Annual Meeting, Grand Rapids, MI, June 2017, and Lexington, KY, June 2015
American Society for Environmental History, Chicago, IL, April 2017
Living With Animals, Richmond, KY, March 2019, 2017, 2015, and 2013
The Ideal Animal, Kassel, Germany, June 2016
History of Science Society, Chicago, IL, October 2014
The World Association for the History of Veterinary Medicine, London, England, September 2014
Peer Reviewer
2023, University of Georgia Press and Humanimalia
2017, Routledge
2015, 2016, and 2017, Sloth
2014, American Quarterly
I'm happy to send my full Academic CV upon request.