The Slumbering Masses

This project, based on my dissertation research, focuses on the historical and contemporary relationships between sleep, medicine and capitalism in the United States. As such, it traces theses relationships from the early 1800s to the turn of the 21st century, in so doing following the transformations from industrial to postindustrial, allopathic to biomedicine, and primordial to flexible. I posit these various forces as components of "integral medicine," a means to understand the collaborations between economic, biological, scientific, medical, social and cultural forces.

Related Publications

(August 2009) Fantasies of Extremes: Sports, War and the Science of Sleep. Biosocieties 4.2.

(February 2009) Precipitating Pharmakologies and Capital Entrapments: Narcolepsy and the Strange Cases of Provigil and Xyrem. Medical Anthropology 28.1: 11-30.  

(December 2008) Sleep, Signification, and the Abstract Body of Allopathic Medicine. Body & Society 14.3: 93-114.

Volunteer Research Opportunities

I accept unpaid undergraduate assistants to conduct research on the following topics:

• 1) A researcher is required to identify where attempts have been made on changing public and private school start times at the elementary and secondary levels and what the results have been.
• 2) A researcher is required to identify where businesses have changed their operating hours, moving away from being open 24 hours over the past decade.
• 3) A researcher is required to identify how American business hours affect business operations globally (in terms of call centers, especially).

Matters

This project follows conceptions of the brain in three sciences over the course of the 20th century, their convergences and bases for ethical practice. I trace the relationships between psychoanalysis, cybernetics, and neuroscience to make an argument about "dominant" and "minor" sciences -- a distinction I borrow from Deleuze & Guattari -- and the cultural practices they enable, especially as related to the brain. This research is currently ongoing, and will be completed in 2011.

Volunteer Research Opportunities

I accept unpaid undergraduate assistants to conduct research on the following topics:

• 1) A researcher is required to identify literature on bioethics and its relations to psychoanalysis.
• 2) A researcher is required to identify neurological research on emotions, their cause and effects (on individuals and socially).
• 3) A researcher is required to compile an annotated bibliography on anthropological approaches to autism.

Wither, Bloom

This project is a history of the interrelationships of industrialization, colonialism, medicine and capitalism in the United States. It takes as its point of entry into these concerns the contemporary prevalence of cancer in a number of communities in the United States, and unravels the historical forces that have led to these embodiments of American industrialism and colonialism. I take as my foundation in this study the development and practice of epidemiology as a method that binds medicine, science, colonialism and industry in the understanding and management of populations. In constructing this historical narrative, I take as my sites of interest geographically demarcated spaces that align with particular cancer prevalences – epidemiological hotspots that align with colonial and industrial histories.

Volunteer Research Opportunities

I accept unpaid undergraduate assistants to conduct research on the following topics:

• 1) A researcher is required to compile an annotated bibliography on anthropological approaches to cancer.
• 2) A researcher is required to identify oncology research related to specific areas in the United States: New Mexico & Nevada, Montana, Hawaii, and California.

Distress

Over the past decade, "stress" as a concept has become globalized. To track circulating syndromes, such as stress, I have begun to develop a multi-sited research program with other scholars to track the movements and meanings of "stress" at the turn of the 21st century.

Volunteer Research Opportunities

I accept unpaid undergraduate assistants to conduct research on the following topics:

• 1) A researcher is required to identify relevant medical and self-help literature on stress in the following languages: French, Spanish, Russian, and English. If you have other language skills and are interested in this opportunity, please contact me.

Exiles

Over the past decade, I've published a number of articles and essays on superhero comics, science fiction, and other popular culture texts. There isn't a consistent argument, but the pieces on comic books and superheroes are being supplemented with a couple new essays and may become a book in the near future.

Related Publications

(Summer 2006) Batman and Robin in the Nude, or Class and its Exceptions.  Extrapolation, 47.3: 187-206.(2005)

“The Event” and “The Woman,” or Notes on the Temporality of Sex.  Christopher Priest: The Interaction.  Andrew Butler, ed.  Foundation Studies in Science Fiction, vol. 6. Science Fiction Foundation Press, 2005. 65-77.

(May 2004) Apocalypse, Ideology, America: Science Fiction and the Myth of the Post-Apocalyptic Everyday.  Rhizomes.net: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge: n.p.

(Spring 2004) Technics, Memes, Ideology:  The Affirmation of Lies and the Pursuit of the Future.  Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction vol. 90: 44-57.

(Winter 2003) The World Ozymandias Made: Utopias in Superhero Comics. Journal of Popular Culture 36.3: 497-517.

Marginalia

Occasionally, I just get interested in something and produce an article. I keep them here:

(Fall 2006) The Politics of Materiality, or “The Left is Always Late.”  PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 29.2: 254-275.