Author Archives: Johnathan Favini

John is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Virginia whose research addresses the intersections of race, Indigeneity, and the environment. Broadly, his research connects two complex social phenomena—the plantation and climate change. He is interested in how the material and cultural transformations wrought by European conquest of the Americas shape contemporary environments and social life, including prevailing scientific frameworks. His dissertation centers on a movement to stop bauxite mining led primary by conservationist and Maroons in Jamaica. He has also undertaken community engaged fieldwork in Virginia on natural gas infrastructure and is building toward a second project on “rights of nature” statutes in the US Rustbelt.
Bloody zombies arms reaching out

Zombie Knowledge: Toward a Deeper Conversation between Black Studies and Multispecies Anthropology

Monsters, the nightmarish figures we conjure in the dark, reflect our own culturally and politically specific anxieties. They are a dark mirror: a terrifying rendering of a social fact exaggerated, turned inside out, or perhaps a manifestation of some truth we find unthinkable except in fantasy. (read more...)