Hello!
I am a cultural anthropologist interested in ethnographic questions of embodiment, materiality, knowledge, and the political with a geographic focus on Peru and the Americas. My work draws upon diverse scholarly fields, especially environmental and medical anthropology, science and technology studies, critical race studies, and political theory. I am motivated by theoretical curiosity and political urgency and aspire to co-think, write, and create across different media, formats, and publics.
Currently, I am a Chancellor's postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine mentored by Professor Kim Fortun in the department of Anthropology. Starting in Fall 2020, I will be an Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Previously, I lectured at the University of Chicago's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Department of Anthropology and held a post-doctoral fellowship in the Science in Human Culture Program at Northwestern University.
In 2015, I completed my PhD in sociocultural anthropology at the University of California, Davis with a designated emphasis in critical theory. My PhD research examined how lead toxicity is operationalized politically within social projects that resist––or support–– Peru's large-scale extractive industries. I conducted 1.5 years of research at two emblematic sites of metal production and lead contamination in Peru: the Andean Metallurgic Center of La Oroya and the National Seaport of El Callao. My research found that while toxicological sciences deliver ethical weight to public health, human rights, and environmental activism, neoliberal labor reforms in Peru make human exposures to heavy metals a requisite to diverse forms of economic livelihood and collective survival. Contemporary antagonisms between labor and environment/health generate the analytical challenge of this project. Through an ethnographic examination of the social and material processes that bring bodies and minerals into relation, my work conceptualizes the politics of environmentalism, health, and human rights within the noxious environs of racial capitalisms and post-anthropocene worlds. I am currently completing a book manuscript of this research, tentatively entitled Mineral Incorporations.
At the University of Arizona, my teaching will emphasize medical anthropology and thematics of health and environment in Latin America. At the University of Chicago, I taught the pro-seminar for the M.A. and B.A. programs in Latin American and Caribbean studies as well as additional courses on cultures of extractivism, toxicity, social movements, and race, gender, and indigeneity. I advised senior and master's theses in anthropology and Latin American Studies. Previously, I also taught courses on the life politics of the Catholic Church, decolonial approaches to the study of science, technology, and medicine, environmental anthropology, and the anthropology of globalization.
I am a cultural anthropologist interested in ethnographic questions of embodiment, materiality, knowledge, and the political with a geographic focus on Peru and the Americas. My work draws upon diverse scholarly fields, especially environmental and medical anthropology, science and technology studies, critical race studies, and political theory. I am motivated by theoretical curiosity and political urgency and aspire to co-think, write, and create across different media, formats, and publics.
Currently, I am a Chancellor's postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine mentored by Professor Kim Fortun in the department of Anthropology. Starting in Fall 2020, I will be an Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Previously, I lectured at the University of Chicago's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Department of Anthropology and held a post-doctoral fellowship in the Science in Human Culture Program at Northwestern University.
In 2015, I completed my PhD in sociocultural anthropology at the University of California, Davis with a designated emphasis in critical theory. My PhD research examined how lead toxicity is operationalized politically within social projects that resist––or support–– Peru's large-scale extractive industries. I conducted 1.5 years of research at two emblematic sites of metal production and lead contamination in Peru: the Andean Metallurgic Center of La Oroya and the National Seaport of El Callao. My research found that while toxicological sciences deliver ethical weight to public health, human rights, and environmental activism, neoliberal labor reforms in Peru make human exposures to heavy metals a requisite to diverse forms of economic livelihood and collective survival. Contemporary antagonisms between labor and environment/health generate the analytical challenge of this project. Through an ethnographic examination of the social and material processes that bring bodies and minerals into relation, my work conceptualizes the politics of environmentalism, health, and human rights within the noxious environs of racial capitalisms and post-anthropocene worlds. I am currently completing a book manuscript of this research, tentatively entitled Mineral Incorporations.
At the University of Arizona, my teaching will emphasize medical anthropology and thematics of health and environment in Latin America. At the University of Chicago, I taught the pro-seminar for the M.A. and B.A. programs in Latin American and Caribbean studies as well as additional courses on cultures of extractivism, toxicity, social movements, and race, gender, and indigeneity. I advised senior and master's theses in anthropology and Latin American Studies. Previously, I also taught courses on the life politics of the Catholic Church, decolonial approaches to the study of science, technology, and medicine, environmental anthropology, and the anthropology of globalization.
| graeter_s_cv2019.pdf |