Author Archives: Payton Frankiewicz

Tea & Solidarity provided an interesting look into the lives of Tamil women during the postwar era in Sri Lanka. In the novel, author Mythri Jegathesan illustrates the economic crisis that the tea industry was funneled through after the civil … Continue reading →

As an Anthropology major, I’d actually taken a course last semester– Cultural Anthropology– in which we read The Land of  Open Graves in it’s entirety, which I would highly recommend if you liked the introduction and Chapter 7. I also had … Continue reading →

In Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty, author Dr. Ana Maurine Lara provides us with a powerful ethnography that proved to be extremely thought provoking in reflecting on her fieldwork in the Dominican Republic. Here, she explains her engagement in different religious … Continue reading →

In Angela Garcia’s The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the RIo Grande, the author tells us about the unsettling grip that heroin holds specifically within a hispanic community region along the Rio Grande. What I found particularly interesting is … Continue reading →

As one who didn’t initially know too much about the Mexican healthcare system, let alone the practice of midwifery in general, I found this week’s reading Midwifery & Development in Mexico: Delivering Health particularly interesting. To start, I appreciated how Dixon laid … Continue reading →

The two readings from Taneja this week were very captivating to me personally, particularly because they offered knowledge and perspective on a time in history that I didn’t know much about. The first reading provided interesting theological frameworks and historical … Continue reading →

Throughout Chapters 1 and 3, Shange dives into the central idea of a Progressive Dystopia, and aims to analyze how widespread sentiments of anti-Blackness affect progressivism on an educational level. To do this, Shange makes use of the Robeson Justice … Continue reading →

The first portion of Thomas’ novel was a dive deeper into anthropologists’ traditional notions of what social and economic factors contribute to both the presence and persistence of violence in a community or culture. Her definition of the central concept … Continue reading →

Field Notes Location The chosen field site where the food was purchased was at Grins cafe on Vanderbilt campus. Situated in between Branscomb residence hall, Memorial Gymnasium, and the first portion of greek row, Grins sits on an extremely accessible … Continue reading →

Despite taking a few intro anthropology classes, I sometimes still find the premise of ethnography somewhat complicated. This being said, I believe the Murchinson reading really helped to clarify some of the basic proponents of ethnography and helped delineate its … Continue reading →

In Tsing’s profoundly symbolic writing The Mushroom at the End of the World, she juxtaposes the human notion of progress with the idea of capitalism and the generally uncertain future that we face. What I found interesting in Tsings description … Continue reading →