Author: zoetodd

Zoe Todd (Métis/otipemisiw) is an artist and scholar from amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), Alberta, Canada. She writes about fish, art, Métis legal traditions, the Anthropocene, extinction, and decolonization in urban and prairie contexts. She also studies human-animal relations, colonialism and environmental change in north/western Canada. She holds a BSc (Biological Sciences) and MSc (Rural Sociology) from the University of Alberta and a PhD (Social Anthropology) from Aberdeen University. She is an Associate Professor who splits her time between the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She was a 2018/2019 Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine. She is part of the interdisciplinary Fluid Boundaries team (one of four teams shortlisted in 2019 to represent Canada at the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale) and she is Principal Investigator for the “Restor(y)ing Bull Trout” project at Carleton University.

(an answer)

By zoetodd | January 27, 2020

It’s dangerous to write and post when you have the flu. But I have been housebound since Friday and although my physical body is nowhere near ready to strike out into the world, my brain is ready to do more than just watch Parks and Recreation on repeat. So here we are. In May 2018 I asked “should I stay or should I go?” with respect to the discipline of anthropology. By that point I had been working in the {+}

some tips for academic job interviews

By zoetodd | December 30, 2019

The academic job market is fraught. We know this. I can only speak explicitly to the Canadian context, but we know from our own experiences, and from empirical data, that making the leap from doctorate to tenure-track is no easy feat. I do not want to downplay the realities of the struggle for folks on the job market. However, I also want to reach out here for those doctoral students on the market who might not have someone to give {+}

anthropology of environments: what I learned from the horseshoe crabs

By zoetodd | September 5, 2019

“Would you believe me now If I told you I got caught up in a wave? Almost gave it away Would you hear me out If I told you I was terrified for days? Thought I was gonna break” — Maggie Rogers, Light On I spent the better part of last year living and working in the US, falling asleep every night only two blocks from the mysterious lull of Long Island Sound — the weight and presence of water seeping {+}

I’m too tired to read your work — on refusing HAU Journal

By zoetodd | July 1, 2019

This weekend, PhD student Taylor Genovese drew attention to the fact that the former Editor in Chief of HAU journal was granted an opportunity to write a final editorial in the journal (which I refuse to link to) — despite widespread accounts from former staff of highly problematic behaviours that were allowed to carry on at the journal. I have only read one screen cap of a portion of the editorial on twitter, and here’s why: life is too short to {+}

Your failure of imagination is not my problem

By zoetodd | January 10, 2019

In November 2016, I flew to Zurich to deliver a talk on my work on Métis legal-ethical paradigms, prairie fish, and the Anthropocene. When we booked the tickets earlier that summer, it didn’t occur to me that I’d asked my hosts to book my travel for the night of the US Presidential election. So, as I set out from Ottawa, the Canadian capital, on the evening of November 8, I entered a strange and disorienting patch of space time that {+}

gratitude and magic

By zoetodd | October 14, 2018

The job of a blogger is to keep blogging. And in the last few months, I’ve really struggled with coming up with anything meaningful or helpful to say. I feel pretty firmly, as many are articulating very powerfully (please see this podcast hosted by Autumn Brown and adrienne marie brown, “How To Survive the End of the World“, passed along to me by my friend and colleague Aadita Chaudhury this weekend*), that we’re facing the end of one order of {+}

The Decolonial Turn 2.0: the reckoning

By zoetodd | June 15, 2018

By now, many readers are familiar with the issues surrounding recent events at HAU: journal of ethnographic theory, including the letters released by the HAU Former Staff 7 here and four current and former staff here. The week’s revelations were kicked off by an apology David Graeber here. What is clear from the ensuing conversations is that issues of harassment, abuse, exploitation, misogyny, and classism/elitism remain live and palpable in the discipline’s highest echelons, and have impacted precarious and vulnerable scholars in {+}

Should I stay or should I go?

By zoetodd | May 12, 2018

At the end of my sixth semester as an anthropology professor, I’m reflecting on what it means to inhabit this discipline (or, maybe, to occupy (re-occupy?) it). I have spent the better part of the last 8 years immersed in anthropological theory, anthropological politics, and engaging and interlocuting with the ghosts of the discipline’s past. And, to be honest, this work wears away at my cells, my fibres, my bones. I’m exhausted. I have aged. I recently joked in a {+}

anthro{dendum} is now anthro{duodenum}!

By zoetodd | April 1, 2018

It has only been a few months since we re-launched “Savage Minds” as anthro{dendum}, but upon further consideration we feel that the site lacks focus. It was one thing when we were the only major anthropology blog, but now we are just one of many. For this reason we feel the blog needs to narrow its scope. So, with that in mind, we are relaunching today as anthro{duodenum}! The world of the gut — the microbiome, the microvilli that line {+}

A note to the exhausted anthropology student

By zoetodd | December 22, 2017

It’s the end of the term. You’ve handed in your papers, you’ve written your last exams. You’ve put the last few months behind you, and hopefully you’re able to spend time with kindred folks over the holidays — be they friends, family, or kin of any other configuration. Take this time to do the things you need to do to nurture yourself. As someone who struggled immensely in my undergraduate, I want to tell you that you can do this. {+}