205-975-6526

205-975-8630

I am a cultural anthropologist who has had rather diverse research interests, but have a concentration in the study of human and wild primate interactions. My book Kinship with Monkeys: The Guaja Foragers of Eastern Amazonia (Columbia University Press 2003), explored a hunting and gathering group's relationships with monkeys in ecological, social, and symbolic domains of their culture. For the past several years, I have been investigating host-switching in human, ape, and monkey malarias from prehistory to present, with particular emphasis on environmental changes fostering malarial proliferation in all primates since the agricultural revolution. I currently have a book proposal under review on this topic entitled, The 10,000 Year Fever: The Historical Ecology of Human and Wild Primate Malarias.

Ph.D. in Anthropology, Tulane University, 2000
M.A. in Anthropology, University of Alabama/University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1992
B.S. in Nursing, University of Florida, 1984

Research Interests:

Historical ecology
Ethnoprimatology
Medical anthropology
Indigenous Amazonians
Alabama Choctaw
Disease ecology
Disaster prepardedness

Teaching Areas:

Cultural anthropology
Ecological anthropology
Gender
Linguistics
Medical anthropology
South American Indians
Theory in anthropology
Sci-fi
World problems