Alejandro Cerón traces 15 years of Guatemalan Indigenous and Mestizo communities demanding answers about water contamination and illness. The obscure responses they received from agribusinesses make clear whose health is valued, and whose is rendered invisible. #ABAxTA_NOLA
Erin Mellett’s work reveals how “healthcare that prioritizes efficiency over accessibility puts deaf immigrants at risk—through misdiagnoses, incorrect medications, and life-threatening language barriers.” #ABAxTA_NOLA
“Ghosted: Race, Health & the Haunting of Medical Systems” traced the spectral dimensions of health inequity—how Black and Indigenous communities are erased in data, neglected in care, and rendered invisible by the very systems meant to protect them. #ABAxTA_NOLA
The "Ghosts and Their Multimodal Stories in the South through an Afrocentric Lens" roundtable explores the ways in which Afrocentric multimodal methods of storytelling is critical to decolonizing anthropology. We began this panel with a moment of silence in honor of our ancestors. #ABAxTA_NOLA
As she provides a scholarly discussion of the presentations, Corliss Heath brings us home with an interrogation of the multiple ways in which Black people engage identity, community, and ancestry. She asks the question: “how can you bring a voice to people who are silenced or erased?” #ABAxTA_NOLA
“We need to understand how we learn about one another because often formal schooling doesn’t teach us about the African diaspora.” -Dr. Nigel Escalada #ABAxTA_NOLA
Nigel Encalada speaks of the ways in which the Garifuna identity is shaped by resistance and resilience. Based on his qualitative study, he argues that Garifuna culture has high cultural capital, yet they have low political representation. #ABAxTA_NOLA
Courtney D. Morris on the petrochemical industry, “I felt an urgency to document and create a counter archive of the Black and Indigenous communities in Mossville…I photographed self portraits and the seemingly empty sites that had been demolished to make the unseeable seen.” #ABAxTA_NOLA
N Fadeke Castor honor Dr. Omotayo Jolaosho, who passed away in 2022, in her citational practice: “Breath is a powerful material and spiritual force, a point of not only harm but also recovery.” #ABAxTA_NOLA
Happening now in Salon E, Habitable Air: Urban Inequality in the Time of Client change #ABAxTA_NOLA
For friends headed to New Orleans for the AAAs, mark your calendars for our roundtable on Trouillot’s Peasants and Capital, a book discussion with Christien Tompkins, and a video installation on militarism in the southern Caribbean that I curated with Brent Crosson. #ABAxTA_NOLA
Courtney Desiree Morris reflects on how she hopes the book will shift pedagogical practice, “I hope the book can open up how we actually prepare students to go into the field which is often structured by profound violence” #ABAxTA_NOLA
A love letter from Dana-Ain Davis to all of the book contributors, “Your work has created space for scholarship that refuses easy capture, and recognizes anthropology’s potential as a radical practice of solidarity.” #ABAxTA_NOLA
Kicking off our ABAxTA session spotlights, we’re reporting live from the roundtable on “Fugitive Anthropology: Embodying Activist Research” #ABAxTA_NOLA
The Association of Black Anthropologists Student Interest Group is having a social hour TODAY from 12-1:15pm at the Oak Alley Room in the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel. #ABAxTA_NOLA
Are you in New Orleans for AAA?
Come to my last book event of the year, where brilliant colleagues have generously agreed to discuss my @ucpress.bsky.social book. Huge thanks to Lee D. Baker, Adia Benton, Chelsey R. Carter, Laurence Ralph, and Todne Thomas!
See you Sunday! 😊
#ABAxTA_NOLA
TA and the @assocofblackanthro.bsky.social are collaborating again on AAA coverage this year!
Follow the hashtag #ABAxTA_NOLA to tag us in photos, follow online discussions, and connect with fellow attendees!
We can’t wait to see you in New Orleans!
@americananthro.bsky.social
