Evocative Ethnographies of Florida’s Silver River: Biodiversity, Boundaries, Life Experiences (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Evocative Ethnographies of Florida’s Silver River: Biodiversity, Boundaries, Life Experiences
Author: Concha-Holmes, Amanda
Author: Shriver-Rice, Meryl
Abstract: Water: a reflection, a surface, a substance, and a movement. A boundary that eludes, precludes and shapes form and life itself. A vessel that shapes its surroundings and where vessels float, feed, and folly. This live panel shares multimedia poetic experiments in conducting an ethnography with a river, specifically with the Silver River in North Central Florida where Asian monkeys, mastodons, Black Seminoles, self-identified rednecks in motorboats, Northern conservationists in kayaks, tourists in glass bottom boats, Tarzan movies, fungi, Paradise Park (the Blacks only beach during segregation), manatees and alligators (from prehistoric times), migratory birds, algae, and conceptions of humaNature relationships collide as fragmented facets of the Silver River's identity.
Meryl Shriver-Rice’s masters of Environment, Culture and Media program’s course called Nature, the Anthropocene and Visual Anthropology (University of Miami) is the milieu for this artistic-scholastic engagement with representations of lifeworlds, culturally specific experiences, and the policies that shape and are shaped by these meshworks. Students are guided by Amanda Concha-Holmes’ pioneering work with Evocative Ethnography to integrate videos, texts, soundscapes, images, graphics, sensorial experiences, and poetry to interpret some of the layers of cultural and ecological history through a decolonial, feminist theoretical and methodological lens that examines the Silver River’s entangled prehistorical, historical, and contemporary entanglements of environmental concepts, conservation policies, diverse peoples, animals and plants, climate changes, multispecies perspectives, and the meaning for being, belonging and becoming in Florida, and the world.
This 90-minute panel will feature multimedia presentations accompanied by the artivists who made them for a discussion on decolonization, embodied transformation, healing, and learning.
Date Range: 12-14 March 2021
Location: Zoom Anthropology of Consciousness meeting
Evocative Ethnography and the Silver River (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Evocative Ethnography and the Silver River
Author: Concha-Holmes, Amanda
Abstract: Students are guided by Amanda Concha-Holmes’ pioneering work with Evocative Ethnography to integrate videos, texts, soundscapes, images, graphics, sensorial experiences, and poetry to interpret some of the layers of cultural and ecological history through a decolonial, feminist theoretical and methodological lens that examines the Silver River’s entangled prehistorical, historical, and contemporary entanglements of environmental concepts, conservation policies, diverse peoples, animals and plants, climate changes, multispecies perspectives, and the meaning for being, belonging and becoming in Florida, and the world.
Year: 2021
Audience: Graduate
Renegade Women in Anthropology at the End of the World (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Renegade Women in Anthropology at the End of the World
Author: Concha-Holmes, Amanda
Author: Anderson, Judy
Author: Main, Meredith
Author: Lewis, Eshe
Abstract: The confluence of two racialized pandemics—COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence—has shaken the mainstream in the Americas from a post-racial slumber. This interview discussion positions a feminist ethnographic lens on the frontlines of these epidemics to explore how Black communities in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and the U.S. South are mobilizing against historically rooted racialized and gendered injustices and receiving unprecedented public attention. The interlocutors we work with and we ourselves are renegade women in anthropology: women who conduct research on the frontlines to support Black lives, organize communities, and provide healthcare without financial and professional security. Our allyship with Black communities manifests in diverse ways. In Brazil, we fund and assemble packages with essential supplies for Black women-headed households who are battling COVID-19 while protecting their children from anti-Black police violence. In Peru, we support Black women who are faced with the choice of exposing themselves to the virus or going without food, income, or protection against violence in the home. We are deeply intertwined with Black communities in Argentina who are being denied access to the legal system. From the heart of the U.S. South, we are uncovering historical legacies of injustices and social movements while using art and technology to design a future otherwise. We are immersed in an anthropology that merges the professional with the personal; together we contribute to a conversation of what renegade women in anthropology means in times of global crisis.
Date Range: November 2020
Location: Zoom AAA (Association of American Anthropologists) conference
Blacks in Florida: Decolonizing Representation (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Blacks in Florida: Decolonizing Representation
Author: Concha-Holmes
Abstract: Florida has a deep connection to Black history that is often left at the margins of historical representations or ignored completely. As Marvin Dunn notes in his book A History of Florida Through Black Eyes, “people of African descent have been major players in almost every significant event in the history of Florida from the arrival of the conquistadors to the launch of the space shuttle…[and yet] [g]enerations of African Americans in Florida [and most other Americans] have been denied our history. That is an intellectual crime.” (x-xii). If colonial thought represents those Americans worth representing as white, European and male, then decolonizing representations means that the representations not only include people of color and women but include them in ways that highlight their achievements and not only their oppression; it also means that the classroom and learning experiences go beyond the written word.
In order to decolonize representations, students must uncover underrepresented histories and learn the tools to represent otherwise. The course will cover some of the stories of African descendants in Florida including creating the first independent towns in the United States, Black Seminoles and other freedom fighters, racial terrorism during and beyond reconstruction, Black joy and celebration at Paradise Park, Black leaders in music, civil rights, medicine, business and politics.
This course is meant to offer the insights and the skills into interpreting representations of Blacks in Florida through learning the methods of archival research, interviewing, analysis, digital production, and public exhibition with a feminist, decolonial lens. The course is divided into three modules: 1. Black histories, 2. Research on Black experiences and expressions of the present, and 3. Creating museum exhibits and K-12 classroom curricula for Black futures.
Year: 2021
Audience: Undergraduate