Adventures in Creative Stumbling
Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Department of Anthropology Speakers’ SeriesÂ
Monday, October 28 2024
12:30 to 2:00 pm
Peterson Hall 116
Luis Vivanco
University of Vermont
Adventures in creative stumbling
Abstract:
During the last five years, I have been spending more time than I probably should making and sharing research-based comics on the social history of bicycles. What began as a playful diversion has generated new revelations about things I have long taken for granted, including my relationship with anthropological and historical scholarship and teaching. I have come to describe what I do in this space as creative stumbling. In this illustrated talk, I reflect on my intentional and emergent inquiry practices, tripping, stumbling, and backing my way into inquiries, embracing the generative intellectual and creative possibilities of bewilderment while creating sequential narrative art.
Speaker Biography:
Luis Vivanco is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Vermont. His scholarship focuses on the culture and politics of environmentalist social movements and activism, drawing primarily on research in Latin America. His writings have explored community-level biodiversity conservation and ecotourism; the history of nature cinema and wildlife film; and the socio-cultural dimensions of urban bicycle mobility and political activism. He is currently working on his tenth book, which offers a critical overview of environmental anthropology. He is author of the Oxford Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology and has co-written four widely-used anthropology textbooks. He has won several of his university’s top teaching awards, among them Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award (2012), Scholar-Teacher Award (2023), and University Outstanding Advising Award (2023). In 2024, he launched a Comics-Based Research Lab at the University of Vermont.