Monogamy Undone: Review of A. Willey’s Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology (2016)

Rick W. A. Smith is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and has recently accepted a Neukom Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dartmouth College starting in the Fall of 2017. Applying recent developments in queer and feminist materialisms to the study of human population genetics and epigenetics, Rick’s research explores the entanglements of matter and meaning – the ways in which social, political, and biological forces interact to shape human bodies past and present. Rick’s dissertation project is concerned with the materialities of oppression. He has developed new methodologies which he is using to reconstruct the DNA-level effects of class, gender, and ethnic violence in the ancient Huari civilization of Peru. His research also includes the development of feminist, queer, and decolonial genomics, which focuses on the social, political, ideological, and historical factors that have influenced the biopolitics of indigenous and white trash belonging in the United States.