• history of capitalism
• traditional leatherworking // bone needles
• healthcare
• history and philosophy of science
• Haitian Creole

history of capitalism

i took a history of capitalism class in high school, and the topic has stuck with me in various forms since. very slowly, i’ve been working my way through a smattering of books and articles on (in) what is a vast and still-growing field.

most particularly, i’m interested in the history and evolution of neoliberalism. i can’t offer a good definition here because there is no agreement from scholars as to what it actually is, but that lexical ambiguity is partly what makes it interesting to me.

recently, i’ve been parsing such debates (on a meta-disciplinary level) through the lens of racial capitalism. as i read Cedric Robinson’s “Black Marxism,” it piqued my interest in applying this lens not only to neoliberalism itself, but also to the scholarship of neoliberalism, and the ways in which scholarly discourse on neoliberalism seems to fall prey to the very system it aims to critique, especially with respect to race.

traditional leatherworking // bone needles

traditional types of tanning and leatherworking have interested me for a long time—particularly Native American practices for making and working with buckskin. i’m hoping, one day, to tan my own (i recieved an informal offer from a grad student in the archeology department to do exactly that…), but in the meantime i’ll satisfy myself by working with it.

healthcare

the U.S. healthcare system is an enduring interest of mine, and i’ve gone through many phases. it started from the historical perspective, looking at Revolutionary/Early Republic America and the work of Benjamin Rush, and later the development and rise of the teaching hospital. i then moved on to look at healthcare from the sociological/anthropological perspective, before coming to an array of policy interests, including GLP-1 compounding and the Inflation Reduction Act. most recently i’ve been lazily tracking the furor around CSRs/APTCs, the Trump administration’s proposed changes to ACA marketplace plans (e.g. expanding catastrophic coverage), and states’ responses.

you can read the thoughts i occasionally write down on my blog.

history and philosophy of science

i have a vague interest in the history and philosophy of science, which ebbs and flows mostly in relation to how pertinent it is to my study of the above. i have a cursory knowledge of Merton, Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Lauden, Feyerabend, and others, but deep knowledge of none.

i’m most engaged with the (fraught) history of statistics and statistical methods, tracing the idea of the (statistical) norm and normalcy, the work of Adolphe Quetelet, Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, etc.

though i mostly approach this study of quantitative methods critically (i feel we know their benefits all too well, thanks to their incessant promotion), there are also moments that i see positive, generative paths within it; mostly recently, that has come from Conwell and Loughran’s detailing of DuBois’ quantitative methods.

Haitian Creole

in high school, i took Spanish with the logic that it is the most useful (viz., most geographically ubiquitous) language to learn. now, i’ve begun learning Haitian Creole (kreyòl) purely for my own enjoyment—because, realistically, i will never actually use it (though this does take off the pressure of having to learn it quickly or well).

this is partly inspired from reading Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s book Silencing the Past. a Haitian anthropologist, he also authored the first published nonfiction book in Haitian Creole.