Georgia Ennis

Field Notes: Rainforest Radio | UAPress Rainforest Radio follows Amazonian Kichwa media through production, reception, and circulation to understand the role of media in language reclamation.

I recently discussed the fieldwork behind my book for Field Notes with the University of Arizona Press uapress.arizona.edu/2025/05/fiel...

Georgia Ennis on her book, Rainforest Radio Bernard Perley: You mention how radio as a medium introduced new domains for language use, but also as an affirmation of traditional forms of language use.  The value of radio is in its abilit…

It was an honor to be in conversation with Bernard Perley about my new book, Rainforest Radio for the CaMP Anthropology blog

the media seem to be the most obsessed with actions against elite schools - meanwhile the DOE has quietly opened investigations into smaller schools too

Trump and many GOP lawmakers want to end all funding for NPR and PBS − unraveling a US public media system that took a century to build The precursors of today’s public media programs consisted of professors giving lectures about history and finance.

Wrote a historical piece that defends funding for NPR and PBS. Whatever their problems, we cannot let Fox News become our default "public sphere." There needs to be alternatives, including imperfect yet aspirational ones.

“These well intentioned revitalization strategies have contradictorily imposed some of the same oppressive hierarchies between written and spoken languages that activists sought to overcome." 48:1 pg 116 @georgiaennis.bsky.social

I translated one of my articles into Spanish. I personally find it important so that people in Ecuador can actually read my research, and I have talked with people who appreciate that access. I would rather publish only in Spanish but my language skills are not good enough for that

A hand holds the book Rainforest Radio: Language Reclamation and Community Media in the Ecuadorian Amazon in front of a book shelf. The book cover features a photo of a handmade drum hanging from a bamboo wall, surrounded by baskets, plants, and wooden benches

Rainforest Radio officially drops April 22 but @heatherfro.bsky.social saw it irl first. Can’t wait to hold it in my own hands soon

Excited for the special issue of @aicrjournal.bsky.social edited by Erin Debenport and @georgiaennis.bsky.social:

Language Lives in Unexpected Places

A great set of articles and a poem by Jenny Davis and commentary by Leighton Peterson and myself

escholarship.org/uc/aicrj/48/1

Even as language rights are being restricted, it’s important to remember all of the ways that Indigenous languages have continued to flourish in the face of oppression

The front cover of American Indian Culture and Research Journal, volume 48, number 1, 2025. The cover is black with a three panel black and white cartoon by Bernard Perley.

Back cover of American Indian Culture and Research journal with table of contents

Our special issue of American Indian Culture and Research Journal “Language Lives in Unexpected Places,” co-edited with Erin Debenport, is a reminder of the progress made and how far we have to go in the pursuit of language rights and justice escholarship.org/uc/aicrj/48/1

“Official” language policies are always statements about so much more than language

Back to reading Black Reconstruction. But two things: 1.) Today is W.E.B. Du Bois's birthday! and 2.) Everyone should check out Zinn Education Project's valuable report about how the state fails to teach complex histories of Reconstruction: www.teachreconstructionreport.org

Rainforest Radio explores ecologies of language, media, and environment in the Western Amazon to understand the use of community media for regional language reclamation

My book is coming out in April! You can pre-order Rainforest Radio and get 30% off with the code AZFLR

uapress.arizona.edu/book/rainfor...

I have always believed that at its best, anthropology seeks to make the world safer for human difference. I’ll keep teaching from this perspective until I’m forced to stop

The stakes of teaching about race and gender from an anthropological perspective have never felt higher. After our recent classes, some of my students thanked me for talking about redlining (something few had heard of before) and the widespread existence of non-binary gender roles around the world

Has anyone used #MaxQDA to research Instagram and other multimodal platforms? Suggestions on other tools to use for qualitative social media research?

I’m starting some new work on Amazonian social media activism and I’m looking for strategies to catalog and code images, videos, and text

A nude figure lies against a rocky and mossy hillside, supine on a patch of dirt between boulders. The figure is obscured by white wildflowers that appear to grow densely all around the figure, springing up between the legs, between the arms and torso, etc.

The earth of a shoreline is hollowed out in the abstract-but-recognizable shape of a human figure, with arms raised alongside the figure’s head. The lower half of the figure is covered with vivid red powdered pigment. The rest of the scene is gray, white, green, and desolate.

Good news: Carl Andre died!

Celebrate by sharing the important, beautiful work of Ana Mendieta, the woman he murdered. She is best known for her earth/body works, in which she used her body, and later the absence of the body, within landscapes.

One day after the White House environmental justice website went dark, please join me in welcoming the father of environmental justice to Bluesky. Yes, sociologist @drrobertbullard.bsky.social literally defined the concept in his 1990 book, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality.

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Yep, my intro class gets a template that helps them develop their key points from the chapter. My upper level classes get a basic set of requirements they should meet (e.g. a summary that covers the who, what, and why of the reading and 4-5 discussion questions)

In the days after Helene, Asheville was continually described as a place that showed the illusions of ‘climate havens.’ But thinking of WNC as a climate haven required the same kind forgetting (of the 1916 flood, of flooding in 2004, and 2021) that is driving exposure to the fires in LA.

Same! I’d love a space for multimodal posting that isn’t constrained by an algorithm that runs on advertising and controversy

I still lecture on the material, but providing students with more ownership of their learning made a real difference in the class. I’m adding this assignment into my upper level courses this semester.

Rather than asking for discussion posts they can game with AI, asking them to outline and present on the chapter in a dynamic way encouraged them to actually interact with the course material.

Students actually read the textbook and talked with their classmates about the material. They asked more questions in lectures. And I noticed an increase in their quiz scores. Many of them highlighted it as their favorite part of class in reviews.

Struggling to get your students to read? Try “roulette” style discussion leadership or presentations. I introduced short group presentations into my Intro to Cultural Anthro class last semester. Groups had 20 minutes to prepare and were randomly selected to present. The results were amazing.

Just want to shout out the Demystifying Language Project. I’m working on my syllabus for Intro to Ling Anth and @kirbyconrod.bsky.social's article is the perfect complement to our discussion of grammar and syntax, connecting the structure of language to ongoing social change

Tracking the Licensing of Scholarly Content to LLMs ITHAKA has developed a tool that tracks publisher deals to license scholarly content for use as training data by LLMs

"In recent months, several publishers have announced that they are licensing their scholarly content for use as training data for LLMs... To understand the dynamics around this fast-developing market, [Ithaka is] launching a tracker of these licensing deals."