“I have come to describe what I do in this space as creative stumbling.”
We are over the moon to welcome Professor Luis Vivanco to campus to present a research conversation titled, “Adventures in Stumbling.” Professor Vivanco describes this lecture, which focuses on culture, comics and emerging modes of inquiry in anthropology (and social science writ large) as follows:
“During the last few 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 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, while embracing the generative intellectual and creative possibilities that exist in unfamiliar and bewildering spaces, moments, and processes.”
You can learn more about this innovative work, and Professor Vivanco, here.
Professor Vivanco is is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at UVM. 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 writing his tenth book, on environmental anthropology. He is also author of the Oxford Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology and has co-written four widely-used anthropology textbooks. He has won University of Vermont’s Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award (2012); Scholar-Teacher Award (2023), and the University Outstanding Advising Award (2023).