Elizabeth R. Johnson
elizabethrjohnson9@gmail.com | elizabethrjohnson.org | geocritique.org | @erandolphj
Education
Ph.D., Geography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, August 2011
M.A., Geography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, March 2007.
B.A., Geography from the Environmental School, Clark University, Worcester, MA, June 2001. Cum Laude, High Honors in Geography
Professional Experience
Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Department of Geography
Durham University, UK, 2017-Present.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities, Environmental Studies Program
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, 2015-2017
Research Fellow, College of Life & Environmental Sciences
Science, Technology, and Culture Research Cluster & Department of Geography
University of Exeter, UK, 2013-2015.
A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, under the theme of “Life”
Center for the Humanities & Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011-2013
Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant, Department of Geography
University of Minnesota, 2004-2007, 2008-2009
United States Peace Corp Environmental Education Volunteer, Chongqing
Institute of Technology, Chongqing, China, 2001-2003
Publications
REFEREED PUBLICATIONS
Johnson, E. 2017. “At the Limits of Species Being: Sensing the Anthropocene,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 116 (2).
Johnson, E and A. Schrader. “Unsettling Life, Death, and Killability: an interdisciplinary discussion” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, forthcoming.
Johnson, E. “Reconsidering Mimesis: Freedom and Acquiescence in the Anthropocene,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(2).
Johnson, E. “Unsettling Life in the Law: Living with and as Jellyfish.” In Irus Braverman, ed., Animals, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities, London: Routledge.
Johnson, E. 2015. “Of Lobsters, Laboratories, and War: Animal Studies and Spaces of Encounter” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33 (2).
Johnson, E. and J. Goldstein. “Biomimetic Future: Enclosing a more-than-human intellect,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105 (2).
Goldstein, J. and Johnson, E. 2015. “Biomimicry: New Natures for and Against Capital,” Theory, Culture, Society, 32 (1).
Johnson, E. and H. Morehouse. 2014. “Introduction: Toward a Politics for the Anthropocene,” a forum special issue on the Politics of the Anthropocene, E. Johnson and H. Morehouse, eds., Progress In Human Geography, 38 (3): 439-441.
Johnson, E. 2010. “Reinventing Biological Life, Reinventing ‘The Human,’” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 10(3): 180.
Meyerhoff, E., E. Johnson, and B. Braun. 2011. “Time and the University,” Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 10 (3): 483-507.
BOOK REVIEWS
Meyerhoff, E. and E. Johnson. 2009. “Charting the Terrain of Struggle in the Global University,” book review of The Edu-factory Collective, eds. (2009) Toward a Global Autonomous University. Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory, New York: Autonomedia, in Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 9(4).
NON-ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
Contributing editor, Rare Earth Catalogue: Reckoning with the Anthropocene, Brooklyn, NY: Occuprint.
Johnson, E. “Frederic Neyrat: The Political Unconscious of the Anthropocene, an Interview with Elizabeth R. Johnson,” Society and Space Blog, http://societyandspace.com/material/interviews/neyrat-by-johnson/.
Johnson, Elizabeth, Jessi Lehman, Harlan Morehouse, and Sara Nelson. 2013. “400ppm: Critical Climate Change Scholarship,” part of the Society and Space blog forum, “400ppm: Exit Holocene, Enter Anthropocene,” http://societyandspace.com/material/elizabeth-johnson-jessi-lehman-harlan-morehouse-sara-nelson-400ppm-critical-climate-change-scholarship/
Fellowships, Honors, & Awards
Fisher Center Faculty Fellow, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, on the theme of “Gender, Climate Change, and the Anthropocene” 2015
Humanities and Social Science Strategy Development Grant, University of Exeter, for “Unsettling Life/Death in Technoscientific Practices with Marine Invertebrates”, with Astrid Schrader, 2014
Human-Animal Studies Fellowship, Animal-Society Institute, Wesleyan University, Summer 2011
Participant, Macaulay Honors College Faculty Seminar, “From Bestiary to Bioculture: Constituting the Human,” 2010-2011
Mark and Judy Yudof Fellowship in Science Policy and Ethics, University of Minnesota, 2009-2010
Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences Fellowship, University of Minnesota, 2009
Participant, Center for Place, Culture, and Politics Annual Seminar, “Geopolitics and Insecurity,” The Graduate Center CUNY, 2007-2008
Presidential Fellowship, The Graduate Center CUNY; 2007-2012, declined 2009-2012
Graduate Research Partnership Program (with Professor Arun Saldanha), Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, 2007
Foreign Language Area Scholarship (Mandarin Chinese), U.S. Department of Education in association with University of Minnesota, 2006-2007
Red Pocket and Hsiao Scholarships, China Center, University of Minnesota, 2005
Honorable Mention, Geography, National Science Foundation – Graduate Research Fellowship Program, 2005
Invited Lectures
2015. “Re-placing Labor in the Engineered Ecologies of the Anthropocene,” Engineered Worlds, a workshop at The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago, October 1-3.
2015. “Biomimetic science and the politics of fabricating ‘pluripotent’ life,” Domestication and Fabrication of life, Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale Pépinière Interdisciplinaire CNRS-PSL, College de France, March 24.
2015. “Cartographies of the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the bio/geo divide,” Life After the Anthropocene, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, Oxford University, February 25.
2014. “Between Apocalypse and Eternity: Legislating the Life Cycles of Jellyfish” More-than-Human Legalities: Advocating an Animal Turn in Law, SUNY Buffalo Law School, September 11-12.
2014. “Engineering Bees: Reconsidering Human and Nonhuman Labor,” Department of Geography, University of Washington, April 25.
2014. “Unsettling Life/Death: Living with and as Jellyfish,” Biological Futures in a Globalized World, Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, April 24.
2013. “Reproducing Bees: Value and Bricolage in Biomimetic Practice,” Insects and Biotechnologies Workshop, Institute for Science Innovation and Society, University of Oxford, December 11.
2011. “On Friendship and Revolutionary Time,” So-Called Marginalia event, Bluestockings Bookstore, New York City, June 10.
Campus Talks
2014. “Time and the University,” University College London–Exeter Workshop on Science and Technology Studies, University of Exeter, February 21.
2014. “For the Love of Jellyfish,” University of Exeter, Department of Geography Seminar, February 5.
2013. “Mimetic Revolutions in the Biopolitical Machine,” Biopolitics: Life in the Past and Present, Center for the Humanities, UW – Madison, May 3-4.
2013. “The Promise of a New Humanity: Imagining Bio-Mimetic Futures,” Friday Lunch Lecture Series, Center for the Humanities, UW – Madison, March 1.
2012. “Life, Limits, and Enclosure: The Production of Biomimetic Science,” Yi-Fu Tuan Lecture Series, Department of Geography, UW – Madison, November 16.
2011. “The Purpose of RoboBees: Biomimicry and Value,” Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, UW-Madison, November 17.
2007. “Revealing the West as a Land of Gold? The problem of tourism development and biodiversity conservation in Western Sichuan, China,” Asian Literatures, Cultures, and Media Workshop, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, March 22.
Conference Activity
PAPER PRESENTATIONS
2016 “Bioaccumulation in the Anthropocene and the Limits of Labor,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, March 29-April 4.
2015 “The Imperceptibility of Jellyfish: Unknowability in the Anthropocene,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Chicago, IL April 21-25.
2014 “Thinking Im/mortality with Jellyfish,” Im/mortality and In/finitude Symposium, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, December 2-5.
2014 “Deciding on the Uncompanionable: On Killing Bedbugs,” British Animal Studies Network Annual Conference, University of Exeter, November 14-15.
2014 “Intimacy and Finitude: Living with and As Jellyfish,” Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Turin, Italy, June 3-6.
2014 “Beyond Productions of Ignorance: Agnotologies of the Anthropocene,” Anthropocene Feminisms Conference, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, April 10-12.
2013 “Biomimicries For and Against Capitalism,” with Jesse Goldstein, Critical Climate Change Workshop, University of Minnesota and Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 2013.
2012 “Revisiting more-than-human Encounters: The ethics and politics of living and
dying lobsters,” Annual Conference on Critical Geography, Chapel Hill, NC, November 2012.
2012 “The Political Promise of Ontology,” Millennium Conference: Materialism and World Politics, London, UK, with Garnet Kindervater, October 2012.
2012 “Littoral Bodies: Beyond the Boundaries of Geopolitical Territory” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, New York, NY, March 2012.
2011 “Reproducing Bees? Bricolage and the Value of Biomimicry” Human-Animal Studies Conference, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, July 2011.
2011 “For the Love of Jellyfish: Reflections on Labor, Affect, and Biological Politics” Constituting the Human, Macaulay Honors College, CUNY, New York, NY, April 2011.
2010 “Politicizing the Banality of RoboBees, or: Musing on Technoscience and the Quotidian,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Seattle, WA, April 2010.
2010 “Reverse Engineering Evolution: Considering jellyfish, oilfields, and other stories of the material present” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington, D.C, April 2010.
2009 “Bio-Machinic Innovation: Of technological materials, imagined futures and contemporary conflict” Annual Meeting of the Association of American Anthropologists, Philadelphia, PA, November 2009.
2008 “Consider the Lobster: From environmentalism to militarism” The State of Things Conference, University of Leicester, UK, May 2008.
2008 “Geopolitics, Bio-Revolutions, and the Emerging Science of Defense” Annual Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, London, UK, August 2008.
2007 “Engineering (In)Secure Bodies: Biological productions of national defense” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Boston, MA, April 2007.
2007 “Combat Zoology: Engineering insecurity and the nation-state” Project Biocultures: Science, Technology, Culture, Humanity, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, November 2007.
2007 “Is Domestic Tourism a Domestic Phenomenon? Development, the state, and global connections in the mountains of Western Sichuan, China” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, CA, April 2007.
PANEL PRESENTATIONS
2015 Queer Data: Desire and Tension in the Production of Media Ecologies, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Chicago, IL, April 21-25.
2010 The Ontology of Revolution: Negri and Geography (Re)considered, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Washington, DC, April 14-18.
2009 Geopolitics and Insecurity, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Las Vegas, NV, March 22-27.
2008 Susan Hanson’s 45 years in geography: Feminist ideas change the world, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Boston, MA, April 15-19.
Teaching Experience
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Environmental Studies Program
Topics in Environmental Studies: Global Climate Change (Fall 2015, 2016; Spring 2016)
Eating, Killing, Loving: Our Lives with Animals (Spring 2016)
Human Values and the Environment (Fall 2015, 2016; Spring 2016)
Radical Environmentalisms (Fall 2016)
Senior Integrated Experience: Local Animal Agriculture (Fall 2015)
University of Exeter, Department of Geography
Geographies of Science, Politics and Publics (Spring 2015), co-taught with Gail Davies
Geographies of Life (Fall 2014), co-taught with the Nature, Materialities, and Biopolitics Research Group
University of Wisconsin – Madison, Department of Geography
Introduction to People and Resources (Spring 2012, 2013)
Special Topics Seminar: Emergent Geographies of Techno-Biological Change (Fall 2011, 2012)
LaGuardia Community College, Department of Social Sciences
Introduction to World Geography: America in the World (Fall 2010, Spring 2011)
University of Minnesota, Department of Geography
Political Ecology of North America (Summer 2010)
Service
Academic Service
2014 Discussant, “Ignorance and Intervention,” Knowledge/Value Workshop: Dark Data, University of Exeter, December 15-16.
2014 Paper Session Co-Organizer with Astrid Schrader, “Unsettling Life and Death” Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Turin, Italy, June 3-6.
2014 Paper Session Co-Organizer with Harlan Morehouse and Rory Rowan, “Geophilosophy and the Geo-Social,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Tampa, FL, April 19-25.
2013 Paper Session Co-Organizer with Harlan Morehouse, “Revisiting the Anthropocene, Rethinking Anthropos,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 9-13.
2013 Panel Session Co-Organizer with Katharine Kindervater, “Michel Serres and Geography,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 9-13.
2013 Discussant, “Animating Geopolitics,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, CA, April 9-13.
2012 Paper Session Co-Organizer with Garnet Kindervater, “The Political Promises of Ontology,” Millennium Conference: Materialism and World Politics, London School of Economics, UK, October 19-20.
2012 Discussant, “Theorizing the Geographies of Food: New Directions and Interventions for Alternative Food Praxis,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, New York, NY, February 24-28.
2010 Panel Co-Organizer with Nathan Clough, “The Ontology of Revolution: Negri and Geography (Re)considered,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., April 14-18.
2009 Panel Organizer, “Geopolitics and Insecurity,” Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV, March 22-27.
2008 Paper Session Co-organizer with Bruce Braun, “Experimentation and Engineering: Between the Aleatory and the Processual,” Association of American Geographers, Boston, MA, April 15-19.
University Service
2013 Workshop Co-Organizer with Stephen Hinchliffe and Astrid Schrader, “Science Culture Futures,” a symposium at the University of Exeter, December.
2010 Conference Co-Organizer, “Beneath the University, the Commons,” University of Minnesota and the West Bank Social Center, April 8-11.
2009 Conference Co-Organizer, “Re-Working the University: Visions, Strategies, Demands,” University of Minnesota, April 24-26.
2008-2011 Graduate Student Workers United, Founding Member, UMN
Departmental Service
University of Exeter, Department of Geography
Nature, Materialities and Biopolitics (NAMBIO) Research Group, Member, 2013-present
University of Wisconsin – Madison, Department of Geography
Women in Geography, Member, 2011-2013
City University of New York – Graduate Center, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Spacetime Research Collective, Founding Member, 2008-present
University of Minnesota – Department of Geography
Working Group for Global Political Scholarship, Member, 2006-2009
Supporting Women in Geography, Member, 2004-2011
Coffee Hour Committee (coordinating committee for weekly speaker series), 2004-2009
Journal Peer Review
Cultural Geography 2016
Theory, Culture, Society 2016
Science, Technology, and Human Values, 2015
Geographical Research, 2015
Area, 2014
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2014, 2011
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2014
Geoforum, 2013
Social Studies of Science, 2013
Angelaki, 2012
Popular Media
2013 Stack-Whitney, K. “Ground Squirrels, the DoD, and the Death of Public Science: An Interview with Dr. Elizabeth Johnson,” Perpetual Notion Machine, WORT 89.9 FM, Madison, WI. Aired August 15, 2013.
2013 Beecham, Gwendolyn. 2013. “The Academic Feminist: Putting an Economic Value on Life – A Conversation with Elizabeth Johnson,” Feministing Online, January 17, http://feministing.com/2013/01/17/the-academic-feminist-putting-an-economic-value-on-life-a-conversation-with-elizabeth-johnson/
Professional Associations
Member, European Society for Literature, Science and Arts (SLSA – EU)
Member, Association of American Geographers
Member, American Anthropological Association
Member, Political Geography Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
Member, Cultural Ecology Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers
Member, Royal Geographic Society with Institute for British Geographers