Studying medicine, environment, and war
Darcie DeAngelo is a medical anthropologist with training in sensory ethnography. Her area of focus is on landmine detection industries in Cambodia, especially those that work with animal detection aids. She is dedicated to engaged studies and has conducted research in diverse fields from public mental health disparities to international policy.
She also produces public humanities exhibitions where she troubles the boundary between art and anthropology. These pieces have been shown in a wide variety of places from academic conferences, art galleries, to experimental public-facing exhibitions. She is currently an assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and the Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah where she is writing her second book, For the Love of Rats, which explores the surprising relationships between rats and humans across time and space. She was previously a member of the policy-scholar team at the Mansfield-Luce Asia Foundation and a former Wilson China Fellow. She was formerly Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Visual Anthropology Review. In 2024, she was awarded a Wenner Gren Fejos Ethnographic Film Fellowship to work on a feature length film on landmine detection rats.
Check out her public talk at SPUI 25 in Amsterdam with her esteemed colleagues on War Pollution from October 2023.
She discusses encounters with militarism, landmine detection, environment, and economy in Cambodia from her fieldwork there since 2010.
Writing
Books
How to Love a Rat: Detecting Bombs in Postwar Cambodia is part of The University of California Press’s competitive Atelier workshop series. It is in production and due out by UC Press in 2024. A grounded, ethnographic book, it investigates human and nonhuman relationships in a postwar ecology. Its stories consider the ways in which former enemies relate to each other, the landmines, and their landmine detection rats as they work together to clear the land from remnants of wars they themselves fought in the past. Pre-order today!
For the Love of Rats is my second forthcoming book under contract with the trade press, Liveright, Inc, a W. W. Norton & Company imprint. The book explores the unexpected kinships and relationships between rats and humans across time and space from plague vectors, contemporary rat hunters, tickle scientists, and landmine detectors.
Peer reviewed articles
(2022) “Your_Wildlife Communities, Yeast Worlds” in Antennae: The journal of art and nature in the Special Issue on “Mycologies.” http://www.antennae.org.uk/
In “Your_Wildlife Communities, Yeast Worlds,” I consider how wild yeast worlds for online communities during the pandemic. Sourdough bread bakers gather together to discuss how their wild yeasts are part of their families. Cultivated by a citizen science lab from the University of North Carolina, these online communities find kinship despite the isolation of social distancing and disease.
(2021) “Minefield Montage” in Antennae: The journal of art and nature in volume 2 of the Special Issue on “Uncontainable Natures.” http://www.antennae.org.uk/
In “Minefield Montage” I discuss montage as a methodology for ethnographic research especially when it comes to engaging with nonhuman interlocutors like rats, bombs, and spirits. The collection contributes to theories of nature as a concept by drawing from genealogies in Southeast Asia.
(2021) “Resilient Relations: Rethinking truth, reconciliation, and justice in Cambodia” for The Journal of Global Buddhism in the Special Issue on “Resilience.” http://www.globalbuddhism.org/jgb/index.php/jgb/article/view/310
In “Resilient Relations” I write about ideas of distributed accountability in Cambodia and the ways in which former enemies mediate their violence pasts on the ground. These mediations follow lay practices of Buddhism and they undermine concepts of justice based on individual-oriented righteousness.
(2021) “Vector” as a Living Lexicon Entry in Environmental Humanities. https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article/13/1/272/173447/Vector
In “Vector” I describe being a vector as a new way to think about being human as well as being related. In light of the pandemic, humans became vectors, unwitting carriers of a deadly disease. I integrate this with theories of relationality from Marilyn Strathern and Roberto Esposito’s immunitas. When people resist relationality, I connect this to fears of being a vector and being subject to vectors. This is due to be published in the May 2021 issue of Duke University Press’s Environmental Humanities.
(2019) “Negative Space: Imaginaries of violence in Cambodia” in Southeast of Now Special Issue on Reframing the Archive pp 47-66. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/737378
In “Negative Space,” I write about spirit tattoos I came across in Cambodia. These spirit tattoos protected former soldiers from explosives in a minefield but also rendered their skin as negative space. The ways these tattoos depicted violence helped me understand negative space as a way to both communicate and imagine violence.
(2018) “Demilitarizing disarmament with mine detection rats” in Culture and Organization Special Issue on The Animal. https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BpNtjar33d5RkB5t4JqC/full
In “Demilitarizing Disarmament,” I write about how ratly attributes of landmine detection animals restructure the organizational ethos of mine action both in and beyond Cambodia.
Popular writing
(2023) “A Model Organism Triptych: A Vacanti Mouse, a Ticklish Rat, and a Pain-Free Mouse” by Darcie DeAngelo, Shimpei Ishiyama, and Julianne Yip. https://niche-canada.org/2023/07/18/a-model-organism-triptych-a-vacanti-mouse-a-ticklish-rat-and-a-pain-free-mouse/
In this speculative nonfiction piece, Shimpei Ishiyama, Julianne Yip, and I co-think with three different kinds of lab rodents.
2021) “Peaceful minefields: Environmental protection or security risk” in New Security Beats: the blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program. https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2021/08/peaceful-minefields-environmental-protection-security-risks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewSecurityBeat+%28New+Security+Beat%29
(2021) “The Walmart Parking Lot: How a symbol of capitalism became an oasis for RV and van dwellers” in Roadtrippers Magazine. https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/walmart-parking-lots-vanlife/
(2020) “Rats help clear minefields in Cambodia - and suspicion of the military” in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/rats-help-clear-minefields-in-cambodia-and-suspicion-of-the-military-148685?fbclid=IwAR3p8Anh8Mx2h_w483zyIGABQq87CCyeGzufse80C2BzXnzcWXO6pXAOgQY
(2020) “How rats are overturning decades of military norms” in SAPIENS https://www.sapiens.org/culture/land-mine-detection-rats/
In this SAPIENS article I present work from my research on how the rats are altering the militarism in landmine detection industries through their cuteness.
Technical writing
(2019) “Learning Modules: Touch, Sight, Hearing, Taste & Smell, and Orchestra of the Senses” for the Human+ Documentary series through Idéacom.
As a sensory ethnographer, I consulted as a content writer for the Human+ documentary series learning modules. The documentaries depict human sensoria and how technologies have altered them: https://humanplus.info/en/#Community
