Interview conducted by Sammi Mason
Kirstin Erickson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and has served as the Director of the Fulbright College Honors Program since 2017. She is an affiliated faculty member with the department of Latin American and Latino Studies and previously served as the Director of Latin American and Latino Studies for four years. She began working at the University of Arkansas in 2001.
The comments in this piece were edited for length and clarity.
What is your current topic of research? What projects are you currently working on? What topics do you specialize in that you’d be able to help students with?
I have written one book thus far. It’s called Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace: the Everyday Production of Ethnic Identity. The Yaquis are an indigenous nation in Northern Mexico. My current work is in Northern New Mexico, so I’ve worked on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, which I feel is important because the border is a social and historical construct that we need to examine in a critical light. In Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace, my focus was on narrative and identity. I looked at the ways in which narratives of Yaqui identity are deeply emplaced and spatialized; their narratives have a lot to do with movement, exile, return, diaspora, displacement, and the sacredness of their landscape.
Now I’m working in northern New Mexico, not with a Native American community, but in a series of historically Hispano communities. And they intentionally use the word Hispano, not Hispanic, which is a census term. They are the descendants, for the most part, of Hispano settlers that came in the colonial era in the late 1500s. I use material and expressive culture to examine the ways in which cultural memory is cultivated. I deploy what might be called a “critical heritage studies” approach. My big question is why is it that material culture is so foregrounded in northern New Mexico? The folk arts are richly abundant, the vernacular art scene is very high-end, the artistry is exquisite, a lot of non-Hispanos go there to consume art…it’s really well-known. Local people continually highlight and return to these discourses of the materiality of their world. And so I look at the ways in which that’s tied to cultural memory in the area.
And it’s a vibrant community, it’s an amazing place to study. Everybody should visit northern New Mexico, it’s the best place in the world.
What is your favorite thing to teach? It can be a book, subject, concept, class—whatever you enjoy most about teaching?
I’m just going to say for now, the thing that comes to mind is my class on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It’s called Identity and Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. That said, I have to admit that almost every time I finish the semester I end up saying, “that was my favorite class!” I teach religion in Latin America, I teach a class on museums and material culture, I teach performance theory…I love all of them, so it’s hard to pick a favorite.
In my Borderlands class I use a set of texts and ethnographies that are really compelling to me. And the key text that I will absolutely always teach is Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera. It’s a book that basically revolutionized the way feminist theory works in the United States, and has had global impacts on feminist and queer theory. Anzaldúa’s theory is very situated as a product of the borderlands. She looks at the ways in which certain geographical, economic, historical, political experiences ramify to impact one’s subjectivity, and she demonstrates that you can’t separate those things. Students always have their minds blown wide open by that book.
I feel like the border is really important to teach about because we have all these news media and political stereotypes about the border. The border is such a vibrant, beautiful place. It’s my favorite place in the world. I think everyone should experience it and go there to break down their own stereotypes of what is going on there and really understand what people are dealing with. People have cultural logics that really enable them to thrive and have agency and move forward in a place that’s often viewed as a margin. But it’s their center, right? It’s their world. I study the U.S.-Mexico border, but there are many borders around the world, and the theory we use in that class is deployable in many circumstances. The U.S.-Mexico border is not entirely “Mexico” and it’s not entirely the “U.S.” —it’s something else. It’s a third space.
Give me your elevator pitch for why students should study anthropology.
To me, anthropology is here to make you uncomfortable with your world as you’ve lived it up until the present. I don’t know if that’s exactly the right way to say it, but to question your comfort zone. And cultural anthropology provides students and scholars with a way of viewing the world through the eyes of others. We often talk about anthropology as “cultural critique,” and what we’re talking about is using other cultures’ lifeways and understandings and perspectives to reflect back on ourselves too, and to say “Why do I think my way is right? Why did I grow up thinking that this way to believe or this way to have a family or this way to organize a government is the right way?” There are so many ways of being human.
At the same time there are some human universals that we find in anthropology too – balancing that diversity of perspectives with the fact that we’re all human beings, we all have emotion, we all have kinship systems, we all have cosmologies that we use to interpret the universe around us. And so, to also see that all of these ways of living are equally valid and should be judged in their own unique contexts —that’s what we call cultural relativism, right, this rather non-judgmental approach to the practices and lifeways of others.
That said—I know this is longer than an elevator speech—anthropology is also really great at looking at social justice and injustice and human rights. So, it’s not value-free. It’s contextual and deeply historicized, but it’s not value-free. We tackle the issues of human trafficking, economic inequities or inequalities, and political repression, in a way that tries to give students a holistic approach to those problems.
What if a student doesn’t want to be uncomfortable in their own world? How can you push students out of their comfort zone to make them embrace anthropology?
By the time students get to me—I teach mostly juniors and seniors and grad students — they’re self-selecting. But I used to teach intro, and what I would try to do in intro classes was to choose texts that were going to really resonate with students, and open them gradually to new ideas and a willingness to step outside of their comfort zones.
But I think it’s my job to make them uncomfortable. Not in a bad way, just to push them to be really critical, and I think that’s what anthropology gives students: one, the ability to communicate very well, and two, the ability to be critical thinkers. If they haven’t learned to be a critical thinker by the end of the class, then I have failed them. I’m there to say “okay, you have a certain way of doing things. Look at it critically, think about it: ‘Is that right? Is that ok? Is that equitable? Is that just? Are there perhaps some other answers to these questions that you always thought you had the answers to?’”
What is your favorite thing to do off-campus?
Sing. I sing in the choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. I used to sing in the Master Chorale here on campus, but I just haven’t had time to do that in the past few years. I love to sing. I feel so enlivened when I’m singing. It takes my mind off of everything else, because I have to focus so hard on reading the music. My daughters both sing, and my older daughter is actually a music major where she’s attending college, and so we have that in common. I love sharing that with them.
I also love to do yoga and to take long walks with my dog Zola in my neighborhood. I enjoy cooking and making good food for my family and for other people, and I enjoy trying new restaurants. And I love reading novels. I always have a novel (or two, or three) on my bedside table.
What is the restaurant you’ve tried recently that you’re most excited about?
Well I’m most excited about The Preacher’s Son. I’m always willing to drive to Bentonville to go to The Preacher’s Son, it’s amazing. We have fantastic restaurants in Fayetteville too. Mockingbird Kitchen is our go-to. We go there all the time and we absolutely love it.
What is the best book you’ve read in the last year?
This is a hard one. There are so many good books, but I just finished reading Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. This book is going to revolutionize how I teach my Indigenous Peoples of North America class. You have to read this book. It’s poetry—I don’t usually read poetry, actually. I have poetry around my house, and I enjoy poetry, but it’s not my go-to. I usually read novels.
Layli Long Soldier is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation and she uses language to question history. The overarching concept of Whereas is that in 2009 President Obama read the official congressional apology to the Native Americans. She uses that congressional statement and interjects a Lakota perspective of history to question it. She takes issue with the “hollowness” of the apology. That no Native American leaders were invited to hear it delivered, that it had these platitudes about how “both sides” were injured, but doesn’t truly examine the history of genocide against Native American peoples. And she uses a series of “Whereas” statements to dismantle this apology. She uses poetic language to question it. She uses poetry as a means to deploy justice and provide context. It’s a deeply anthropological work, too, which is why I enjoyed it. This book is one that will haunt me, that will continue to work on my mind.
Our last question is what is the best piece of advice you can give current honors students?
I’ve thought a lot about this because there is a lot of advice I’d like to share. And I tend to be very wordy, so I chose some key words and phrases. The first key phrase is: Be dedicated. To your craft, your art, your scholarship, your mission here as a student. You have these four years and it’s a treasure, and they go fast. It’s the only time in your life that your main job is just to study. You’ll never have that chance again unless you go to grad school. And I say “dedicated” rather than “diligent” intentionally, because to me dedication means that you’re doing it for yourself, to better yourself. “Diligent” implies to me that you are doing it because someone told you to, you’re doing it for others. So be dedicated.
Second, cultivate resilience in yourself. Everybody fails at something, everybody has a bump or maybe more, a diversion in the road, in their path forward, and the unexpected happens. Even if you don’t fail at something outright, people will fail you, and you need to be able to spring back. Those who succeed in the end are those who are able to make their way back, and to have inner strength, and to say “ok, this happened, I’m going to overcome it, I’m going to make it happen, I’m going to move on.” Those who let it paralyze them won’t be able to succeed. You will all face challenges, that’s what college is about. It can seem overwhelming at times, but I would say be resilient, that’s the best skill.
The third and final keyword that I’ll say is be joyful in what you’re doing. It doesn’t always mean you’ll be happy. I see a difference between happiness and joy. I had a professor in graduate school who always used to say: “you have to have the fire in your belly.” I love that phrase. Have that internal passion and drive. And if you don’t like what you’re doing, make a change. Listen to yourself. Be self-aware and be willing to take chances and risks and make a change if you want to. Ultimately, it’s your life, and being an honors student is a privilege and it’s a wonderful thing, but it takes a lot of hard work and you have to love what you’re doing. Discover and foster joy in your daily existence as well as in your long-term trajectory.
