The Anthropology of Toxicity

While reviewing all the footage with Juan Flores and Galena Park, we were discussing how we wanted to construct our narrative. We came up with ideas like showing scenes of the colorful ships, refineries, and sand dunes while he narrates fun, childhood stories, in order to illustrate that these important, nostalgic moments are inevitably casted […]

While we have thought through form during the semester, maps have emerged as a particularly interesting site to examine how the relationship between toxicity and our ability (or inability) to fully apprehend its scale and effects is deeply intertwined with systems of power. Maps are claims to space and information through processes of abstraction, and […]

On Monday November 18th, Tim, Allison, and I visited Ms. Cecelia at the Young Neighborhood library and talked to her about the CES site a couple blocks away. After our conversation, we poked around the site itself—peeking through the fences, taking photos, getting a feel for the neighborhood adjacent to the site. The CES site […]

The process of creating my “Narrating Body Burden” project was a unique experience for me. While I have experienced writing creative works modeled after other pieces, whether structurally or conceptually, this was the first time that I engaged with the process of modeling a short piece after multiple sources, unspecified within a wide array of […]

I haven’t gotten a chance to re-watch the footage yet, but about a week ago I filmed my interview with Dr. Richard Gibbons, the expert for my digital storytelling project. Dr. Gibbons is the conservation director at the Houston Audubon. We met in a cabin at the Edith Moore Nature Sanctuary, a patch of tree-covered […]

I have conducted plenty of interviews in the past. Most of them were even filmed for video projects. And yet every time I experience the same anxiety and nervousness as I did in those early interviews. It wasn’t surprising, then, that my heart was racing as I stepped into the office of an environmental engineering […]

Last weekend, three of us hopped in a Lyft and drove to Galena Park, a 25 minute trip that took us from one side of Houston’s skyline to the other. We met Juan Flores at a Dairy Queen in the middle of the town, from which he offered to drive us around to multiple sites […]

I like to feel that I’m well-acquainted with my local surroundings, and I’ll often complain to myself about having exhausted my options of directions I could go to find new running routes. This is especially true when I’m in my hometown of Tyler, TX. But even there as in Houston, the city keeps proving me […]

I skim the news; I read the newspaper; I’m on Twitter (thanks to this class!). I know very little about the Opioid crisis, but I know it’s unique that we are holding more than the addicted accountable. The call to go after pharmaceutical companies and doctors who knowingly overprescribe opioids for their own financial benefit is […]

While waiting for more information about our film project, which will be based in the Pleasantville neighboorhood of Houston, I thought it would be useful to try to obtain context for the place. Through my research, it became clear that Pleasantville is a subdivision in the superneighboorhood “Pleasantville Area.” Mapping Short of actually visiting the […]