Shaylih Muehlmann

Assistant Professor
Canada Research Chair in Language, Culture and the Environment

shaylih(at)mail.ubc.ca
Ph. 822-1913 (AnSo 2303)
PhD University of Toronto, 2008

Research Interests

Shaylih Muehlmann’s work examines the intersections between environmental conflict, language and identity, with a specific focus on how social processes coalesce in the construction of inequality and the formation of social subjects. Dr. Muehlmann brings to her scholarship a strong commitment to an ethnographic analysis of contemporary social issues, which in her doctoral work she applied to understanding how the Cucapá, an indigenous group in northern Mexico, have experienced a trans-national water conflict at the end of the Colorado River. She is currently working on a second book manuscript entitled “When I Wear My Alligator Boots” (winner of the 2009 Public Anthropology Publishing Prize and forthcoming with the University of California Press). This project analyzes the effects of the so called “war on drugs” on the rural under-classes of the US-Mexico border region.

Keywords:Environmental politics; linguistic anthropology; drug trafficking; indigeneity; water scarcity; the anthropology of the awkward; US-Mexico borderlands; Mexico.

Selected Publications

Books

In prep.    “When I Wear My Alligator Boots”: Narco-culture in the US-Mexico Borderlands. (University of California Press).

Forthcoming (2013).    Where the River Ends: Contested Indigeneities in the Mexican Colorado Delta. (Duke University Press).

Journal Articles

2012. Rhizomes and other uncountables: the malaise of enumeration in Mexico's Colorado River Delta. American Ethnologist. 39(2):339-353. (view pdf)

2011. Von Humboldt’s parrot and the countdown of last speakers in the Colorado Delta. Language & Communication. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2011.05.001 (view pdf)

2009. How do Real Indians Fish? Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Contested Indigeneities in the Colorado Delta. American Anthropologist. 111(4): 468-479. (view pdf)

2008.“Spread Your Ass Cheeks”: And Other Things that Should not be Said in Indigenous Languages. American Ethnologist. 35(1): 34-48. (view pdf)

Selected Book Chapters

2007.  Defending Diversity: Staking Out a Common, Global Interest. In Duchêne, Alexandre and Monica Heller eds. Discourses of Endangerment: Interest and Ideology in the Defence of Language. New York: Continuum. Pp. 14-34. (view pdf)

Selected Fellowships and Awards

Richard Carly Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, Wenner Gren Foundation

Social Science and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant 2010-2013

Wenner-Gren Postdoctoral Research Award and Osmundsen Initiative Funding, Wenner-Gren Foundation 2010-2012