Cymene Howe is a

cultural anthropologist Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term s ...

and Professor in the Department of Anthropology at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

, Houston, Texas, United States. Her research has focused on environment, inequalities and the anthropology of climate change. She has also been active in multi-modal approaches to knowledge and public anthropology through podcasting, documentary filmmaking and installations, most notably the Okjökull memorial.

Career

Howe has conducted anthropological field work in Nicaragua, Mexico, Iceland and the United States and she has been the recipient of several research grants, including from the National Science Foundation and The Fulbright Program. She has been an invited Society Scholar in the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University and a visiting fellow at Durham University, U.K. From 2015-2018 she served as co-editor of the journal ''

Cultural Anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term ...

'' and was founding faculty of The Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS) at Rice University (now the Center for Environmental Studies). With Dominic Boyer, she carried out one of the first major anthropological studies on renewable

energy transition An energy transition (or energy system transformation) is a major structural change to energy supply and consumption in an energy system. Currently, a transition to sustainable energy is underway to limit climate change. Most of the sustainab ...

. The research took place in Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec, site of the world’s densest concentration of terrestrial wind parks and became the subject of two books, ''Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene'' (Howe) and ''Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene'' (Boyer). Since 2016, she has also co-produced over 200 episodes of the Cultures of Energy podcast with Boyer. From 2016-2018, Howe led research in Iceland for “Melt: The social life of ice at the top of the world,” that centered on the cultural impact of Icelandic glacial loss. Based on that project, with Boyer in 2018, she produced and co-directed a documentary film about Okjökull (Ok glacier) the first major Icelandic glacier to be declassified as a glacier due to global warming. The educational film, ''Not Ok: A little movie about a small glacier at the end of the world'', featured the voice of

Jón Gnarr Jón Gnarr (; born Jón Gunnar Kristinsson on 2 January 1967) is an Icelanders, Icelandic actor, comedian, and politician who served as the Mayor of Reykjavík, Mayor of Reykjavík from 2010 to 2014. He is currently a member of the Althing for ...

as Ok mountain. In August 2019, Howe and Boyer organized the installation of a memorial to

Okjökull Okjökull (, Ok glacier) was a glacier in western Iceland on top of the shield volcano Ok. Ok is located north-east of Reykjavík. The glacier was declared dead in 2014 by glaciologist Oddur Sigurðsson due to its loss of thickness. Ice crysta ...

, the first of Iceland’s major glaciers to be destroyed by climate change. The memorial event was widely covered by the international news media.

Publications

* ''21st Century Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health, Education and Rights'' (

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

2007; coedited with Gilbert Herdt) *''Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua'' (

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 ...

, 2013) * ''Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene'' (

, 2019) *''The Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon'' ( Punctum Books, 2020; coedited with Anand Pandian)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Howe, Cymene Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Cultural anthropologists 21st-century American anthropologists American women anthropologists American documentary film producers American women documentary filmmakers American non-fiction environmental writers American women non-fiction writers Rice University faculty