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Steven Black

Steven Black

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Steven Black

Professor    Anthropology

Overview

Education

Ph.D., 2010, Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., 2004, Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., 2002, Ethnomusicology with an emphasis in Jazz Studies, University of California, los Angeles
B.A., 2002, Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles

Specializations

Linguistic anthropology, medical anthropology and global health.

Biography

Dr. Black’s research examines global and planetary health through the lens of linguistic and communicative practices. His work connects to the anthropological study of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, morality and ethics, globalization, neoliberalism, global health, and international aid. In his professional activities, Dr. Black emphasizes anthropological ethics and engaged scholarship, working in dialogue with public discourses, public policies, and the concerns and goals of research participants. He has studied performance and HIV/AIDS support/ activism in South Africa (leading to publication of a book, titled Speech and Song at the Margins of Global Health), improvisation (both verbal and musical), and the communicative practices of global health professionals. He is currently writing a book about storytelling and the constitution of scientific, ethical, and monetary value in global health. He also recently led a collaborative project on planetary health and cultural sustainability in Boruca Indigenous territory in Costa Rica funded by National Geographic.

Dr. Black is currently the treasurer for the Society for Medical Anthropology. He is also on the advisory board for the journal, Anthropology and Humanism, and he is a senior editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, At GSU, he is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Anthropology.

Dr. Black is also a musician, with a background as a jazz saxophonist, a B.A. in ethnomusicology, and an interest in piano and guitar. He speaks English, isiZulu (a.k.a. Zulu) and Spanish. In addition to playing music, spending time with his family, and doing carpentry work, Dr. Black enjoys the outdoors in urban, rural and park forms, and he has hiked, run, and climbed through these spaces on five continents.

Publications

Publications

Books

  • 2019    Speech and Song at the Margins of Global Health: Zulu Tradition, HIV Stigma, and AIDS Activism in South Africa. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Special issues of journals

  • 2020    Black, Steven P. and Lynnette Arnold (eds.). “Communicating Care.” A special issue of Medical Anthropology 39(7).

Articles and Book Chapters

  • To appear. Black, Steven P., Carlos Faerron Guzmán, Carolina Bolaños Palmieri, Cassandra Eng, and Yanet Fundora. American Anthropologist. “Boundary Objects and Collaboration in a Planetary Health Project in Boruca Indigenous Territory, Costa Rica.” Part of a Vital Topics Forum, Kate Riley (ed.), “Language and Planetary Health.”
  • 2024    Black, Steven P., Carolina Bolaños Palmieri, Cassandra Eng, Carlos Faerron Guzmán, Yanet Fundora, Leila Garro Valverde, and Jose Carlos Morales Morales. “Autonomy, Land Stewardship, and Indigenous Emancipatory Praxis through Legislative Activism in Costa Rica and Multilateral Institutions.” In Carolyn Smith-Morris and César Abadia (eds.), Countering Modernity – Indigenous Communalism: Communal and Cooperative Models from Indigenous Peoples. New York: Routledge.
  • 2023    Norgaard, Martin, Matthew Dunaway, and Steven P. Black. “Descriptions of Improvisational Thinking by Expert Musicians Trained in Different Cultural Traditions.” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 237: 45-66. [published in 2024]
  • 2023    “Language and Health.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. New York: Oxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.570
  • 2023    “Ethics and Language.” In Alessandro Duranti, Rachel George, and Robin Conley Riner (eds.), A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 299-314. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119780830.ch16
  • 2022    Black, Steven P. and Robin Conley Riner. “Care as a Methodological Stance: Research Ethics in Linguistic Anthropology.” In Sabina Perrino and Sonya Pritzker (eds.), Research Methods in Linguistic Anthropology. Bloomsbury Academic Press, p. 97-124. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350117488.ch-4
  • 2021    “Portable Values, Inequities, and Techno-Optimism in Global Health Storytelling.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 31(1): 25-42. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12297
  • 2020    Black, Steven P. and Gabriela Alvarado. “Global Health Education and Mediatization of Care in Costa Rica.” Medical Anthropology 39(7): 597-608. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2020.1722123
  • 2020    Arnold, Lynnette and Steven P. Black. “How Communicative Approaches Enrich the Study of Care.” Medical Anthropology 39(7): 573-581. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2020.1814285
  • 2020    “Communicability, Xenophobia, and Stigma During the COVID-19 Outbreak: ‘Common Reactions’?” Language, Culture, and Society 2(2): 242-251. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.00028.bla
  • 2019    “Ethics, Expertise, and Inequities in Global Health Discourses: The Case of Non-Profit HIV/AIDS Research in South Africa.” In N. Avineri, L. Graham, E. Johnson, R. Conley Riner, and J. Rosa (eds.), Language and Social Justice in Practice. New York: Routledge, p. 119-127. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315115702
  • 2018    “Sexual Stigma: Markedness, Taboo, Containment, and Emergence.” In Kira Hall and Edward Barrett (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. Published online: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190212926.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190212926-e-8
  • 2018    “Music and Language.” In Hillary Calan (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Published online: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1995
  • 2018    “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Care.” Annual Review of Anthropology 47: 79-95. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102317-050059
  • 2017    “Anthropological Ethics and the Communicative Affordances of Audio-Video Recorders in Ethnographic Fieldwork: Transduction as Theory.” American Anthropologist 119(1): 46-57.
  • 2017    Steven P. Black and Elizabeth Falconi. “Linguistic Anthropology and Ethnolinguistics.” In Mark Aronoff and Jaine Rees-Miller (eds.), The Handbook of Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 479-504.
  • 2015    “The Morality of Performance: HIV Disclosure in Speech and Song in South Africa.” Ethos 43(3): 247-266.
  • 2014    “The Intersubjective Space-Time of a Zulu Choir/ HIV Support Group in Global Perspective.” Special issue, Doing (Things With) Sounds: Music As a Site of Social Semiosis. In Social Semiotics 24(4): 1-21.
  • 2013    “Narrating Fragile Stories About HIV/AIDS in South Africa.” Pragmatics and Society 4(3): 345-368.
  • 2013    “Stigma and Ideological Constructions of the Foreign: Facing HIV/AIDS in South Africa.” Language in Society 42(5):481-502.
  • 2013    “Linguistic Anthropology in 2012: Language Matter(s).” American Anthropologist 115(2):269-282.
  • 2012    “Laughing to Death: Joking as Support Amid Stigma for Zulu-Speaking South Africans Living with HIV/AIDS.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 22(1):87-108.
  • 2012    Alessandro Duranti and Steven P. Black. “Language Socialization and Verbal Improvisation.” In Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, & Bambi Schieffelin (eds.), The Handbook of Language Socialization. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 443-463.
  • 2008    “Creativity and Learning Jazz: The Practice of ‘Listening’.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 15(4): 279-295.

Other publications

Ethnographic Photography Book

  • 2022    Black, Steven P., Carolina Bolaños Palmieri, Cassandra Eng, Yanet E. Fundora, Carlos Alberto Faerron Guzmán, Belén Cruz González, Kiany Fernandez, Valeria Gutierrez, Fabiana Lazaro, Yatana Lazaro, Jose David Lázaro González, Taba Shidira Leiva Leiva, Daniela Mora Lazaro, Fabio Morales Morales, and Kiany Morales. Historias de Boruca: Balanceando lo Tradicional y lo Contemporáneo a Través de Imágenes (Stories of Boruca: Balancing the Traditional and the Contemporary Through Pictures). https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/anthro_facpub/25/

Book reviews

  • 2023    “Arc of Interference: Medical Anthropology for Worlds on Edge, João Biehl and Vincanne Adams (eds.). Duke University Press. 2023. ISBN: 9781478019800.” Journal of Medical Humanities.
  • 2022    “Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge. Briggs, Charles L. Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2021. X + 336 pgs.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32(2): 468-469.
  • 2014    “Lilian Lem Atanga et al. (eds.). Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013. xi +331pp., notes, index.” Language in Society 43(4):bn 1-2.
  • 2013    “Thomas Blom Hansen. Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. xv + 354 pp., notes, index.” Anthropology and Humanism 38(2): 207-209.
  • 2013    “The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts.
    • Edited by Gregory Barz and Judah M. Cohen.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27(2):b42-43.
  • 2011    “Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa. Andrew Apter,
    • Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(2):288-290.

Reports and blog posts