Maxwell School News and Commentary

Shannon Novak, professor of anthropology, has contributed to “The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology” (Routledge, 2025). Her chapter, “Blood, mud, and mucking around with waste,” examines the materiality and logic of separation practices involved in the gendering of landscapes, bodies and subjectivities at a mother goddess (Mariamma) temple in the industrial outskirts of Toronto, Canada. 

Farhana Sultana, professor of geography and the environment, has edited and contributed to this collection, which exposes how legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism co-produce and exacerbate the climate crisis, create disproportionate impacts on those who contributed the least to climate change, and influence global and local responses. (Routledge, 2024).

Merril Silverstein, Marjorie Cantor Endowed Professor of Aging Studies and chair of sociology, has edited and written the introduction for “Aging Families in Chinese Society” (Routledge, 2022), which was recently released in paperback.

This handbook, co-edited by Mona Bhan, associate professor of anthropology and Ford-Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies, politicizes discourses of nationalism, patriotism, democracy, and liberalism, and it questions how these dominant globalist imaginaries and discourses serve institutionalized power, create hegemony, and normalize domination.