Researchers

My undergraduate work in both English and Sustainable Agriculture has provided the groundwork for my desert research. I am currently working on a project about “close-reading” desert land:There is no such thing as a neutral approach to land. The human gaze, and subsequent human actions are informed by a complex hermeneutic circle that Aldo Leopold deemed a “land ethic.” A meaningful land ethic cannot be an intellectual ideology blindly applied to all settings. It must be, as N. Scott Momaday describes, “a moral comprehension of earth and air” derived from a close reading of the narrative of place. Utilizing in-person interviews on and off Native American reservations, extensive plant ecology research, and folk plant taxonomies, this project explores a desert-specific land ethic in my home of Tucson, Arizona. Adaptations in plant structures, the formation of symbiotic relationships, and tribal stories that interpret the lay of the land all form a common narrative—they tell us how to live sustainably in the Sonoran Desert. This research builds on the ethnobiological work of scholars such as Gary Paul Nabhan, Amadeo Rea, and Robin Wall Kimmerer to provide a practical framework for forming place-oriented land ethics informed by a reading of the land itself. By crossing interdisciplinary and multicultural borders, we can listen deeply to the narratives of our “geographical ancestors” and learn to live within the limits of the lands we call home.