Dr. William L. Alexander Anthropology Department Chair Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology (PhD Arizona)
Research Interests
Environmental Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Political Ecology, Political Economy, Economic Anthropology, Economic Development & Underdevelopment, Globalization, Immigration, Migrant & Farmworker Health, Conservation & Epidemiology in Biodiversity Hotspots
Field Settings
Latin America (Chile, Mexico, US/Mexico border, Latinx farmworkers in North Carolina), West Africa (Cameroon)
On-going Research Projects
- Immigration enforcement and farmworker health in Eastern North Carolina
- A cultural and oral history of Korup National Park in Southwest Cameroon: Impacts of conservation on the lives of local people
- Biocultural models of disease risk and perception of Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) in and around Korup National Park, Southwest Cameroon
Recent Articles
William L. Alexander, E. Christian Wells, Martha Lincoln, Brittany Y. Davis, and Peter C. Little2021 Environmental Justice Ethnography in the Classroom: Teaching Activism, Inspiring Involvement. Human Organization 80(1): 37-48.
William L. Alexander, Mary K. Brannock, and Anthony Guevara 2020 Shifting the Contours of Public Engagement through Ethnographic Filmmaking: Politics, Im/migrant Policing, and Farmworker Health Made Visible. Visual Anthropology Review 36(2): 234-254.
William L. Alexander 2018 Testing the Water, Challenging the Narratives of Sustainable Development: Student Volunteer Research Promoting Health in Rural Panama on the Edge of an 'Eco-playground' Journal of Political Ecology 25:65-79.
William L. Alexander, Anthony Guevara, and Mary Brannock 2016 Using Ethnographic Video to Cast Light in the Shadows of Checkpoints. Practicing Anthropology 38(1): 31-32.
William L. Alexander and Magdalena Fernandez 2014 Immigration Policing and Medical Care for Farmworkers: Uncertainties and Anxieties in the East Coast Migrant Stream. North American Dialogue 17(1): 13-30.
Books
James B. Greenberg, Thomas Weaver, William L. Alexander and Anne Browning-Aiken, editors Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico (University of Colorado Press, 2012)
William L. Alexander, editor Lost in the Long Transition: Struggles for Social Justice in Neoliberal Chile (Lexington Books, 2009)
William L. Alexander Resiliency in Hostile Environments: A Comunidad Agrícola in Chile's Norte Chico. (Lehigh University Press, 2008)
Classes Taught
- ANT 450 History of Anthropological Theory
- ANT 460 Public Health & Poverty
- ANT 346 Medical Anthropology
- ANT 330 The Immigrant Experience
- ANT 329 Environmental Justice Ethnography
- ANT 327 Globalization & Culture Change
- ANT 317 Social Issues in Latin America
- ANT 309 Environmental Anthropology
- ANT 208 Language & Culture
- ANT 206 Cultural Anthropology
