David Flood

We live in a time of profound political conflict and general upheaval in the US and indeed across the world. What connects these vast disruptions to your interactions with the neighbor you disagree with politically, the roommate you don't get along with socially, to your job, the way you shop, the food you like, the music you listen to? As a sociocultural anthropologist, I believe that studying the micro-interactions of our everyday lives can help to illuminate and answer big questions about the times we live in: their structures, assumptions, and outcomes. In my teaching, I think of the college classroom as a space that we ritually set aside from everyday life, enabling us to wrestle with these profoundly practical questions of engagement in the world: what does it mean to live a life of human dignity and flourishing? What are we to do with the times that we are given as political actors, and how can we best understand them? What do we owe our fellow humans and non-humans, and how should we fulfill those obligations through work, civic engagement, community obligation, and in our personal relationships? I aim to address these questions through courses that combine engaged experience with intellectual work, and that build communities of learning and friendship.