Jasmine PISAPIA

EDUCATION

Ph. D., Sociocultural Anthropology, Columbia University

M.A., Comparative Literature and Media Studies, Université de Montréal

B. A., Literature and Humanities, Université de Montréal

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Environmental anthropology, anthropology of images, theater & performance, literary theory, psychoanalysis, aesthetics,  historical anthropology, feminist studies, European and Italian studies.

RESEARCH APPOINTMENTS

2025-2028                  Principal Investigator of “Ecologies of Performance: A Multimodal Ethnography of Environmental Violence and

                                  Embodied Resistance,” Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università Ca' Foscari, Veneszia, Italia

2024-2025                  Institute for Cultural Inquiry ICI, Berlin, Germany

2022-2024                  SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, McGill University, Department of Anthropology

PUBLICATIONS

In progress:

Taken By Poison: Aesthetics, Environmental Catastrophe, and Italy’s Postindustrial South

[Book manuscript in preparation] 

Book chapters:

Pisapia, J. “Through the Keyhole: (Photographic) Desire and the Astronomical Imagination,” (article reprint) in Shanay Jhaveri (ed.), Night Fever: Film and Photography After Dark, Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2024. 

Pisapia, J. Bonifacio, V. “Di bombe e lucciole. Una scrittura apotropaica per la fine del mondo,” Prefazione a Michael Taussig, L’arte del non-dominio nell’era dello sfaldamento globale, Milano, Mimesis/Meltemi editore, 2023.

Pisapia, J. “Visioni di polvere. Lutto, lavoro e bonifica nel cimitero di Taranto,” Il Ritmo dell’Esperienza : Nove Casi Etnografici per Ripensare l’Etnografia dei Conflitti Ambientali, Valentina Bonifacio, Rita Vinaello (eds.) Cooperativa Libraria Editrice Università di Padova, 2020.

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

Pisapia, J. “Ariadne in the Tiergarten: Kracauer’s Photographic Ethnography of the Detail,” Visual Anthropology Review (forthcoming).

Pisapia, J. "“Tristezza Siderurgica”". Intermédialités / Intermediality no. 39 “Retourner (la nostalgie) / Returning (Nostalgia)” (eds. André Habib, Suzanne Paquet, Carl Therrien) (2022) : 1–35.

Pisapia, J. Mongelli, I. “Per un’antropologia estetica della crisi ecologica: teatro, arti visive, e «crisi della presenza» nella città di Taranto” in Antropologia, Lucia Portis and Angela Biscald (eds), “Restituire. Un approccio multimediale” (2022)

Pisapia, J. “Slow Motion and Sports: Corporeal ‘Imageries,’ Hypnosis and Transfigured Time,” INCITE Journal of Experimental Media #7/8, 2016-2017.

Pisapia, J. “Behind the Scenes of The Sea Theater: Conversations with Michael Taussig (Columbia University) and Hélène Baril (Visual Artist)” in Seachange: Arts, Communication, Technologies, Montreal, Oct. 2015.

Pisapia, J.  “Archives du pathos. Ernesto de Martino et la survivance,” Intermediality. History and Theory of the Arts, Literature, and Technologies  n°18 “archiver/archiving, ” Fall 2011, p. 45-69. 

Pisapia, J. “Archives of Pathos. Image, Survival and Ernesto de Martino’s Interdisciplinary Ethnography,” Visual Ethnography, Vol. 2, n° 1, 2013.

RECENT PRESENTATIONS:

2025 “Between Ecological Psychosis and Environmental Catharsis: Reading the Unsettled Landscapes of Taranto, Tarantismo, and the Peasant of Bern,” Invited talk at the Institute of Social Anthropology - Institut für Sozialanthropologie, Bern, Switzerland, April 29, 2025. 

2024 “Vessel and Voice: Collaborative Theater-Making and In-Situ Creations in New York and Naples,” International workshop IMAGES, SOUND AND PERFORMANCE AS WAYS OF KNOWING organized by Valentina Bonifacio and Lisa Stevenson, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, 4-8 March 2024. 

2023 “Le Vite Postume del Veleno.” Invited talk in the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University, Laboratorio  Demo-Etno-Antropologico (LAB-DEA), Venice, Italy, December 11th, 2023.  

2023 “The Future Caught in Hindsight: Temporal Redoublings in Poisonous Images,” presentation as part of the panel: “Poisons and Their Doubles” co-organized with Sandra T. Hyde (McGill University). American Anthropological Association (AAA), Toronto, Canada, November 15-19, 2023. 

2023 “Global Pathogens, Local Pathologies: Toward a More Than Human Understanding of Biosecurity.” Convener, session at STS Italia Conference 2023, Bologna, Italy, June 29, 2023.

2023 “Co-Creation in Theater Arts as Pedagogy of Social Inquiry.” Invited talk at CUNY Education Conference: Rethinking Voice and Power in Education, New York City, February 20, 2023.

2023 “Between Nature and You: Nature Technology and Augmented Body in Italy’s Postindustrial South.” Invited talk at the International Center for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan, August 11th, 2023.

2023 "The Afterlives of Poison", Special Guest Lecture, Speaker Series of McGill's Department of Anthropology, March 13th. 

2022 Presentation as part of the panel: “(Dis)placing the Dead, (Un)earthing the Truth: The Politics of Death, Graves and Grief,” American Anthropological Association (AAA), Seattle, November 9-13, 2022.

2022 “Translating the End of the World: A Conversation with Dorothy Zinn and Jasmine Pisapia about Translating Ernesto De Martino’s Last Masterwork, La fine del mondo,” Columbia University, Department of Anthropology, Society of Fellows & Heyman Center for the Humanities, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, New York, April 28th.

2022 “‘Air at the End of the World’: Reading Taranto’s Environmental Crisis with Ernesto De Martino.” Presentation at the University of Cologne, “Crisis, Apocalypse and Millenarianism in the Contemporary World. A Workshop on Ernesto De Martino” organized by Martin Zillinger and Dorothy Zinn, 30 Nov. 2021.

See more creative projects in theater, curatorship, and publications at: www.jasmineclotildepisapia.com