Ethnography, Humility, Identity, and the Academy

In today’s episode of How To Be Wrong we welcome Dr. Khytie Brown, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Brown’s research examines the intersections of religion, race, gender and sexual alterity, criminality, material culture, sensory epistemologies and social media practices among African diasporic religious practitioners in the Caribbean, Latin America and North America. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard and is a research associate at the Center on Transnational Policing at Princeton. Our conversation explores the humbling power of ethnographic research as well as ways in which race and gender influence perceptions about academic identity and power.

John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations.