Patricia Alvarez Astacio

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Departments/Programs

Anthropology

Degrees

University of California, Santa Cruz, Ph.D.
University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A.

Expertise

Visual anthropology, documentary/ethnographic filmmaking, Latin America, indigeneity, capitalism, the senses

Profile

Patricia is an anthropologist and filmmaker whose scholarly research and creative practice develops in the folds between ethnography, critical theory, sensory ethnography, and the documentary arts. Her most recent works converge on issues of gender and ethnic representations in neoliberal, post-authoritarian Peru. She is currently working on her book manuscript Moral Fibers: Making Fashion Ethical. The book critically explores the Peruvian alpaca wool supply chain analyzing how, through the intervention of development projects, indigenous women artisans and their aesthetic traditions are interpolated into “ethical fashion” manufacturing networks. Moral Fibers unites the fields of political economy, ethnic studies, aesthetic theory, and gender studies to expand our thinking about the parameters and exclusions encoded into “ethical capitalism.”

Her latest film Entretejido weaves together the different sites and communities involved in this supply chain, bringing viewers into contact with the ways objects we wear are entangled in national racial politics and histories. The film, which premiered at the Havana International Film Festival, extends her long-standing critical engagement with aesthetic politics, sensorial and embodied forms of knowledge.

She is starting to work on an ethnography and film of the color magenta exploring its symbolic, cultural, racial, gendered, political and industrial life.

Courses Taught

ANTH	81a	Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Methods and Practice of Anthropological Research
ANTH	113b	Race and Ethnicity: Anthropological Perspectives
ANTH	130a	Filming Culture: Ethnographic and Documentary Filmmaking
ANTH	130b	Visuality and Culture
ANTH	131b	Latin America in Ethnographic Perspective
ANTH	138a	Digital Cultures
ANTH	152a	The Social Fabric: An Anthropology of Fashion
ANTH	163a	Work and Labor in Global Context
ANTH	170b	Multispecies Ethnography: Anthropology Beyond the Human
ANTH	208a	Documenting Culture: Visual and Multimodal Ethnography

Awards and Honors

Mandel Faculty Grant (2021)

Best Cultural/Ethnic Documentary Film, Houston International Film Festival (2017)

Honorable Mention for Best Graduate Student Film, Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival (2016)

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Rice University (2016 - 2017)

UC President's Dissertation Year Fellowship (2013 - 2014)

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2009 - 2012)

Scholarship

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia, Gabriel Dattatreyan and Arjun Shankar. "Multimodal Ambivalence: A Manifesto for Producing in S@!#t Times." American Anthropologists 124. 2 (2021).

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. "Tactile Analytics: Touching as a Collective Act." Experimenting with Ethnography: A companion to analysis. Ed. Andrea Ballestero and Brit Ross Winthereik. Duke University Press, 2021

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. "Film Screening Entretejido." Department of Anthropology, Tufts University. Medford, MA

Entretejido. Director, Producer, Cinematography, Sound and Additional Editing Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. Documentary Educational Resources, 2019.

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia and Benjamín Schultz Figueroa. "Trinh T. Minh-Ha (1952-)." Independent Female Filmmakers: A Chronicle through Interviews, Profiles, and Manifestos. Ed. Michele Meek. Routledge, 2019

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. "Our Governor Resigned via Facebook: #RickyRenuncia, Puerto Rico’s Summer of Protest." Platypus: The CASTAC Blog (Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing) (2019): <http://blog.castac.org/2019/07/our-governor-resigned-via-facebook-rickyrenuncia-puerto-ricos-summer-of-protest/>.

Takaragawa, Stephanie, Trudi Lynn Smith, Kate Hennessy, Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Jenny Chio, Coleman Nye and Shalini Shankar. "Bad Habitus: Anthropology in the Age of the Multimodal." American Anthropologist (2019).

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia, Ugo Edu and Ruth Goldstein. "Collaborations: Envisioning an Engaged Multimodal Future for Anthropology." History of Anthropology (HAN), Special Issue on: Collaborative Futures: Whose Anthropology? (2018)

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. "Por una Cámara Animista: Mifesto sobre la Simbiosis en el Cine Documental Sensorial y Afectivo (For an Animist Camera: Manifesto about symbiosis in Sensory and Affective Documentary Cinema)." Conexión: Revista del Departamento de Comunicaciones de la PUCP (2018).

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia and Benjamin Shultz-Figueroa. "In Conversation: Trinh T. Minh-ha." The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture.

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia and Benjamín Schultz Figueroa. "Demands for Puerto Rican Relief." NOW! A Journal of Urgent Praxis (2017)

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. "Screening Room Series." Visual and New Media Review, Cultural Anthropology Online (2017)

El Señor de los Milagros/Lord of Miracles. Co-Director, Cinematography Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. Self-Distributed, 2013.

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. "Anthropologies." Rev. of Anthropologies, by Francois Delaporte & Georges Canguilhem eds.. Visual Anthropology Review vol. 29 of 2 2013

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. Sintiendo el Tejido. 2012. Ethnographic Terminalia at SOMA Arts Gallery, San Francisco. (Ethnographic Based-collaborative interactive installation produced with Mozhdeh Matin and Cristina Flores Teves).

Por Fin Pario Paula. Co-Director, Cinematographer, Editor Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. Snag Films, 2011.

Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. Archival Video Installation: Life in the Age of Biotechnology. 2010. Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM, Kawliga Studios, New Orleans. (Archival Video Loop).

Finding D-QU: The Lonely Struggle of California's Only Tribal College. Co-Editor Alvarez Astacio, Patricia. Third World Newsreel, 2009.