Ben Slightom
Political Anthropology, Afro-pessimism, Post-Industrial Landscapes, Urban Dispossession, and the Racialized Production of the Underclass
Website:
Bachelors of Science in Architecture, Ball State University, 2018
________________
Benjamin Slightom is currently pursuing a joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and African American Studies. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana in 2018 with a B.S. in Architecture. His research focuses on how Midwestern post-industrial collapse has changed the dynamics of U.S. state-driven Black dispossession by creating largely invisible populations and landscapes which possess unique capacities to imagine and enact transformative, anti-capitalist Black futures in the form of prefigurative political action. His research has received early support at several conferences including the 2018 Mellon Conference at Queens College, the 2019 Semiotic Anthropology Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, and the 2020 conference of the American Ethnological Society. His preliminary fieldwork in Detroit, Michigan has also received financial support from the American Ethnological Society.
Department:
FASANT Anthropology