Department and Institution:
Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
Elena Peterman is a PhD student in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She researches the political and affective dimensions of encounters with industrial toxicants (especially PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. Her ethnographic work traces the ways so-called 'forever chemicals'— in their persistence and expansive proliferation— variously derange or reinforce racialized regimes of property and citizenship in a rapidly transforming corner of the U.S. South.
