Biography
Jessica Smith is the Hennebach Assistant Professor of Energy Policy in the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines. An anthropologist by training, she conducts research on the sociocultural dimensions of extractive industries in the American West, with a focus on labor, gender, kinship, and “responsible” capitalism. She is the author of Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West (Rutgers University Press, 2014), which was funded by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She holds a PhD in anthropology and a certificate in women’s studies from the University of Michigan.
Selected publications:
N.D. Morals, Materials, and Technoscience: Reimagining Energy Security as a Sociotechnical Imaginary in the United States. With Tidwell, A. Forthcoming in Science, Technology & Human Values.
2015 Turning Mine Protesters into Collaborators: The Opportunities and Challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Mining Industry. Society and Natural Resources 28(2): 165-179.
2014 Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
2013 The Politics of Pits and the Materiality of Mine Labor: Making Natural Resources in the American West. American Anthropologist 115 (4): 582-594.
2010 Risky Business: Neoliberalism and Workplace Safety in Wyoming Coal Mines. Human Organization 69 (4): 331-342.
2010 Talk about Technology: Negotiating Gender Difference in Wyoming Coal Mines. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35 (4): 893-918.
2010 Corporate Social Responsibility and the Perils of Universalization. With Helfgott, F. Anthropology Today 26(3): 20-23.
