Christian is a journalism graduate student at Northwestern University. He received his Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology and environmental studies from Augustana College, a small liberal arts school in Rock Island, Illinois, in 2020. He enjoys bringing together anthropological research/theory and personal experience to tell true (written and audio) stories and understand our complicated, globalized world a little better. You can reach Christian on Twitter @csbelliott.
In June of 2020, four months into a global pandemic and a month after I graduated from college (via a YouTube livestream while sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room), I decided to apply to be a U.S. Census Bureau Enumerator. In college I’d learned the decennial count’s importance in determining state and …
+ Read More Behind Many Masks: An Ethnographic Account of a Pandemic Borderlands
Quibi’s demise—just six months after the premium short-form smartphone-focused streaming service went live—made headlines last week. Company founder (and former head of Walt Disney Studios) Jeffrey Katzenberg claimed the COVID-19 pandemic held sole responsibility for Quibi’s $1.8 billion failure. As is usually the case, the reality is much more complicated. The Quibi fiasco makes a …
+ Read More Gone in a Quibi: A case for anthropology in business?