Overview
Juno Salazar Parreñas is an Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. She examines human-animal relations, environmental issues, and efforts to institutionalize justice. She is the author of Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke UP, 2018), which received the 2019 Michelle Rosaldo Prize from the Association for Feminist Anthropology and honorable mentions for the 2020 Harry Benda Prize from the Association of Asian Studies, the 2019 Society for Medical Anthropology’s New Millennium Book Award and the 2019 Anthropology of Work and Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology and Computing’s Diana Forsythe Prize. Her articles appear in such journals as American Ethnologist, Anthropology and History, Cahiers d’Anthropologie Sociale, Catalyst: feminism, theory, technoscience, Environmental Humanities, History and Theory, positions: asia critique, and Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology, and Society. Her article, “Producing Affect: Transnational volunteerism in a Malaysian orangutan rehabilitation center,” received the 2013 General Anthropology Division’s Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship Prize. She is a former columnist for the Los Angeles based monthly magazine The Lesbian News. Her collaborations and conversations with artists such as Daniel Lie, Ines Lechleitner and Islands Songs (Nicolas Perret and Sylvia Ploner) have been hosted by MoMA, Ö1 Kunstradio, and Dokumenta 14. At Cornell, she teaches a range of interdisciplinary courses that include environmental ethics, introduction to feminist, gender and sexuality studies, as well as courses that speak to Southeast Asian studies.
Research Focus
Current Research Projects:
- Current Book Project: Animals in the Misanthropocene; or, Three Ways to World Destruction
- Triage for a Sick Planet: The Emergence of Integrative Approaches to the Study of Humans, Animals, and Environments
Awards and Honors
2024 George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship
Publications
Book:
- Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2018.
Edited Books:
- Pandemics Past and Pending. An open access eBook of student essays, co-edited with Alena Zhang, Rodrigo Guzman Serrano, Mari Kramer, and Vishal Nyayapathi. Cornell University. 2023.
- Gender: Animals. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. 2017.
Articles and Chapters:
- "When Our Tulips Speak Together: More than Human Queer Natures.” Unsettling Queer Anthropology: Foundations, Reorientations, Departures. Margot Weiss, ed. Duke University Press. 2024
- "Orangutans: Borneo, 1962.” The Planning Moment: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Sarah Blacker et al, Eds. Fordham University Press. 2024. https://www.fordhampress.com/9781531506636/the-planning-moment/
- "Experiment and Excavation in the Ethnographic Museum: Care, Cruelty and Barbara Harrisson.” Spaces of Care: Confronting Colonial Afterlives in European Ethnographic Museums. 2023. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag. https:/doi.org/10.14361/9783839468487-006
- "Ethnography after Anthropology: Become Moles not Mining Corporations." 2023. American Ethnologist 50(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13201
- "Afterward: Ecological Inqueeries." Co-authored with Nicole Seymour. 2022. Environmental Humanities 14 (3). https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9962992
- "Pronouns for an apocalyptic future: asymmetrical terms for a new era." 2021. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 4 (1): 1989849. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2021.1989849
- "Power, Care and Species Difference in Orangutan Rehabilitation in Sarawak: A Roundtable." Co-written with Alicia Izharuddin, Monamie Bhadra Haines, Faizah Zakaria, and Robert Cribb. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 94, no. 1 (2021): 203-215. https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0019
- “From Decolonial Indigenous Knowledges to Vernacular Ideas in Southeast Asia.” September 2020. History and Theory. 59(3):413-420. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12169
- “Specificity.” April 2020. Indonesia. 109: 65-70. https://doi.org/10.1353/ind.2020.0008
- "An Anthropology of Primatology Exceeds the Primate Order: a feminist and queer critique." 2019 Cahiers d’anthropologie sociale (18: Primates):126-143. https://doi.org/10.3917/cas.018.0126
- “The Job of Finding Food is a Joke: Orangutan Rehabilitation, Work, Subsistence, and Social Relations.” 2019. How Nature Works. Alex Blanchette and Sarah Besky eds. School for Advanced Research Seminar. University of New Mexico Press, pp. 79-98.
- “Arrested: Orangutan Sexuality and the rehabilitation of wildness through captivity in Malaysia.” 2019. History and Anthropology. 30(5): 527-532. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2019.1638773
- “Orangutan Rehabilitation as an Experiment of Decolonization.” 2017. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Peer-reviewed Critical Perspectives. 3(1).
- “Engaging Decolonization and Decoloniality in Science and Technology Studies.” 2017. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Peer-reviewed Critical Perspectives. 3(1). Co-authored with Kristina Lyons and Noah Tamarkin. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v3i1.28794
- “Introduction.” 2017. Gender: Animals. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
- “Hunting.” 2017. Gender: Animals. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
- “The Materiality of Intimacy: Rethinking ‘Ethical Capitalism’ through Embodied Encounters with Animals in Southeast Asia.” 2016. positions: asia critique. 24(1):97-107. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-3320065
- “Producing Affect: transnational volunteerism in a Malaysian orangutan rehabilitation center.” 2012. American Ethnologist. Volume 39, Issue 4, pp. 673-687. 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01387.x
Public Scholarship:
- Mellon Sawyer Lecturers at University of Washington. Rethinking Humanitarianism and Seeing Beyond the Human. Co-convened by Arzoo Osanloo and Cabeiri Robinson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlkvnCwSaGs
- “The Semi-Wild.” Ö1 Kunstradio (Art Radio on Austrian national public radio). October 14, 2018. This was a 20-minute sound installation stemming from collaboration with the artist Ines Lechleitner: http://www.kunstradio.at/2018B/14_10_18.html
- "A Joke of a Job: Naturalizing the Work of Semiwild Orangutans." 2018. Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsites, July 26. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-joke-of-a-job-naturalizing-the-work-of-semiwild-orangutans
- “YNK: You Never Know #17, Blasted Landscapes/Abundant Futures #4 with Juno Salazar Parreñas.” Documenta 14: Savvy Funk Radio Broadcast, FM 103.0 MHz in Berlin, FM 90.4 MHz in Kassel, SW 15560 kHz, and streamed worldwide on Deutschlandfunkkulture (German national radio’s culture station). July 4, 2017. This was a 13-minute interview about my forthcoming manuscript followed by a live soundscape by Islands+Songs. Other broadcasts featured Dipesh Chakrabarty and Juanita Sundberg. Available online: https://www.mixcloud.com/Islands_Songs/ynk-12-_-june-29th-_-blasted-landscapes-abundant-futures-3-_-with-juno-salazar-parre%C3%B1as/
- "Multispecies Ethnography and Social Hierarchy." Engagement: a Blog Published by Anthropology and Environment Society of the American Anthropological Association. September 15, 2015.
- “Queerly Questioning.” A regularly featured column published between July 1997 and July 2020. The Lesbian News. Oldest monthly magazine of its kind, publishing since 1975.
Responsibilities
President Elect of the General Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association, 2023-2025
In the news
- Conference explores post-Covid-19 global health biopolitics
- Conference explores the theme of “Repair” from multiple humanities disciplines
- Community read launches Society for the Humanities’ ‘Repair’ theme
- Studying connections between animal-human health