Erin O’Connor
Erin O’Connor
Title
Associate Professor of SociologyChair, Department of Politics and Human Rights
Department
Department of Politics and Human RightsDepartment of Natural Resources, Affiliated Faculty of Environmental Studies
Phone
Please request by emailAbout
Erin O’Connor is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Politics and Human Rights as well as Affiliated Faculty of Environmental Studies in the Department of Natural Sciences. Her research specializes in work and labor, art and craft, knowledge and culture, the body and environment and is guided by material feminism, critical indigenous theory, phenomenology, critical ecological theory, and posthumanism. Her book manuscript, Gather: art, self, and world among glassblowers, draws from four years of ethnographic research in a glassblowing studio to analyze contemporary craft in industrial and knowledge economies. Herein, she considers the citizen-craftsman and colonialism, patriarchy and power, language and love, pedagogy and learning, onto-epistemologies of “body” and “materiality,” as well as the glass supply chain ecology in the context of empire and settler colonialism. Additionally, she researches the work and life of American Magic Realist painter, Frederick Papsdorf (1887-1978).
Dr. O’Connor has published in the journals Thesis Eleven, Qualitative Sociology Review, Qualitative Sociology, Qualitative Research, and Ethnography, as well as in edited volumes such as Practicing Culture and Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, Studio Studies: Operations, topologies, and displacements and Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making. In class, she uses her areas of expertise as lenses through which to investigate social inequality and human rights as regards race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class, species, and land among other issues. She also serves as Faculty Co-Advisor for the Bedford Hills Club, which supports the MMC college programs at both the Bedford Hills and Taconic Women’s Correctional Facilities.
Dr. O’Connor enjoys the outdoors, creating, and sharing her interests with her children (while learning a lot about superheroes and Legos along the way).
Degree(s)
Ph.D., New School for Social Research
M.A., New School for Social Research
Honors, B.A., Michigan State University
Recent Work
(Work in Progress) Gather: art, self, and world among glassblowers. Book Manuscript.
(Submitted, 2023) “The Tellurian Dimension of Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing”. In Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective. London: Routledge.
(Forthcoming, 2023). “Embodied Knowledge: glassblowing and the meaning of practice”. In The Glass Reader, eds. Kevin Petrie and Jeffrey Sarmiento. London: Bloomsbury.
(In Press, 2023). “Materia Erotica: making-love among glassblowers”. In Leaving the field? Methodological Insights from Ethnographic Exits, eds. Robin Smith and Sara Delamont. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
2017 “Touching Tacit Knowledge: handwork as ethnographic method in a glassblowing studio”. Qualitative Research 17(2), 217-230.
2016 “The Prototype: Problem Work in the relationship between Designer, Artist, and Gaffer in Glassblowing” in Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making, ed. Trevor Marchand. London: Ashgate.
2016 “Inter- to Intracorporeality: The haptic hotshop heat of a glassblowing studio” in Studio Studies: Operations, Topologies & Displacements, eds. Igancio Farias and Alex Wiley. London: Routledge.
2012 “Cross Disciplinary Literacy in the Age of Apps and Mobile Devices,” with Rebecca Mushtare and Millie Burns, in Emerging Pedagogies for the New Millennium. Network: A Journal of Faculty Development (www.nyu.edu/frn/publications/emerging.pedagogies/index.html).
2012 “Saber hecho carne: la experiencia dl sentido y la busqueda de expertise en el soplado de vidrio”” in Hacia una nueva sociología cultural: Mapas, dramas y prácticas, ed. C. E. Benzecry. Buenos Aires: Quilmes University Press.
2009 “The Act of Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity: Originality, Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Science.” Co-Authored with Diana Rhoten. Thesis Eleven (96(1).
2007 “The Centripetal Force of Expression: Drawing Embodied Histories into Glassblowing.” Qualitative Sociology Review, “Ethnographies of Artistic Work,” eds. Howard Becker and Marie Buscatto.
2007 “Hot Glass: The Calorific Imagination of Practice in Glassblowing.” In Practicing Culture, eds. Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett. London: Routledge.
2007 “Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing: meaning and the struggle towards proficiency (modified reprint).” In Chris Shilling (ed.), Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, The Sociological Review Monograph.
2006 “Glassblowing Tools: Extending the Body towards Practical Knowledge and Informing a Social World.” Qualitative Sociology 29(2).
2005 “Embodied Knowledge: Meaning and the Struggle Towards Proficiency in Glassblowing.” Ethnography 6(2).
Research
Work, Craft, Art, Ethnography, Culture, Knowledge, Social Theory, Body, Environment, Phenomenology, New Materialisms, Posthumanism
Teaching
Anthropology at Museums in NYC
Art, Politics & Society (Art Activism)
Radical Labor and Artisan Movements
EcoCulture & Sustainability (Queer Ecologies)
Environmental Justice
Material Culture
Culture & Ideology
Foundations of Social and Political Inquiry
Introduction to Sociology
Ethnography
Great Social Thinkers
Professional Experience
As Chair of the Department of Politics and Human Rights in the context of Covid, Professor O’Connor is actively working with her colleagues in PHR, International Studies (IS), and across the college to develop online programming. Some events are open to the public. Please inquire.
Fall 2020: PHR/IS Event Series, Racial Justice
Spring 2021: PHR/IS Sojourner Truth Suffrage Academy
Office Hours