Erin O’Connor
Erin O’ConnorCopyrighted
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 as well as Affiliated Faculty of Environmental Studies, whose coursework contributes to the college’s BFA in Art. She is a 2023 recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass. Her current project, “Following the Glass: mapping the ‘material life’ of glass batch and its kin” seeks to re-tell the story of studio glassblowing from the vantage of batch-making.
Dr. O’Connor’s research specializes in art and craft, knowledge and culture, work and labor, materiality and the body, and the environment and elements. Her book manuscript, Fire-Craft: art, body, and world among glassblowers, draws from four years of ethnographic research in a glassblowing studio. Informed by phenomenology, material feminism, critical indigenous theory, and posthumanism, Fire-Craft considers pedagogy and learning, making and knowing, patriarchy and power, language and love, resources and settler colonialism, and the onto-epistemologies of “body” and “materiality”.
In addition, Dr. O’Connor 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 numerous edited volumes, including the following: Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making; Studio Studies: Operations, topologies, and displacements; and Leaving the field? Methodological Insights from Ethnographic Exits. At MMC, Dr. O’Connor serves as a Co-Coordinator of the Social Justice Academy as well as Faculty Co-Advisor of 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
(Book Manuscript) Fire-Craft: art, body, and world among glassblowers.
(Forthcoming, 2023) “The Tellurian Dimension of Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing”. In Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective, eds. Camilla Groth and Nithikul Nimkulrat. London: Routledge.
(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
Art, Craft, Work, Labor, Body, Knowledge, Ethnography, Culture, Social Theory, Environment, Elements, Ethno-Mineralogy, Settler Colonialism, Phenomenology, New Materialism, Material Feminism, 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