CV
(Full of formatting flaws. Current as of June 2020)
Critical Disability Studies ● Queer Theory ● STS and biomedicine ● Toxicity ● Anthropologies of life and death ● Injury, illness, and disability ● Intimacy ●
Academic Positions
2020-Current Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Mississauga
2019-2020 Core Faculty, CSWGS, Rice University.
2016-2020 Core Faculty, Medical Humanities Program, Rice University.
2015-2020 Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rice University.
2013-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow in Theory and Writing, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.
2011-2013 NIMH-funded Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Health, Heath Care and Aging Research, Rutgers University.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. 2011, University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology.
M.A. 2005, University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology.
B.A. with Honours, Summa Cum Laude, 2004, York University, Individualized Studies Program (focused on Critical Discourse Analysis).
Selected Publications
Books
2015 After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed, Duke University Press.*
*Awarded honorable mention for 2016 Gregory Bateson Prize
Journal Articles
In Progress Disaggregating Disability
In Review Straight Time: Heteronormativity, Rehabilitation, and the Aftermath of American War.
2020 Veteran Therapeutics: The Promise of Military Medicine and the Possibilities of Disability in the Post-9/11 US. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 34:3: ##-##.
2020 On the Possibilities of Open Grief: Mourning, Affect, Attachment, Cultural Anthropology. 35(1): 40–47.
2019 Ethnography of Things Military: A Roundtable with Sarah Hautzinger, Kevin McSorley, and Eyal Ben-Ari, Ethnos.
2017 In-durable Sociality: Sociality, Solitude, and Forms of Life in the Present at a U.S. Military Hospital, Social Text. 35 (130).
Collateral Afterworlds: An Introduction Co-authored with Julie Livingston, Social Text. 35 (130).
Review of Making War at Ft. Hood: War and Uncertainty in a Military Community, in conversation with Lindsay Bell, North American Dialogue, 2(20).
2016 After War, Medicine, Anthropology, Theory. 2(3).
2014 Critical Military Studies, Queer Theory, and the Possibilities of Critique: the case of suicide and family caregiving in the U.S. military, Critical Military Studies. 1(1): 1-15. [Awarded journal prize for best article by an emerging scholar]
2013 On Movement: The Matter of U.S. Soldiers’ Being After Combat, Ethnos. 78(3).
War Sick: Meaningful Illness and Military Victimhood, review essay, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 65(2).
This is a Picture of an Injured Soldier, in Soldier Exposures in Technical Publics, Zoë Wool ed., a critical archival image essay for Public Culture’s media and literature website www.publicbooks.org. [Reprinted in special military-themed issue of Physical Therapy. 93(9)].
2012 Labors of Love: The Transformation of Care in the Non-Medical Attendant Program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Co-authored with Seth Messinger. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 26(1).
2009 The US Military and the Social Life of War, with Erin Finley and Kenneth MacLeish, Anthropology News. In Focus: Veteran Identity 50(5): 29.
Book Chapters
2019 Afterwar Work for Life: “Care” in Veteran Families in War and Health Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino, ed.s, New York University Press.
2016 with Alison Howell. The War Comes Home: The Toll of War and the Shifting Burden of Care in Handbook on Gender and War, Jennifer Mathers and Linda Steiner, Eds. Edward Elgar Publishing.
2015 Attachments of Life and Death: Heteronational Masculinity, Genital Injury, and the Soldier’s Body in Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium, Veena Das and Clara Han, eds., University of California Press.
2006 Operationalizing Iraqi Freedom, Organizational Discourse: Identity, Ideology and Idiosyncrasy. Armin Beverungen, et. al. [ed.s] KMCP: Leiceter, UK.
Edited Volumes
2017 Collateral Afterworlds co-edited with Julie Livingston, a special issue of Social Text. Contributors: Anne Allison, Naisargi Dave, Angela Garcia, Lisa Stevenson, Zoë Wool. Afterward by Elizabeth Povinelli.
2013 Soldier Exposures in Technical Publics, Zoë Wool ed., a critical archival image essay for Public Culture’s media and literature website www.publicbooks.org. Contributors: Beatrice Jaureguri, Caren Kaplan, Paul Lawrie, Beth Linker, Ken MacLeish, Joe Masco, David Serlin, Zoë Wool.
Online Writing
2019 Homunculus Revolts: Refiguring the Neurological Subject. Somatosphere.org.
2018 US Military Burn Pits and the Politics of Health, with Kenneth MacLeish, MAQ's Critical Care blog. http://medanthroquarterly.org/2018/08/01/us-military-burn-pits-and-the-politics-of-health/
Check Your Syllabus 101: Disability Access Statements https://anthrodendum.org/2018/08/13/check-your-syllabus-101-disability-access-statements/
What I Wish I Knew about Anthropology and Disability: Toward a more Enabling Anthropology, with Michelle Friedner and Devva Katsnitz, Anthrodendum.org.
2017 Ethnography and the Militarization of the American Dream, invited discussion with Gina Perez for the American Anthropologist blog Public Anthropologies.
Invited contribution to What Are You Reading? Responses to the Election and Inauguration on the Cultural Anthropology blog.
The Relativity of Toxicity, Anthro{dendum}.
2016 Invited contribution to Top of the Heap, booklist series for Somatosphere.org.
2015 "The terror of being on the wrong side of the (bio)politics of life” invited contribution to a Somatosphere.org book forum on Lisa Stevenson’s Life Beside Itself.
2013 Life Support, with Nick Dupree, an invited entry for the Cabinet of Commonplaces project at Somatosphere.org, http://somatosphere.net/2014/02/life-support.html
2010 The War Comes Home: The Toll of War and the Shifting Burden of Care, with Alison Howell, in The Costs of War: An accounting of the U.S. military response to 9/11, a project of the Eisenhower Research Group at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Catherine Lutz and Neta Crawford, Directors. http://costsofwar.org/article/us-veterans-and-military-families
2009-current Blogger for anthro{dendum}.org (nee SavageMinds.org).
Fellowships, Awards, And Grants
2020
Rice University Center for Engaged Research and Learning Course Development Award, Anthropology of Toxicity
Rice Creative Ventures Fund, Rice Feminist Seminar, with Helena Michie and Brian Riedel.
2019
Feminist Seminar Award, Rice University Center for the Study of Women, Gender & Sexuality.
2018
Rice Humanities Research Center Workshop or Lecture Series Grant for Disability Studies Lecture Series, with Joshua Eyler.
Rice Humanities Research Center Research Project Development Grant for Disability and the City: Mapping Emergent Embodiment in Berlin.
2018-2023
NSF CAREER Award for Socialities of Care: Informal Caregiving in post-9/11 Veteran and Care Collective Worlds.
2017-2020
Grant from VA's War Related Illness and Injury Center for Perspectives on Burn Pit Exposure: Questions of Diagnosis in Veteran and Caregiver Experience, Co-PI with Dr. Kenneth MacLeish, Vanderbilt University.
2017-2019
Rice Interdisciplinary Excellence Award, Toward ExperienceGuided Design of Effective Assistive Devices, Co-PI with Dr. Marcie O'Malley and Dr. Phil Kortum.
2016
Mellon Foundation Public Humanities modular course award, awarded through Humanities Research Center, Rice University, for development of Disability Inside-Out: Sexuality, Identity, Politics.
Rice Humanities Research Center Mellon Medical Humanities Symposium Grant for Critical Care: Disability interventions and Medical Humanities.
2011-2013
NIMH-funded Postdoctoral Fellow, IHHCPAR, Rutgers University.
2011
Ethnographic Writing Fellowship, Centre for Ethnography, University of Toronto, Scarborough.
2010
University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology Travel Grant.
Ethel-Jane Westfeldt Bunting Summer Scholar, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, NM.
2009
Society for the Study of North America, St. Clair Drake Student Travel Grant Award.
2007-2008
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.
Vonda McCrae Clarke Memorial/ Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Anthropology.
Presentations and Talks
Conference Papers
2019 Homunculus Revolts: Re-figuring the neurological subject, Explorations in the Medical Humanities, Columbia University, March 30th.
2018 Logics of Combustion: Toxicity, Commensurability, and the Biopolitics of US War Zone Waste, with Kenneth MacLeish, American Anthropological Assocation, San Jose, CA. November 16th.
The Worthiness of Disability: Economization and Exception in Veteran and Non-Veteran Worlds, American Ethnological Association, Philadelphia, PA, March 23rd.
2017 Discussant for Contemporary Entanglements of Care and Punishment, American Anthropological Association, Washington DC, November 30th.
2016 Care and the Significance of Others: Veteran Family Caregiving and the Worlds Beyond, American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, MN, November 19th.
The Veteran Family Caregiver Program and Life After War, Society for Medical Anthropology-Society for Applied Anthropology join meeting, Vancouver, BC, April 2nd.
2015 After War, American Anthropological Association, Denver, CO, November 19th
2014 Care: Afterwar Work for Life, Society for Cultural Anthropology Biennial Meeting, Detroit, MI, May 10th
Soldier Salvage: Intimate Technologies and the Making of Men, Gender, Bodies, Technologies, Virginia Tech, April 2nd
2012 In-durable Sociality: Precarious Life in Common and the Temporal Limits of the Social and organizer of “Enduring in the Verge: Being with Others in the Boundaries of the Social” invited panel with Anne Allison, Naisargi Dave, Veena Das, and Elizabeth Povinelli, 109th American Anthropology Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, November 17th.
Precarious Solitude: Deadly Attachments and Life Preserving Aloneness at a U.S. Military Hospital. Society for Cultural Anthropology Biennial Meeting, Providence, May 11th
2011 The Miniscule War: The Common Sense of Fragments At Walter Reed Army Medical Center 108th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Montreal, November 19th
2010 Earth Shattering: Movement as Worlding for U.S. Soldiers Marked by Combat, Circulation: 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, November 17th
2009 Subjects of Sacrifice: The Im/possibilities of Everyday Life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, The End/s of Anthropology: 108th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, December 3rd
Deck the Walls: Beyond Institutionality at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Canadian Anthropological Association Société Canadienne d'Anthropologie/American Ethnological Society Joint Annual Meeting, Vancouver, May 13th-16th
2008 Combative Engagements: An Ethnographic Approach to Anti-Anthropology and the U.S. Military, 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 19th
2007 Whose Afraid of the Persian Gulf: Locating Fear in the War on Terror, Canadian Anthropological Association Société Canadienne d'Anthropologie/American Ethnological Society Joint Annual Meeting, Toronto, May 8th-12th
“Home Grown”: Globalization and Its Radical Others in The Discourse of the War on Terror, Annual Meeting of the Georgetown Linguistics Society, Washington D.C., April 1st
“On the Economy”: Discursive Positionings and Neoliberal Subjects on a U.S. Army Base, Language and Neoliberalism Symposium Toronto, February 18th-19th
2006 War-Scapes? Preliminary notes on si(gh)ting the War on Terror, Medusa Lecture Series, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, October 13th
Operationalizing Iraqi Freedom, 7th International Organizational Discourse Conference: Identity, Ideology and Idiosyncrasy, International Centre for Research in Organizational Discourse, Strategy and Change, Amsterdam July 26th -July 28th
2005 Grammars of Violence, Grammars of Modernity: The Discourse of the Intifada in the Globe and Mail and September 11th Terrorist Talk, Racial Violence and the Colour Line in the New World Order, Dalhousie University, April 1st-2nd
Discourse…What the Foucault? Medusa Lecture Series, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, March 4th
Invited Presentations and Workshops
2020 Veteran Therapeutics: The Perverse Promise of Military Medicine and The Possibilities of Disability, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, February 3rd.
2019 Veteran Therapeutics and the Possibilities of Disability, Disability Studies @Rice Lecture Series, November 11th.
All that is Solid Burns Into Smoke: US Military Burn Pits and the Logics of Combustion, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, October 14th.
After War: anthropological perspectives on life after war injury, Association of the US Army, Houston, TX, October 8th.
Veteran Therapeutics: Military Medicine’s Perverse Promise and the Possibilities of Disability, Global Health Colloquium, Princeton University, March 29th.
Open Grief: Notes Toward a Weak Theory of Mourning, Affect, and Sociality. Bodies of Knowledge Working Group, Humanities Council, Princeton University, March 28th.
The Significance of Others: Straight Time and the Securing of Life for Post-9/11 US Veterans. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, February 11th.
Perverse Vitalities: Veteran Therapeutics, The Possibilities of Disability, and the Promise of Military Medicine in the Post-9/11 U.S. Department of the Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University, January 23rd.
2018 Mourning, Affect, Sociality: On the Possibilities of Open Grief. Care at the Nexus of Power and Praxis: Anthropological Engagements with Caring Otherwise, Wenner-Gren Funded Workshop, St. Louis, October 4-7th.
Socialities of Care and the Significance of Others: Kinship, Care, and Queerness in US Veteran Disability Worlds. Health Humanities, University of Toronto, Scarborough. February 28th.
2017 Straight Time, Base Technologies, and the Feeling of No Feeling: Queer Attachments and Disability in the Aftermath of American War. Medicine and its Objects workshop series, University of Chicago, October 25th.
Straight Time: Rehabilitation, Heteronormativity, and The Politics of Cure. Medical Humanities Student Symposium. Rice University, November 5th.
Informal Caregiving for Post-9/11 Veterans, Grand Rounds at the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC), VA New Jersey Health System, July 26th.
2016 Being “No Less of a Person”: Intimacy, Disability, and the Limits of Life After War. Colloquium talk, Duke University, March 7th.
Veterans Observing/Veterans Observed. A roundtable discussion with Roy Scranton, David Jay, and Shelly Rambo. Duke University Forum for Scholars and Publics. March 8th.
Rethinking Care and the Military Family: Policy, Practice, and Alternatives for Caregiving. Invited lecture, DeBakey VA, Houston, May 2nd
2014 Scenes from the American Afterwar: Intimacy, Injury, and Forms of Life Worth Living. Gender, Sexuality and Health Symposium, Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Medicine, Columbia University, September 17th
War and Intimacy, invited workshop at University of Colorado, Boulder, April 24th-26th
2013 Conjugal Couplehood and the Injured Soldier Body: Contours of Life in the American Afterwar. “Women & Health” Annual Women and Gender Studies Symposium, Rutgers University, Newark, March 6th
2012 The Social Epidemiology of the New Wars invited workshop organized by Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Chair in Global Health, Collège d'études mondiales, FMSH, Paris, December 16th-18th.
The Weight of Life in the Afterwar at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, University of Syracuse Anthropology Colloquium Lecture, October 1st
Precarious Life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center: Sociality, Solitude, and Being in Common. Economies of Affect Working Group, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, April 6th
2011 In Defense of Intimacy: Solider Identities and Masculinity in Today’s Military, with Aaron Belkin and Brian Selmeski, Annual Gender Studies Research Roundtable, Whitman College, November 1st.
Orienting the Injured Soldier’s Body: Masculinity and its Attachments at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, October 20th.
Fieldnotes from America and Its Military, with Ken MacLeish, Brown University, Department of Anthropology, March 14th
"For What You Do": Injured U.S. Soldiers and the Im-possibilities of Regret, Centre for Ethnography, University of Toronto, Scarborough, February 17th
The War Comes Home, The Costs of War Workshop, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, January 5th
2010 Militarization Beyond Projects, Public Beyond Policy, Co-organizer, with Kenneth MacLeish, and moderator, 109th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, November 20th
Vital Signs and Möbius Time: Frayed Ordinaries at Walter Reed, School of Advanced Research, Santa Fe, NM, August 4th
2009 Producing Patriots: An Economy of Patriotism at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Centre for Study of the United States, Munk Center for International Studies, Toronto, April 23rd
Panels Organized
2019 Beyond the Prosthetic Imaginary: New Intersections between STS and Disability Studies, an open panel stream co-organized with Stephanie Lloyd, 4S, New Orleans, September 6th.
2018 TOUCH I: Tangible Difference, Worlding Techniques and TOUCH II: Contact, Ethics, Force, Co-organized with Tyler Zoanni, AAA meeting, San Jose, November 14th.
2013 Beyond PTSD: The U.S. Military and the Sequelae of War, Roundtable Discussion co-organized with Ken MacLeish, AAA meeting, Chicago, November 20th
2012 Enduring in the Verge: Being with Others in the Boundaries of the Social Invited Panel, AAA meeting, San Francisco, November 17th
Sociality and Deadly Solitude: On Life Death and Being Alone, Co-organizer, with Kenneth MacLeish, Society for Cultural Anthropology, Providence, May 11th
2009 Between Sovereign and Sacer: Ethnography Soldiers On, Co-organizer, with Kenneth MacLeish, AAA meeting, Philadelphia, December 3rd
Public work
Events Organized
2019-20 Disability Studies @Rice. A year-long interdisciplinary event series featuring six events with cutting edge scholars and activists from across the country.
2017 Critical Care: Disability Interventions and Medical Humanities. A day-long symposium on the meanings of cure and care in the contexts of illness, injury, and disability. Kirsten Osterr and Cory Silverberg, Co-organizers. April 8, 2017.
2011 Picturing Soldiers: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Contemporary Soldier Photographs, A film screening and roundtable discussion on visual representations of soldiers in documentary media featuring Tim Hetherington, Lori Ginker, Jennifer Karady, and Suzanne Opton, Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, March 15th
Art Collaborations
2012 Consultant on phenomenology and PTSD for This is War, a play by Hanna Moscovitch, Directed by Richard Rose. Tarragon Theatre, Toronto.
2011-2015 Consulting Anthropologist for elsewhere, a dance project exploring quintessential questions of place, time, and human attachments from award wining Canadian dancer and choreographer Heidi Strauss of adelheid dance company.
Media appearances
2018 Interview on KPFT Houston's Pacifica station show Queer Voices about Trans Theory and Susan Stryker's Gray Warow lecture at Rice University.
2017 Interview for New Books in Medicine podcast about After War.
Interview with Alex Golub for This Anthro Life podcast about blogging and public anthropology.
2016 Interviewed about After War on Houston Matters, the afternoon show for KUHF the Houston NPR station, January 14th.
2012 Featured guest on The Campbell Conversations with Grant Reeher, a 30-minute news interview show on Syracuse NPR affiliate WRVO, http://wrvo.org/post/zoe-wool-campbell-conversations, December 7th.
Interviewed about my work for the website Post-War Watch, http://postwarwatch.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/zoe-h-wool-the-anthropology-of-veteran-healthcare, March 11th.
2011 Interviewed by NPR Albany’s Capital District Bureau Chief Dave Lucas about the nature of injuries sustained by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan for a piece which aired July 28th
Teaching
Course Instructor:
2020, Spring Body, Technology, Enhancement, Joint Graduate-Undergraduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Rice University; Project Pleasantville, Engaged Learning Project, Rice University.
2019, Fall The Anthropology of Toxicity, Joint Graduate-Undergraduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Rice University; Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Undergraduate Lecture, Rice University.
2018, Spring Collateral Afterworlds, Graduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Rice University; Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Undergraduate Lecture, Rice University; Anthropology Journal Club, Joint Graduate-Undergraduate Workshop, Rice University.
2017, Fall Undergraduate Research Preparation, Department of Anthropology, Rice University
2016, Fall Body, Technology and Enhancement, Graduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Rice University; Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Undergraduate Lecture, Rice University.
2016, Spring Illness, Disability, and the Gendered Body, Graduate/Undergraduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology and Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Rice University
2015, Fall Ethnographies of Care, Graduate/Undergraduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Rice University; Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Undergraduate Lecture, Rice University.
2015, Spring Social Theory and Contemporary Questions: Sociality and the Contours of Life. Graduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, Making Ethnography: Writing and Method. Graduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.
2014, Spring Questions in Theory: Sociality and the Contours of Life. Graduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.
2013, Fall Making Ethnography: Writing and Method. Graduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.
2009, Spring Special Problems in Anthropology: Violence and the Everyday. Undergraduate Seminar, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Mississauga.
Invited Guest Lectures: Medical Humanities (Rice University, 2016); Histories and Cultures of Disease and Healing (Rice University/UT Public Health, 2016); War and the Body (Vanderbilt University, 2016); Crisis Work (Columbia University, 2013); Global Encounters (Syracuse University, 2012); Men and Masculinities (Whitman College, 2011); Contemporary Canadian Theatre, Ethics, and the Problem of Evil (University of Toronto, 2010); Language and Power Structure (University of Toronto, 2007).
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL SERVICE:
Grant Reviewer: NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Cultural Anthropology Program; Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Peer Reviewer: American Ethnologist; Catalyst; Cultural Anthropology; Current Anthropology; Ethnos; Medical Anthropology Quarterly; Radical History Review.
Editorial Board: Medical Anthropology Quarterly; Journal of Critical Military Studies.
Service to the Field:
2018-current Creator and editor of Reading the Archive, a special virtual issue series of MAQ.
2018-current Steering committee, Disability Research Interest Group, section of the Society for Medical Anthropology
2018 Mentor for the Political and Legal Anthropology graduate student mentorship program.
FIELDWORK
2017-Ongoing Interviews with Texas and Louisiana veterans effected by exposure to US military burn pits in Iraq.
2016-2020 Mechanical engineering labs at Rice University and rehabilitation research lab at TIRR Memorial Herman working on therapeutic and assistive robotics.
2013-Ongoing Multiple sites related to long-term informal care for injured veterans as well as disability communities.
2007-2008 Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Fort Dix Army Base
2006 (Summer) Army Fisher House at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Anthropological Association
Society for Medical Anthropology
Society for Cultural Anthropology
American Ethnological Society
Society for the Anthropology of North America
Canadian Anthropological Society/ La Société Canadienne d'Anthropologie
Society for the Social Study of Science
LANGUAGE SKILLS
Spanish: proficient reading and aural skills
French: beginner-level reading and aural skills