Featured Graduate Student: Johnathan Norris
PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology
Johnathan Norris is a fifth year doctoral candidate, studying sociocultural anthropology. His research interests include the anthropology of emotions and affect; ethics and morality; queer anthropology; political anthropology, politics of safety, politics of care; migration and displacement.
We sat down with him to talk about his research and his hopes for anthropology.
Can you tell us a little about where you are right now and what you’re studying?
I am in Armand, Jordan, the capital city of the country of Jordan, in the Middle East. My research looks at emotions and ethics within the queer community here in Jordan. So specifically, I look at safety and identity and how those kind of collide in how queer people adapt to a changing environment where there is increased anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, increased police pressure, and how emotions intersect with ethics. I’m looking to see how that is changing the shape of what the queer community looks like on the ground. I also look at their everyday lives, where they meet, what they do, what they talk about, just to see how that informs ethical decision-making. So that’s kind of broadly what I do.
Day-to-day life is actually interesting. It depends. During the regular work week: because it’s in the city, an urban environment, not everyone is queer, so I can’t just go out and meet people. Being queer is also in a gray area, it makes Jordan a little unique, in the sense that it’s not illegal, but it’s not protected either. Society views it extremely negatively, so it’s kind of a secret, kind of not, depending on who you like, what each person kind of feels for safety, and what they do. So my day-to-day stuff often takes place in the evenings during the week. I meet up with friends; sometimes we just hang out, other times I’ll be doing interviews. Tonight we’re going to a straight bar, but it’s accepting for gays, and so it gets really like ‘gay-ish’. So sometimes I do that, sometimes I will do interviews, sometimes I won’t do anything. Because most of my stuff happens on the weekends. Everyone’s off work, no one has work the next day, and so there’s actually queer clubs that will pop up across the city there. One thing I love about the Middle East, especially Jordan, is they’ll do villas. My friends will rent villas and we’ll go off to other places outside of the capital to have a pool party. So that’s actually one of the sites of my research. It ends up that most of my stuff that I do actually happens on the weekends.
How do you get access to these queer events?
That’s actually one of the hardest things about first starting out was that I heard about all these things, but they’re all underground. Sometimes there will be internal group chats, other times they’ll just message other Jordanian friends directly. I was trying to break into some of these groups for a few months so now I get stuff sent directly to me. I usually just follow my friends though. I might go to another villa than them just to check out a different kind of scene, but usually when there’s a queer club happening, there’s only one. We all message each other, but usually I’ll get a flyer sent directly to me about a villa or something. That’s how I figure out what’s up.
How do you feel your research and your anthropological interests have evolved throughout your education?
It’s actually the story behind why I left theology and pastoral ministry. I was outed as a gay man, and I was fired from my church; my denomination took my credentials away, and I could no longer be a pastor. That led me to a period of deconstruction — religious deconstruction. It was in that phase of deconstructing, leaving my religion, kind of becoming, you know, an atheist, stripped of any kind of compass; like when it comes to ethics and morals influencing our decisions and also emotions, that period for me was all about wrestling ethically. If I leave my religion, is there still an ethical system I can hold on to? What do I do now? And all the emotions that came into play and then just realizing how much of one’s identity gets wrapped up into things like that and how much it affects everything. That’s kind of where the questions begin.
Can you share any advice for students considering studying anthropology?
One of the things I love about anthropology is the ability of an anthropologist to study widely. And even now, within anthropology, there’s kind of an openness to try and play with other theories. To look at novels and try to use them as a means of inspiration. Or how we can learn data science and data analytics and apply that to philosophy and gender studies. Something I would recommend is to retain creativity in your pursuit of knowledge and to know that no matter what brings you to anthropology, you could use all of it down the road, even if it is theology. That’s in part why I love our department. Not all departments are this way. Some are very focused on where you study anthropology in undergrad and then you maybe got a Masters in it and then you’re going for your PhD and it’s all very anthropological. In our department, we have former theology majors. It’s a nice intellectual space where we can all operate in our perspectives and the department fosters that.
How do you see the field of anthropology evolving in the coming years? Are there any developments you’re particularly excited about or hope to see come to fruition?
I would say more training, which is going to sound weird, but a little more training outside of the typical anthropological methods. We’re really big on ethnography, we’re really big on participant observation, sometimes we do historical analysis in the archives, but that’s a lot of our methods. It’s all very important to us and still very important to what I do. I would just like to see, and I do see some evidence of this, people asking ‘what other methods can we do?’ Like using data; How can we play with data, especially when we’re going to be working with AI? That’s another big area: getting into technology studies. I would hope the actual discipline [anthropology] starts, and our department is doing it, opening up its mind to not all students going on to be professors. We need to train newer students in doing something that’s not going to be a full-time tenure-track professor and that means requiring classes on other methods like quantitative methods. We’re moving in that direction to where we’re not just these passive observers. We need to get in and do activist work along with activists, or do things alongside the communities that we study. We need to start making it a core kind of requirement to the discipline.
Do you have any favorite spots around campus?
Honestly, one of my favorite spots around campus is the grad student lounge, because it’s just a great place to hang out. I like to work in the African Studies section of the Mugar Library. There is a corner where I like to work. I’ll write, I’ll grade, and it’s like two walled windows that overlook the Charles. So it’s like I can work and do what I got to do, but it’s a gorgeous view.