About

Jen K. AlVarez Hughes (she/they) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department. They have a Ph.D. in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and graduated cum laude with a B.A. in both Anthropology and Gender Studies from Mount Holyoke College in 2010 after almost a decade working at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR. AlVarez Hughes conducted fieldwork in Iceland on the production of whiteness and the role of storytelling and enchantment in political and economic crises. They continue to collaborate on projects with their interlocutors on documenting local economic knowledge, social mobilization, constitutional reform, and eco-critical and environmental humanities approaches to climate change. AlVarez Hughes’s previous research examined language, history, economy, and “kinship” in lesbian bar culture and among queer youth experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon. They studied Icelandic folklore and language at the University of Iceland (Háskoli Íslands, Reykjavík, Iceland) and were a Visiting Scholar there in 2015-2016.  Before coming to Bates, AlVarez Hughes served as Research Fellow and Program Coordinator for the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (RIDGS) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities supporting scholars doing work related to ethnic, Black, Indigenous, gender, women, sexuality, and disability studies. 

Research and Teaching

At Bates, thanks to generous Bates Faculty Development Funds, AlVarez Hughes is focused on editing and post-production their documentary film and book project, Viking Futures. AlVarez Hughes also advises anthropology student theses, and teaches interdisciplinary courses in anthropology, economics, Medieval studies, environmental studies, and gender, queer, and women’s studies. Their courses include: Cultural Anthropology, Culture and Interpretation, Money and Magic, Economic Ecologies (Humans and Non-Humans), and Queering Capitalism. AlVarez Hughes is currently conducting research for an article on intersections between white identity, masculinity, and queerness in alternative investing communities and an article on cultural appropriations of indigeneity and Viking identity in white supremacist movements. Their next book project is on the queer and indigenous human and non-human entanglements and racial and gendered imaginaries that characterize future-oriented social projects including political movements, human spaceflight futures, and global film and TV production in Iceland’s storied ‘North’. AlVarez Hughes has held fellowships with a variety of organizations including the Leifur Eiriksson Foundation, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Institute for Advanced Study, and Steven J. Schochet Foundation in Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies.

Research Interests

• capitalism, economic crisis, utopia, and history of economy as concept
• Iceland, the Arctic, the North Atlantic, Greenland, and Hawai’i
• time, language, sovereignty, translation, humans/non-humans, ontology, and cosmology
• settler colonialism, whiteness, decolonization, racialization, and inequality
• lesbian and queer ethnography, film, and history
• storytelling, narrative, digital and social media, and film
• feminist, Indigenous, and queer theory and methods; critical theory

Film and Media Work

AlVarez Hughes is a professional video and web producer, financial researcher, museum and archives specialist, and ethnographic filmmaker. They were a contributing editor for Cultural Anthropology’s Visual and New Media Review section from 2016-2020 and have been writing, directing, shooting, and producing a variety of shorts, narrative, and experimental documentary films since 1996. Their previous research, digital media, exhibit and video project clients include: the Discovery Channel’s Curiosity Project (now CuriosityStream), The Smithsonian, The Walker Art Center, Minnesota Opera, Bloomberg, and Al Jazeera Plus (among others).

Personal Notes

AlVarez Hughes’s scholarship and teaching on economy, history, and identity emerges from their own identifications. AlVarez Hughes is a white nonbinary queer woman with Mexican and Indigenous heritage. Their settler ancestors migrated to the Pacific Northwest of the United States in the 20th Century where their family remains today. Others, like their grandfather’s Mexican, Yakama, and Walla Walla kin were forcibly removed, moved, and assimilated through settler-colonial projects that continue at present. Little of their family history is known beyond just a few generations which propels their desire to understand the power of stories and of their silences and erasures – and the force of chosen and made kin.