
Nestor Silva
Teaching Fellow
Stanford Introductory Studies - Civic, Liberal, and Global Education
Bio
Before beginning my PhD studies, I spent nearly a decade working in K-12 education with a focus on consulting/tutoring for special needs students and their families, people ranging from the ultra-wealthy to the undocumented, work which shapes my approach to both teaching and research. For the last two years of my doctoral program, I was a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity. I earned my PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford in June 2022.
Academic Appointments
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Lecturer, Stanford Introductory Studies - Civic, Liberal, and Global Education
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
My research on the environmental politics of hydrocarbon extraction in Ecuador focused on the relationship between Indigenous people and leftist national government committed to environmental protection, multiculturalism, and hydrocarbon extraction. My research in the Colombian llanos addresses the environmental politics of people who identify as farmers and hydrocarbon industry employees in a region marked not only by civil conflict but also by colonial and developmental imaginaries of the state. My Latin American research was foundational my dissertation fieldwork based in the small town of Tioga in northwestern North Dakota’s Bakken region, characterized by farmland fracking.
Social and ecological uncertainties are inherent to this juxtaposition of extraction and agriculture. Those uncertainties are managed by landowners, officials, scientists, and industry personnel. My book project analyzes how managing social/ecological uncertainty was integral to colonizing the Northern Plains, arguing that the managerial ideals of settler colonialism persist not only in the environmental politics of fracking but in a number of socioecological issues far beyond rural, conservative, and pro-oil North Dakota.
2021-22 Courses
- CSRE Senior Seminar
CSRE 200X (Aut) -
Independent Studies (2)
- CSRE Senior Honors Research
CSRE 200Y (Win) - CSRE Senior Honors Research
CSRE 200Z (Spr)
- CSRE Senior Honors Research
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Prior Year Courses
2020-21 Courses
- Introduction to Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
CSRE 196C, ENGLISH 172D, PSYCH 155, SOC 146, TAPS 165 (Spr) - Race and Environment
CSRE 24 (Win) - Undergraduate Research Proposal Writing Workshop
ANTHRO 92A (Aut) - Undergraduate Research Proposal Writing Workshop
ANTHRO 92B (Win)
2019-20 Courses
- Vital Curse: Oil As Culture
ANTHRO 184A (Spr)
2018-19 Courses
- Introduction to Cultural and Social Anthropology
ANTHRO 101S, ANTHRO 1S (Sum)
- Introduction to Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
All Publications
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Beyond Petrotoxic Apparatuses
ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY-ADVANCES IN RESEARCH
2021; 12 (1): 127-145
View details for DOI 10.3167/ares.2021.120108
View details for Web of Science ID 000694051100008
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Huaorani Transformations in Twenty-First-Century Ecuador: Treks into the Future of Time (Book Review)
JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY
2018; 23 (3): 593–95
View details for DOI 10.1111/jlca.12370
View details for Web of Science ID 000454290800012
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Life in Oil: Cofan Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia (Book Review)
JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY
2018; 17 (3): 270–73
View details for DOI 10.1353/lag.2018.0057
View details for Web of Science ID 000450724800020
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"Jodidisimos": The Local Politics of Hydrocarbon Acceptance in Colombia's Eastern Plains
JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY
2018; 17 (3): 132–52
View details for DOI 10.1353/lag.2018.0044
View details for Web of Science ID 000450724800007
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Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Risks and Tenables among Native Amazonians in Northeastern Ecuador
HUMAN ORGANIZATION
2014; 73 (4): 375-388
View details for Web of Science ID 000345516100008