Department of Anthropology

As a four-field trained socio-cultural anthropologist I find inspiration for my research within multiple disciplinary contexts within and outside of anthropology.  The overarching focus of my research is on forms of institutional power, the circulation of presumptive discourse, social exclusion and the ways structural inequality seeps into everyday life.  Taking a critical approach to Culture and cultures, I gravitate toward ‘unmasking’ various unquestioned ideas and the structures they create and inhabit.

I have two current projects related to food, land access, tourism and heritage.  The first and on-going project focuses on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, Italy.  As an active volcanic island, Ischia has a unique environment filled with microclimates, each with particular foodways and practices.  Using what I call the “ecology of taste” I am documenting the ways in which rising oceanic and ambient acidity impact the taste of traditional foods and as a consequence how tourism and environmental change are interrupting the inter-generational transmission of foodways.

The second project centers around ideas about access to public and private recreational spaces in the US and Italy.  This research seeks to investigate the ways in which discourses about access and land rights become seated in settler colonial assumptions about land use and property.  In particular, I ask, how is the logic of settler colonialism multi-scalar?  To this extent settler colonialism is not only an aspect of indigenous – settler relations, but also used as a way to disenfranchise locals in recreational areas who tend to be of significantly lower income, lower health outcomes and lower education levels than the tourists visiting natural spaces and the developers who seek to monetize recreational activities.  Settler logics and discourses are also used by “insiders” to limit access for “newcomers” who find walls of exclusivity keeping them from knowing about and accessing public land resources.  Insider discourses come in the form of ideas about proper land use, the characteristics of individuals “authorized” to access land and experiences, and notions about the proper kind of bodies that should inhabit recreational spaces.

The majority of my career has focused on gay American Indian men (Two-Spirit) and mechanisms of social exclusion.  Within this area I have done both ethnographic and theoretical work, particularly on the ways in which settler colonial ideas seep into Native ideas about gender and sexuality.  I have also focused on the ways in which mechanisms of social exclusion produced greater risk among Native men for HIV infection and lower rates of self-care when living with HIV/AIDS.  The overarching theme for this work has been the impact of “residual” settler colonial ideas that go largely unquestioned even within the most traditional Native communities.  The idea of residual colonial perspectives is also present in my ethnohistorical work on Indian removal.

I have had multiple side projects as well which include studies on the use of performance enhancing drugs among professional cyclists, the use of sport in Italian and French colonialism and the ways we can reconfigure ethnographic methodology in response to changing political climates.

 

Books

2022 Non-Binary Family Configurations: Intersections of Queerness and Homonormativity, B.J. Gilley and G. Masullo, eds., Springer International Press.

2016 Queering the Countryside, Edited Volume with Mary Gray and Colin Johnson, NYU Press.

2014 A Longhouse Fragmented: Ohio Iroquois Autonomy in the Nineteenth Century, SUNY Press.

2011 Critical Queer Indigenous Interventions, University of Arizona Press,
Edited volume with S. Morgenson, Q. Driscoll and C. Finley (equal responsibility).

2006 Becoming Two-Spirit: The Search for Self and Social Acceptance in
Indian Country, University of Nebraska Press.

Articles

Gilley, B.J. (2015) Per tutti i miei parenti: gay indiani americani e relazioni familiari, Famiglie, omesessualità, genitorialità: Pratiche e narrazioni del vivere assieme, R. Parisi, ed. Firenze, IT: SEID Editori.

Gilley, B.J.(2014) Queer Indigenous Entropy: Sexual Circulation and the Conquest Narrative, Anthropology of Consciousness 25(2): 192 - 207.

Gilley, B.J.(2014) Joyous Discipline: Two-Spirit Men’s Autonomy and the Authority of Cultural Conservatives, American Indian Culture and Research Journal.

Gilley, B.J. (2014)  Cycling Nostalgia:  Authenticity, Tourism and Social Critique in Tuscany, Sport in History, Special Issue: Sport's Relationship with Other Leisure Industries, 34(2): 340 - 57.

Gilley, B.J. (2012) Gay American Indian Men’s Mobility and Sexual Sedentarism in the United States Census Rules of Residence, Human Organization, 71(2):  149 – 156.

Gilley, B.J. (2010), “A Balance of Authority:  Ponca Women’s Cultural Autonomy through the Appropriation of the Ethnographic Interview” INTERTEXTS: a Journal of Comparative and Theoretical Reflection 14(2): 43-52.

Gilley, B.J. (2010) Native Sexual Inequalities: American Indian Cultural Conservative Homophobia and the Problem of Tradition, Sexualities, 13 (1): 47-68. 

Gilley, B.J. & M. Keesee (2007) Linking ‘White Oppression’ and HIV/AIDS in American Indian etiology:  Conspiracy Beliefs among AI MSMs and their peers,American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research:  The Journal of the National Center 14(1):  34 - 51. 

Gilley, B.J(2006) “Snag Bags”:  Adapting Condoms to Community Values in American Indian Communities, Culture, Health and Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care 8(6): 1-12.

Gilley, B.J (2006) Cyclist Subjectivity:  Corporeal Management and the Inscription of Suffering, Anthropological Notebooks: Društvo antropologov Slovenije, 12 (2): 53 - 64.

Gilley, B.J.(2004) Making Traditional Spaces:  Cultural Compromise at Two-Spirit Gatherings in Oklahoma, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 28 (2): 81-95.

Chapters

Gilley, B.J. (2011), Two-Spirit Men’s Sexual Survivance against the Inequality of Desire In Critical Queer Indigenous Interventions, S. Morgenson, B. Gilley, Q. Driscoll and C. Finley, eds, University of Arizona Press.

Morgenson, S., B.J. Gilley, Q. Driscoll and C. Finley (2011)  Introduction, In Critical Queer Indigenous Interventions, S. Morgenson, B. Gilley, Q. Driscoll and C. Finley, eds, University of Arizona Press. 

Finley, C., Q. Driscoll, S. Mogenson and B.J. Gilley (2011) The Revolution Is for Everyone: Imagining an Emancipatory Future through Queer Indigenous Critical Theories, In Critical Queer Indigenous Interventions, S. Morgenson, B. Gilley, Q. Driscoll and C. Finley, eds, University of Arizona Press.

Gilley, B.J. (2010) Sherry Ortner In Fifty Key Anthropologists, R. Gordon, A. Lyons and H. Lyons, Eds.  New York:  Routledge Press.

Gilley, B.J. †* (2015) Per tutti i miei parenti: gay indiani americani e relazioni familiari, Famiglie, omesessualità, genitorialità: Pratiche e narrazioni del vivere assieme, R. Parisi, ed. Firenze, IT: SEID Editori.