“…We need stories (and theories) that are just big enough to gather up the complexities and keep the edges open and greedy for surprising new and old connections.”
—Donna Haraway
Research & Writing
Theoretical Foundations
Theoretically, my work lives in the intersection of feminist science studies, ethnography, and strategic foresight. A central question driving my work is the question of coloniality, or ways legacies of a bounded, individual “self” permeate discourses around what it means to be human. Aspiring beyond social solutions based in liberal humanist frameworks means historicizing how colonial hegemonies and hierarchies continue to dominate, while amplifying alternatives. What could a future look like in which ecological, relational terms prevail?
Conference Presentations
Dwelling Together Between Queasy Worlds: Storytelling for Sacred Citizenship. Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, 2019: Radical Approaches to Wellbeing, University of Massuchusetts, Amherst. November, 2019.
(re)membered Ecologies: Touch as Decolonial Praxis The Mind and Life Summer Research Institute 2019: Contemplative Practices and Interventions for Individual and Social Flourishing. June 2019.
Touch as Scholarship: Toward a Decolonial Praxis The Politics of Climate Change: The Western States Political Science Association 2019 Annual Meeting. Sub-conference: The Politics of the Mindfulness Revolution, The Body Politic. April 2019.
Bruja Pedagogies: Resurgent Knowledges Imagining Humane Institutions: Connection, Social Action, and Scholarship Rooted in Contemplative Practices. University of Massachusetts, October 2018.
Dwelling Together Between Queasy Worlds:
Reconjugating the Colonial Wound
Planetary Cultural and Literary Studies: New Epistemologies and Relational Futures in the Age of the Anthropocene, Université de Montreal, April 2018.
De-Territorializing Landscapes: Twenty-One Amazonian Maps Affect Theory Conference 2015: Worldings, Tensions, Futures. The Event of Poiesis; Arts Based Research. October 2015.
De-Territorializing Landscapes: Twenty-One Amazonian Maps Notes from the Underground: The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), 2015. University of Idaho, Moscow. June 2015.
Breaking the Biopolitical Body: (Re)embodied Geographies in Linda Hogan’s The Woman Who Watches Over the WorldBranding the “Other”: Biopolitics, Memory, and Identity in Cultural Representations: The Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. April 2015.
Awards & Fellowships
Summer Research Institute, Mind and Life Society Scholarship Recipient | 2019 & 2018
Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Social Justice Fellow | 2019 & 2018 & 2017
University of New Mexico PhD Full Funding, American Studies | 2013-2018
Publications
Mundt, K.E, 2019. Decoloniality-as-Praxis: On Decoloniality by Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh. Book Review. Journal of Cultural Studies and Critical Methodologies. Sage Publishing, London. Print.
Mundt, K.E., 2021. Touch as Passage: Inhabiting the Colonial Wound. The Arrow Journal of Wakeful Politics and Culture. Special Issue: Healing Social and Ecological Rifts Part II. https://arrow-journal.org/healing-social-and-ecological-rifts-part-2/
Mundt, K.E, 2022. Body, (un)Body: Breaking with the Unbearable. The Arrow Journal of Wakeful Politics and Culture. Special Issue on Rest and Creativity. https://arrow-journal.org/rest-and-creativity/
Mundt, K.E., 2019. (re)Insurgent Ecologies: Dwelling Together Between Queasy Worlds. Dissertation. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds/82/
Curriculum Development
Institute of American Indian Arts Updated core writing program assessment strategies, interpreted data, and administered assessment essay | October 2015–May 2016
Institute of American Indian Arts Researched and developed resource list/annotated bibliography for proposed BA in Integral Studies/Arts-Based Learning | February 2015–April 2015
Collaborations
Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust Board Member | 2016–2018
The Cut + Paste Society
Core member | 2013–2017