Hayden Kantor

PhD, Cornell University, Anthropology (2016)

MA, Cornell University, Anthropology (2012)

MA, University of Chicago, Social Sciences (2008)

BA, Duke University, Political Science (2005)

About

Hayden Kantor is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University.

Hayden's research as a sociocultural anthropologist concerns capitalism, food, and ethics in South Asia and the United States. His current book project considers changing food and farming practices in India. It is based on a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Bihar. Small-scale farming families there grapple with precarious agrarian livelihoods. Economic liberalization and mounting environmental risks have fueled urban migration and reconfigured kinship and caste relations at the village level. His research considers what it means to care and be cared for under these conditions of chronic economic insecurity.

His PWR 1 course, "Food Values: The Rhetoric of What and How We Eat," prompts students to consider how the multiple ways that what we eat expresses what we value. His PWR 2 course, "Think Global: The Rhetoric of Global Citizenship," invites students to explore the meaning of global citizenship and how they might relate their own education to pressing global questions.

Areas of specialization: humanities, social sciences, anthropology, history

Genre expertise: research essays, personal statements, proposals and grant applications, cover letters & resumes, ethnographic writing and creative non-fiction, articles and presentations for non-academic audiences

Enjoys developing arguments, organization, revision, and style