I am an Associate Professor at CUNY and Co-Director of the Avenue B Multi-Studies Center/ Center for Feline Studies. My research has mostly concerned science in national security contexts (especially the production of nuclear weapons) and animal-human interactions (especially feline-feline and feline-human interactions). Nuclear weapons present an extinction danger to humans and many other species (though it seems certain that some forms of life would survive a major exchange). Research and production of nuclear weapons and the development of nuclear technology more broadly have deeply affected the ecosystem in a variety of ways. In terms of extinction, I am primarily involved in research on the felidae and their roles regarding extinction, which are at least triple. First, extinction pressure on the big cats such as tigers and lions arising from continued expansion of the human presence. Second, the ongoing zoocide of ‘domestic’ felines (as well as canids and other animals) in human cultures (through euthanasia of ‘excess populations’), which amounts to billions of individuals a year. Third, the extinction pressure that cats, largely domestic and feral cats, place on other animal populations, such as songbirds or small marsupials.

I also translate works from French and Italian on animal and extinction studies.

Publications on Nuclear Science and Animals:
Books:
The Culture of National Security Science: Los Alamos and Wen Ho Lee, Duke University Press, in prep.

Articles/Chapters:
“Los Alamos as Laboratory for Domestic Security Measures: Nuclear Age Battlefield Transformations and the Ongoing Permutations of Security,” Geopolitics 16, 2011, 329-358.
“Activism and Radical Democracy in New Mexico’s Nuclear Ecology: Scale and Participation in Citizen Action,” Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Global Justice, ed. Heather Gautney, Neil Smith, New York, Routledge, 2009, 109-130.
“The Wen Ho Lee Affair: Between Race and National Security,” Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order, ed. Stanley Aronowitz, Heather Gautney, New York, Basic Books, 2002, 15-30.
“Toward Cat Phenomenology: a Search for Animal Being,” Found Object #8, Spring 2000, 155-184.