News-Letter

Media Credit: Daniel Litwin Goodfellow focuses on health and environment in Baltimore.

On election night, Professor Aaron Goodfellow experienced a new side of the city when he was arrested by the Baltimore City Police Department for "inciting a riot" during the post-election celebrations in Charles Village.

Through his fieldwork as a professor and administrator in the Department of Anthropology and the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Aaron Goodfellow has reached far beyond the Homewood campus to study topics like infectious diseases and ecological risks in Baltimore.

The News-Letter caught up with Professor Goodfellow on Tuesday to chat about his present and future areas of anthropological research, as well as his sentiments regarding his arrest.

News-Letter (N-L): Did you always know you wanted to do anthropology research?

Aaron Goodfellow (AG): No, definitely not. I came to anthropology relatively late in my career. I had a whole previous life as a carpenter. I spent five years building houses in Seattle before going to graduate school.


N-L: Then what finally drew you to anthropology?

AG: I'm not really sure. It wasn't necessarily the field that drew me in, it was more my interests that found a home in anthropology. I knew that I wanted to spend some time thinking in depth about issues.

When I left my undergraduate career at the University of Vermont, I knew that I had some sort of unfinished business and I knew there was more work that I wanted to pursue in certain conceptual veins, although it wasn't clear to me where. It wasn't clear if I wanted to do it in anthropology, history or even philosophy. And after being out of school for five years, I just happened to apply to anthropology departments because it seemed like that was the field that would allow me the broadest possibilities for exploring the ideas and concepts that interest me.


N-L: Why did you take those five years off before graduate school?

AG: It wasn't clear to me if I wanted to go back to school yet. I knew that I wanted to eventually, but I had other things that I wanted to do. I really wanted to go climbing, and I really wanted to go skiing. I wanted to indulge in those things. And it wasn't clear to me if an academic life was something that I wanted to commit to.

Continued...

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