Positions

Research Areas research areas

Overview

  • Casey Golomski is an award-winning creative writer and cultural and medical anthropologist. His research centers perennial questions about life, death, and their thresholds, asking how people work through and memorialize critical events in their lives and communities. Aside from authoring many academic and literary publications, Golomski's been interviewed for and cited by media outlets such as the New York Times, New Hampshire Public Radio, New Hampshire Magazine, AlexNews, Times of eSwatini, and Business Times.

    His forthcoming book, 'God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End', brings readers to the end of life to glimpse what lies on other side for a country racked by racial violence. A work of creative nonfiction based on seven years of immersive research, 'God's Waiting Room' takes a daylong tour of a small-town nursing home and features the memoirs of seven astonishing individuals--Black, white, and LGBT older adults of South Africa's apartheid generation, their Black nurses of the younger born-free generation, and the untold story of Nelson Mandela's Robben Island prison nurse--to show how people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds. Release date Dec. 5, 2024 with Rutgers University Press, and African rights to Wits University Press.

    Other major writings include a critical first edition of the rediscovered and sole-surviving book manuscript of Regina Twala, one of the first Black African women anthropologists, a collaboration with Joel Cabrita and Nosipho Mngomezulu, as well as his own book 'Funeral Culture: AIDS, Work, and Cultural Change in an African Kingdom' (Indiana University Press), the first full documentary account of the AIDS epidemic in eSwatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy and the country with the world's highest HIV prevalence for more than 15 years. A moving, memorable story of people's families, churches, and businesses, Funeral Culture documents how grassroots responses to the epidemic drove innovations in care practices and counteracted the government's conservative cultural projects. The book shows how disease epidemics, whether AIDS or COVID-19, become grounds for citizens to engage in political reform through their aspirations for work.

    Funded by three Fulbright Fellowships, the Wenner Gren, Reed, Mellon, and Teagle Foundations, and institutional awards and grants, his research and creative writing has been published in a range of anthropology, social science, Black and African studies, and literary journals and volumes. He was also awarded the Society for Humanistic Anthropology First Prize in Poetry. As an invited speaker on his research and approaches to writing, he has given talks at Emory, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin, Boston, Michigan State, Oslo, and the Universities of Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal, Witwatersrand, and Pretoria in South Africa, where he is also an ongoing visiting researcher.

    Currently he is a board member for the journal Anthropology and Humanism and the Seacoast African American Cultural Center (SAACC) in Portsmouth, NH where he supervises internships and public cultural education through curation of their collections. For his contributions to SAACC, he also received a state-wide Spirit of NH Volunteer Service Award.

    He is always happy to meet with interested students and consult for both public and private organizations.

    • Selected Publications

    Academic Article

    Year Title
    2024 The Impact of Sharing Recovery Stories in Public: Stigma, Trauma Response, and the Need for Multiple Pathways.  Journal of Social Service Research.  50:481-493. 2024
    2024 Hugo ka Canham. Riotous Deathscapes..  American Historical Review.  129:357-358. 2024
    2024 Quality of Life among Low-Income Older Residents in Subsidized Senior Housing: Rural vs. Suburban Comparisons.  Journal of Social Service Research.  50:39-53. 2024
    2023 Biopolitics from the Global South: a new generation takes on customary nationalism in eSwatini..  African Journal of AIDS Research.  22:257-260. 2023
    2023 The day Mugabe died.  Anthropology and Humanism.  48:355-357. 2023
    2023 Beyond the Limits: Conversation, Part I..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37:90-91. 2023
    2023 Beyond the Limits: Conversation, Part II..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37:96-97. 2023
    2023 Beyond the Limits: Conversation, Part III..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37:102-103. 2023
    2023 Beyond the Limits: Conversation, Part IV..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37:110-111. 2023
    2023 Beyond the Limits: Conversation, Part V..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37:116-117. 2023
    2023 Gentleness..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37:98-101. 2023
    2023 Beyond the Limits: Medicine, Healing, and Medical Anthropology - Conversation, Parts I-V.  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  37. 2023
    2023 Customary nationalism in crisis: protest, identity and politics in eSwatini.  Journal of Contemporary African Studies.  41:119-140. 2023
    2022 Visiting Hours: Spacetimes of Human-Animal Interaction in South African Elder Care..  Medical Anthropology Quarterly: international journal for the cultural and social analysis of health.  36:217-236. 2022
    2022 Aspects of ICT connectivity among older adults living in rural subsidized housing: reassessing the digital divide.  Journal of Enabling Technologies.  16:17-27. 2022
    2020 Multilevel Factors for Life Satisfaction Among Residents in Non-Urban Subsidized Senior Housing.  Innovation in Aging.  4:109-109. 2020
    2020 Countermythologies: Queering Lives in a Southern African Gay and Lesbian Pentecostal Church.  Transforming Anthropology.  28:155-168. 2020
    2020 Society for Humanistic Anthropology 2019 Writing Awards.  Anthropology and Humanism Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly.  45:139-141. 2020
    2020 Greying mutuality: race and joking relations in a South African nursing home.  Africa.  90:273-292. 2020
    2020 "Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery": Dying in South African Frail Care.  Anthropology & Aging.  41:9-23. 2020
    2019 Interrogating traditionalism: gender and Swazi Culture in HIV/AIDS policy. “Customary Nationalism in Crisis: Protest, Identity and Politics in Eswatini” special issue, edited by V. Laterza and C. Golomski.  Journal of Contemporary African Studies.  41:183-198. 2019
    2019 Thumb War.  Anthropology and Humanism.  44:194-197. 2019
    2019 Thumb War. Anthropology and Humanism 44(2): 194-197 2019
    2018 Perceived and Unmet Needs for Health and Social Services in Publicly Subsidized Senior Housing.  Innovations in Aging.  2:994-994. 2018
    2018 Funeral Culture 2018
    2018 Elder Care and Private Health Insurance in South Africa: The Pathos of Race-Class..  Medical Anthropology: cross-cultural studies in health and illness.  37:311-326. 2018
    2018 Work of a Nation: Christian Funerary Ecumenism and Institutional Disruption in Swaziland.  Journal of Southern African Studies.  44:299-314. 2018
    2017 Authority..  Medical Humanities.  43:206. 2017
    2017 Christians' cut: popular religion and the global health campaign for medical male circumcision in Swaziland..  Culture, Health and Sexuality.  19:844-858. 2017
    2017 “My Mother Got Annoyed”.  Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine.  83:405-405. 2017
    2016 Blind spot.  Medicine Anthropology Theory.  3:158. 2016
    2016 Game Walk at Pilanesberg.  Anthropology and Humanism Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly.  41:216-217. 2016
    2016 Religion and Migration: Cases for a Global Material Ethics.  African Studies.  75:449-462. 2016
    2016 Outliving love: marital estrangement in an African insurance market.  Social Dynamics.  42:304-320. 2016
    2016 Risk, Mistake, and Generational Contest in Bodily Rituals of Swazi Jerikho Zionism.  Journal of Contemporary Religion.  31:351-364. 2016
    2015 Urban cemeteries in Swaziland: materialising dignity.  Anthropology Southern Africa.  38:360-371. 2015
    2015 wearing memories: clothing and the global lives of mourning in swaziland.  Material Religion: the journal of objects, art and belief.  11:303-327. 2015
    2015 Compassion technology: Life insurance and the remaking of kinship in Swaziland's age of HIV.  American Ethnologist.  42:81-96. 2015
    2014 Generational inversions: 'working' for social reproduction amid HIV in Swaziland..  African Journal of AIDS Research.  13:351-359. 2014

    Book

    Year Title
    2024 God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End 2024
    2018 Funeral Culture: AIDS, Work, and Cultural Change in an African Kingdom 2018

    Chapter

    Year Title
    2022 Deathnography: Writing, Reading, and Radical Mourning.  105-124. 2022
    2021 12. Dark Matter: Formations of Death Pollution in Southeastern African Funerals.  297-316. 2021
    2021 Dark Matter.  297-316. 2021
    2021 Dark Matter: Formations of Death Pollution in Southeastern African Funerals.  297-316. 2021
    2020 Beautiful Blessings: LGBTIQA Christians’ Reproductive and Parenting Aspirations..  38-44. 2020
    2018 Uhlanga. In African Religions: Beliefs and Practices Through History. Editors: Thomas, Douglas, Alanamu, Temilola, p. 241. ABC-CLIO Greenwood, Santa Barbara..  241-241. 2018
    2016 Polygamy, Polygyny, and Polyandry.  1-3. 2016
    2016 Purity versus Pollution.  1-2. 2016
    A Precious Tale

    Conference Paper

    Year Title
    "Securing Frailty: Black Aspirations for Senior Housing in South Africa"

    Teaching Activities

  • Peoples and Cultures Taught course
  • Peoples and Cultures Taught course
  • The Body: Fat, Fitness & Form Taught course
  • Peoples and Cultures Taught course 2022 - 2023
  • Reading and Research Taught course 2022
  • Africana Religions Taught course 2022
  • The Body: Fat, Fitness & Form Taught course 2022
  • Gendr, Sex, HIV Sub-Sahara Afr Taught course 2021
  • Peoples&Cultures/Sub-Sahar Afr Taught course 2021
  • Global Population & Health Taught course 2021
  • Global Population & Health Taught course 2021
  • Honors Senior Thesis Taught course 2021
  • Peoples&Cultures/Sub-Saharan Taught course 2021
  • Peoples&Cultures/Sub-Saharan Taught course 2021
  • Gendr, Sex, HIV Sub-Sahara Afr Taught course 2020
  • Honors Senior Thesis Taught course 2020
  • The Body: Fat, Fitness & Form Taught course 2020
  • Global Perspectives:Intro Anth Taught course 2020
  • Africana Religions Taught course 2020
  • Medical Anth:Illness & Healing Taught course 2020
  • Global Perspectives:Intro Anth Taught course 2019
  • Gendr, Sex, HIV Sub-Sahara Afr Taught course 2019
  • Internship Taught course 2019
  • Medical Anth:Illness & Healing Taught course 2019
  • Peoples & Cultures/Sub Saharan Taught course 2018
  • Reading and Research Taught course 2018
  • Global Perspectives:Intro Anth Taught course 2018
  • Global Population & Health Taught course 2018
  • Peoples&Cultures of World\Hon Taught course 2018
  • PeoplesCultures:Sub-Sah Africa Taught course 2018
  • Reading and Research Taught course 2018
  • Gendr, Sex, HIV Sub-Sahara Afr Taught course 2017
  • The Body: Fat, Fitness & Form Taught course 2017
  • Medical Anthropology Taught course 2017
  • PeoplesCultures:Sub-Sah Africa Taught course 2017
  • Peoples&Cultures/SubSaharan Af Taught course 2016

    • Education And Training

  • B.A. Sociology, Saint Norbert College
  • Ph.D. Anthropology, Brandeis University

    • Full Name

  • Casey Golomski