Prof. Hilary Cunningham Scharper

Teaching Area:
Theories of Nature; Wilderness Landscapes and Conservation Areas; Environmental Politics; Anthropology of Animals; Nature, Culture and the City.

Research Interests:
Current research is based in northern Ontario on the Bruce Peninsula and focuses on “gated ecologies,” especially those pertaining to protected nature reserves and wilderness areas. Prof. Cunningham’s work focuses on how the creation and implementation of borders and boundaries around conservation areas is linked to particular conceptualizations of nature.

Publications:
– Book chapter. Bordering on the Environmental: Permeabilities, Ecology and Geopolitical Boundaries in The Blackwell Companion to Border Studies. Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, eds. Wiley Blackwell, Forthcoming 2011.

– Book chapter. “Ecology, Poverty and Possible Urban Worlds” in The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Ingrid Stefanovic and Stephen Scharper, eds. University of Toronto Press. Forthcoming 2011.

– Book chapter. Gating Ecology in a Gated Globe: Environmental Aspects of ‘Securing our Borders’. In Borderlands: Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power and Identity, edited by Hastings Donnan and Tom Wilson. University Press of America. 2010.

– Co-editor, with Josiah McC. Heyman, Special Edition on Borders, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Vol. 11 (3). 2004.

Awards, Affiliations, Personal Interests, etc.:
Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award for God and Caesar at the Rio Grande: Sanctuary and the Politics of Religion. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 1995.

Prof. Cunningham (as Hilary Scharper) also writes fiction and recently published a novel, “Perdita,” with Simon & Schuster, Canada.