Christine J. Walley

Program Head

SHASS Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Anthropology

Room E53-335U

617-258-7908

Biography

Christine Walley is Professor of Anthropology at MIT. She received a Ph.D. in anthropology from New York University in 1999. Her first ethnography Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park (Princeton University Press, 2004) explored environmental conflict in rural Tanzania. The Exit Zero Project used family stories from the former steel mill region of Southeast Chicago to examine the long-term impact of deindustrialization in the United States. It includes an award-winning book with University of Chicago Press (2013), as well as a documentary film made with director Chris Boebel (2017). Chris Walley and Chris Boebel have also collaborated with the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum and web designer and artist Jeff Soyk to create an interactive archive and storytelling website sechicagohistory.org. The website uses objects that Southeast Chicago residents saved and the stories they told about them to explore the transformation of what it means to be “working class” in the United States. Walley is also working on a book based on this material tentatively titled, Notes from a ‘Paraindustrial’ Age.

Research

Exit Zero Project

This project includes a book, Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago, published by University of Chicago Press (2013) as well as a documentary, Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story (2017) made with filmmaker Chris Boebel. The book and documentary use family stories and home movies to explore the long-term impacts of deindustrialization and its role in expanding class inequalities in the United States through the lens of the former steel mill community of Southeast Chicago. The project also includes a collaboration with the all-volunteer Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. The collaboration has resulted in an online archive and storytelling site (sechicagohistory.org) that uses objects that diverse groups of residents saved, and the stories they told about them, to explore the transformation in what it means to be “working class” in the United States. The website, designed with Creative Director Jeff Soyk, was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, and MIT. Walley is currently working on a book based on the materials found in the Museum tentatively titled, Notes from a ‘Paraindustrial’ Age.

Selected Publications

2024	“Bringing a Working-Class Archive Online: Multimodal Storytelling in a Postindustrial City.” (forthcoming) Anthropology Now.
2024	“Unsettling the Self: Exploring Autoethnography, Intimate Ethnography, and Ethnographic Memoir,” introductory article by Christine Walley and Denielle Elliott to special issues “Unsettling the Self” including 13 autoethnographic pieces by anthropologists, (forthcoming) American Anthropologist. Anticipated December 2024.
2024	“Living in the Paraindustrial.” In: special issue “Unsettling the Self,” (forthcoming) American Anthropologist. Anticipated December 2024.
2023	No Land to Count On. Chinese Translation of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. Published by Tao Zhi Yao Yao Culture Co., Ltd (TZYY), translator Yiming Zhang with Fei Yan, 307 pgs.
2022	“Telling Stories Through Saved Objects: The Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project.” Cultural Anthropology, Fieldsights, June 28, 2022.
2020	“Robots as Symbols and Anxiety over Work Loss.” Online research brief with MIT’s Taskforce on the Work of the Future
2020	“The “How to” of Working-Class Studies: Self, Stories, and Working Across Media” in The Working Class Studies Handbook, eds. Christie Launius, Tim Strangleman, and Michele Fazio. Routledge.
2018	“Trump’s Election and the White Working Class: What We Missed,” American Ethnologist 44(2):1-8.
2017	Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story, a documentary film by Chris Boebel and Christine Walley. 90 mins.
2015	Transmedia as experimental ethnography: The Exit Zero Project, deindustrialization, and the politics of nostalgia. American Ethnologist, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 624-639.
2013	Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
2009	Deindustrializing Chicago: A Daughter’s Story. In: The Insecure American, eds. Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
2004	Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
2003	"Our Ancestors Used to Bury Their 'Development' in the Ground": Modernity and the Meaning of Development in Tanzania’s Mafia Island Marine Park. Anthropological Quarterly 76, no. 1 (2003): 33-54.
2002	"They Scorn Us Because We are Uneducated": Power and Knowledge in a Tanzanian Marine Park. Ethnography 3, no. 3 (2002): 265-298.
1997	Searching for "Voices": Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debates over Female Genital Operations. Cultural Anthropology 12, no. 3 (1997): 405-438.

Teaching

21A.550J / STS.064
DV Lab: Documenting Science Through Video and New Media

Uses documentary video making as a tool to explore everyday social worlds (including those of science and engineering), and for thinking analytically about media itself. Students make videos and engage in critical analysis. Provides students with instruction on how to communicate effectively and creatively in a visual medium, and how to articulate their own analyses of documentary images in writing and spoken word. Readings drawn from documentary film theory, anthropology, and social studies of science. Students view a wide variety of classic documentaries and explore different styles. Lab component devoted to digital video production. Includes a final video project. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 12.

Video work from this class has been presented at special screenings at the MIT Museum as well as in other venues. Several videos have been posted in the DV Lab class website, http://www.dvlab.mit.edu/

21A.461
What is Capitalism?

Introduces academic debates on the nature of capitalism, drawing upon the ideas of scholars as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Examines anthropological studies of how contemporary capitalism plays out in people's daily lives in a range of geographic and social settings, and implications for how we understand capitalism today. Settings range from Wall Street investment banks to auto assembly plants, from family businesses to consumer shopping malls. Enrollment limited.

21A.410
Environmental Struggles

Offers an international perspective on the environment. Using environmental conflict to consider the stakes that groups in various parts of the world have in nature, while also exploring how ecological and social dynamics interact and change over time, subject considers such controversial environmental issues as: nuclear contamination in Eastern Europe; genetic bioprospecting in Mexico; toxic run-off in the rural US; the Bhopal accident in India; and the impact of population growth in the Third World.

21A.120
American Dream: Exploring Class in the United States

Explores the experiences and understandings of class among Americans positioned at different points along the US social spectrum. Considers a variety of classic frameworks for analyzing social class and uses memoirs, novels and ethnographies to gain a sense of how class is experienced in daily life and how it intersects with other forms of social difference such as race and gender.

21A.429J / STS.320J
Environmental Conflict

Explores the complex interrelationships among humans and natural environments, focusing on non-western parts of the world in addition to Europe and the United States. Use of environmental conflict to draw attention to competing understandings and uses of "nature" as well as the local, national and transnational power relationships in which environmental interactions are embedded. In addition to utilizing a range of theoretical perspectives, subject draws upon a series of ethnographic case studies of environmental conflicts in various parts of the world.

Awards

2023	Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation “Broadening Narratives” grant for “Closing of Mills” and “Wetlands to Waste” storylines, Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project.
2023	Best Interactive Media Award for Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project, Society for Visual Anthropology
2022	Honorable Mention, New Directions Award, General Anthropology Division, American Anthropological Association for The Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project
2022	Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism from the Working Class Studies Association for The Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project w/ the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum, Chris Boebel, and Jeff Soyk.
2021	Illinois State Historical Records and Archive Board grant w/ Southeast Chicago Historical Museum
2020	Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation grant for the Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project w/ the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum.
2020	SHASS Research Fund Award, MIT, for Haunted Brownfields: The Transformation of Being ‘Working-Class” in the United States.
2019	Keeper of the Calumet Award from the Calumet Heritage Partnership for the Exit Zero Project. Co-winner with Chris Boebel.
2017	National Endowment for the Humanities Implementation Grant for interactive website project w/ the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum.
2016	Illinois State Historical Records Grant for archival project w/ Southeast Chicago Historical Museum.
2015	Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism from the Working Class Studies Association for the documentary film Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story (director, Chris Boebel; producer, Chris Walley)
2014	CLR James Book Prize from the Working Class Studies Association for Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
2014	National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (Humanities Collections and References Award) for Exit Zero website project in conjunction with the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. Role: PI
2013	Second Place, Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing (Society for Humanistic Anthropology) for Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
2012	LEF Moving Image Documentary Grant

News

MIT welcomes nine MLK Scholars for 2024-25 - Leslie Jonas and Christine Taylor-Butler are hosted by MIT Anthropology Faculty Members

Institute Community and Equity Office | MIT News

September 11, 2024

Every year since 1991, MIT has welcomed outstanding visiting scholars to campus through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program. The Institute aspires to attract candidates who are, in King’s words, “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.”

MLK Scholars enhance the intellectual and cultural life of the Institute through teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and through active research collaborations with faculty. They work within MIT’s academic departments, but also across fields such as medicine, the arts, law, and public service. The program honors King’s life and legacy by expanding and extending the reach of our community.

Joining MIT in January 2025, Leslie Jonas, an elder member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, is an Indigenous land and water conservationist with a focus on weaving traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM).

Christine Taylor-Butler ’81, member of the 2023–24 MLK Visiting Scholars cohort is extending her visit with MIT for an additional year: she will build on her existing partnerships on campus and in the local communities in promoting STEAM literacy for children.

MIT SHASS announces appointment of new heads for 2024-25

School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences | MIT News

July 11, 2024

The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has announced several changes to the leadership of its academic units for the 2024-25 academic year.

“I’m confident these outstanding members of the SHASS community will provide exceptional leadership. I’m excited to see each implement their vision for the future of their unit,” says Agustin Rayo, the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT SHASS.

Chris Walley will serve as head of Anthropology. Walley is the SHASS Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. She received a PhD in anthropology from New York University in 1999. Her first ethnography, “Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park,” explored environmental conflict in coastal Tanzania. More recently, she is the author of “Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago” as well as co-creator of a documentary film (with director Chris Boebel) entitled “Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story.” She is the director of the Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project, an online multimedia initiative.

Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project announced as SVA Film & Media Festival 2023 Winner in Best Interactive Media

SVA Film Media Festival

November 15, 2023

Winner: Best Interactive Media - Recognizes media work—including VR installations, iDocs, websites, games, podcasts—that best embodies the creative and collaborative spirit of multimodal anthropologies.

The Southeast Chicago Historical Museum is located in a single room in a park fieldhouse on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was founded in the early 1980s by community volunteers. The region had once been part of one of the largest industrial corridors in the world. But, as the local steel mills began to close, residents felt their history slipping away. They donated an astonishing array of artifacts to the Museum. These materials offer a unique window onto everyday life in an industrial community from the vantage point of residents themselves.

See the award-winning website at https://www.sechicagohistory.org/

Living Climate Futures 2022 MIT Anthro DV Lab Videos

April 21, 2023

Students from MIT Anthropology's DV Lab class shot footage documenting 2022's Living Climate Futures events including: Indigenous Earth Day, Environmental Justice and Climate Resilience Tour at GreenRoots in Chelsea, and EcoTown Workshop Event.

2022 GAD New Directions Awards: Christine J. Walley wins Honorable Mention

Amercian Anthropological Association Communities | Katie Nelson

August 25, 2022

2022 NEW DIRECTIONS AWARD - GROUP CATEGORY | Honorable Mention: Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project (SECASP)

Christine J. Walley, Director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The recently launched Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project (SECASP) (sechicagohistory.org) is an online collaborative venture. It highlights materials donated to the all-volunteer Southeast Chicago Historical Museum by the multiracial working-class residents who historically settled in this former steel mill region. The website uses residents' saved objects – and the stories they told about them – to bring to life everyday experiences of work, immigration, job loss, and environmental contamination from the point of view of residents themselves.

The GAD Awards Committee acknowledges the creativity, innovation, and broad dissemination of anthropological insights of SECASP, a collaborative digital project that exposes the public to the history and material culture of Chicago's ethnically diverse working-class neighborhoods.

Living Climate Futures Event Shows a Holistic Way Forward in Climate Fight

article by Stephanie M. McPherson

May 2, 2022

The sun shone bright and warm on the Dertouzos Amphitheater at the Stata Center this past Earth Day. A banner stating “Our Future is Fossil Free — Divest Now” waved from between two trees as a panel of Indigenous leaders and thinkers from across the country talked about their experiences with climate activism and their worldviews that place humanity as one with the rest of the Earth.

3 Questions: An anthropologist and a filmmaker on working-class lives in Chicago

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office

September 22, 2021

The steel industry in the U.S. shrank dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, with profound effects on the country’s industrial workforce. Suddenly, blue-collar workers who had spent their careers in the mills — often as part of multigenerational steelworking families — found themselves unable to earn a living as communities around them suffered and people lost the middle-class lives they had been fashioning. That process was chronicled in MIT anthropologist Christine Walley’s 2013 book “Exit Zero,” a case study of her own father’s travails as a southeast Chicago steelworker whose employer shut its mill in 1980. Walley’s husband, Chris Boebel, a filmmaker by training and media development director for MIT Open Learning, directed a documentary by the same name.