Erin E. O’Connor
Erin E. O’Connor
Title
Associate Professor of SociologyChair, Department of Politics and Human Rights (2026-present)
(2018-2023) Chair, Department of Politics and Human Rights
Department
Department of Politics and Human RightsDepartment of Natural Resources, Affiliated Faculty of Environmental Studies
Phone
Please request by emailAbout
Erin E. O’Connor is an Associate Professor of Sociology, an Affiliated Faculty of Environmental Studies, and contributes to the college’s BFA in Art. She is a 2025 and 2024 recipient of the Marymount Manhattan College Faculty Scholarship Award and a 2023 recipient of the Rakow Grant for Glass Research at the Corning Museum of Glass. Dr. O’Connor is a world-recognized expert in craft studies, specializing in glass, art, craft, knowledge, work, materiality, the body, the environment, and ethnographic research.
Dr. O’Connor is the author of Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World Among Glassblowers, a sensuous ethnography of bodily knowledge, materiality, and the formation of self and community among glassblowers (2025, Columbia University Press). Her current book project, The Middle Mineral & the Mine: A Geoanthropology of Studio Glass, seeks to tell the story of American studio glassblowing from the vantage of the minerals and mines of glass batch. Dr. O’Connor’s research draws from ethnography, archival research, and interviews and is informed by material feminism, critical indigenous theory, political geology, and posthumanism.
Dr. O’Connor has published in the journals Thesis Eleven, Qualitative Sociology Review, Qualitative Sociology, Qualitative Research, and Ethnography, as well as numerous edited volumes, including the following: Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective; Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making; Studio Studies: Operations, topologies, and displacements; and Leaving the field? Methodological Insights from Ethnographic Exits.
At MMC, Dr. O’Connor has served in various roles within college life. Notably, she conceived and launched the inaugural Social Justice Academy (SJA) in 2020, which has become a signature program of the College. The Department of Politics and Human Rights offers the SJA under varying themes and leadership as a semester-long, co-curricular program each spring. In addition, Dr. O’Connor is a Faculty Co-Advisor of the Bedford Hills Club, which supports the MMC college programs at Bedford Hills and Taconic Women’s Correctional Facilities.
In addition, Dr. O’Connor researches the artwork and life of her great-grandfather, American Magic Realist, Frederick Papsdorf (1887-1978).
Degree(s)
Ph.D., New School for Social Research
M.A., New School for Social Research
Honors, B.A., Michigan State University
Recent Work
PUBLIC LECTURES & PERIODICALS
October 2026. “Excavating the Geoanthropology of Studio Glass”. Ecocritical Potentials of Lithomateriality, Aarhus University. Copenhagen, Denmark.
17 February 2026, 3:30 PM GMT. “The Geoanthropology of Studio Glass.” JUST ART: Creating Common Grounds for Climate Justice Through Artistic Research, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
10 February 2026. “The Geoanthropology of Studio Glass.” Royal Danish Academy of Art. Bornholm, Denmark.
5 December 2025, 5:30 - 7:00 PM EST. Reading and Conversation with Erin O’Connor, Author of Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World Among Glassblowers (Columbia University Press, 2025). Urban Glass, Brooklyn, NY. This event is in-person, free, and open to the public. Register for tickets HERE.
6-8 November 2025. “Mastering & (Un)Mastering Mastery: knowledge acquisition in studio glass.” Urban Glass Symposium: Crafting Mastery. Brooklyn, NY. Click HERE for schedule and tickets.
7 October 2025, 4 - 6 PM GMT/11-1 EST. “The Elemental Work of Studio Glassblowing.” Free Online event. Click Artistry @ Work to register. Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in collaboration with the Royal Anthropological Institute, Paris and London.
2025, June 1. “Vitrifying America,” Glass Quarterly, No. 179, pp. 57, 64.
2024, November 14. “Hurricane Helene’s Urgent Message About the Arts, Environment, and Global Mining,” Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/965631/hurricane-helene-was-a-wake-up-call-for-glass-artists/
2024, September 25. “Glassblowing as Terraforming: Posthumanist Turns in Theories of Embodied Knowledge.” A Paul and Irene Hollister Lecture on Glass, Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY.
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
2025. Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World among Glassblowers. Columbia University Press.
ARTICLES & CHAPTERS
2026. Forthcoming. “Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing: meaning and the struggle towards proficiency.” In The Glass Reader, eds. Kevin Petrie and Jeffrey Sarmiento. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
2025, December. “Hotshop: Placing the Genesis of American Studio Glassblowing.” Canadian Review of American Studies.
2024. “From Furnace to Mine: An Ethnomineralogy of the Early Studio Glass Movement.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.
2024. “Becoming with Glass: Medium and Materiality in Embodied Knowledge.” In Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective, eds. Camilla Groth and Nithikul Nimkulrat. London: Routledge.
2023. “Materia Erotica: making-love among glassblowers.” In Leaving the Field? Methodological Insights from Ethnographic Exits, eds. Robin Smith and Sara Delamont. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
2017. “Touching Tacit Knowledge: handwork as ethnographic method in a glassblowing studio.” Qualitative Research 17(2), 217-230.
2016. “The Prototype: Problem Work in the relationship between Designer, Artist, and Gaffer in Glassblowing” in Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making, ed. Trevor Marchand. London: Ashgate. Co-Authored with Suzanne Peck.
2016. “Inter- to Intracorporeality: The haptic hotshop heat of a glassblowing studio” in Studio Studies: Operations, Topologies & Displacements, eds. Igancio Farias and Alex Wiley. London: Routledge.
2012. “Cross Disciplinary Literacy in the Age of Apps and Mobile Devices,” with Rebecca Mushtare and Millie Burns, in Emerging Pedagogies for the New Millennium. Network: A Journal of Faculty Development (www.nyu.edu/frn/publications/emerging.pedagogies/index.html).
2012. “Saber hecho carne: la experiencia dl sentido y la busqueda de expertise en el soplado de vidrio”” in Hacia una nueva sociología cultural: Mapas, dramas y prácticas, ed. C. E. Benzecry. Buenos Aires: Quilmes University Press.
2009. “The Act of Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity: Originality, Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Science.” Co-Authored with Diana Rhoten. Thesis Eleven 96(1).
2007. “The Centripetal Force of Expression: Drawing Embodied Histories into Glassblowing.” Qualitative Sociology Review, “Ethnographies of Artistic Work,” eds. Howard Becker and Marie Buscatto.
2007. “Hot Glass: The Calorific Imagination of Practice in Glassblowing.” In Practicing Culture, eds. Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett. London: Routledge.
2007. “Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing: meaning and the struggle towards proficiency (modified reprint).” In Chris Shilling (ed.), Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, The Sociological Review Monograph.
Research
Glass, Art, Craft, Work, Labor, Body, Embodiment, Knowledge, Ethnography, Culture, Social Theory, Environment, Settler Colonialism, Phenomenology, New Materialism, Material Feminism, Posthumanism, Museums, Material Culture, Anthropology of Art, Anthropology of the Body, Global Mineral Supply Chain, Onto-epistemology, Geoanthropology, Geontology, Political Geology, Political Economy.
Teaching
Anthropology at Museums in NYC
Art, Politics & Society
Radical Labor and Artisan Movements
EcoCulture & Sustainability (Queer Ecologies)
Environmental Justice
Environmental Ethics
Material Culture
Geoanthropologies of Craft
Embodiment & Skill as Worldbuilding
Culture & Ideology
Foundations of Social and Political Inquiry
Introduction to Sociology
Ethnography
Great Social Thinkers
Graffiti & Garbage: a NYC Seminar
Professional Experience
2026 Social Justice Academy: Environmental Justice
Professor O’Connor developed and launched Marymount Manhattan College’s Social Justice Academy in 2020-2021. The academy, launched as the Sojourner Truth Suffrage Academy, runs annually in the Spring Semester. It has become an integral program at the College.
Fall 2020: PHR/IS Event Series, Racial Justice
Spring 2021: PHR/IS Sojourner Truth Suffrage Academy
Office Hours
Fall 2025: Wednesday, 1-2
Location
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