Amy Zhang - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Amy Zhang
New York University

Dear Shivi,

I started to make a video reflection for you from Taipei but gave up rather quickly and decided to
write this the old-fashioned way. I'm so sorry I couldn't be there to celebrate with everyone, your work, your mentorship, and the commitment to environmental anthropology you have inspired in all of us.

There are some things I have always wanted to tell you. During our directed readings sessions on urban anthropology in the first years of my PhD, when I would conjure up some incoherent summary of Lefebvre, my eyes would frequently drift over to your collection of Stephen Pyne's volumes on the history of fire, sitting reassuringly on your bottom bookshelf, a series that was anything but brief. I would wonder how it was possible that anyone could have so much to say about fire, and even more, how anyone could read and retain it all. These thoughts would circle in my mind while incoherent summaries of Lefebvre would spill out to be met with an expert synthesis, a probing question, a suggestion for future reading, or just a nod of recognition. I would always leave your office with a new clarity on Lefebvre, but also a quiet promise to myself that one day I too would learn to think about ecologies in the longue durée, beginning with one of Pyne's volumes.

This was just one example of how you inspired intellectual curiosity. Your knowledge made being interested in everything feel not only possible, but necessary. I will always remember how one simple question after Agrarian Studies from me inspired a detailed explanation of the history of Mumbai. I knew right then and there that I needed to do more reading on the history of Guangzhou.

There were countless ways you were there for your students. I remember the contemplative walks around campus for office hour that I took before departing for fieldwork. During the confusion of the job market, you dropped everything and made time immediately to talk, to advise, to reassure and to ask me to think not only about the future in terms of work but also of family. Your frank counsel always pushed me to think beyond any particular theoretical debate or political moment, toward work that would offer something durable.

Most of all, I treasure the relationships you nurtured among generations of scholars. You introduced
me to scholars interested in waste. EAC was not only the place where I shared some of my first ideas, but where I developed enduring friendships. Traveling to Hong Kong and organizing workshops for the Ecologies of Urbanisms Series was an honor and a pleasure that I will carry with me always.

You helped shape me in every way as a scholar. I know I am not alone in my deep and enduring appreciation and gratitude.

I have yet to sit down with one of Pyneʼs histories, only read a few articles. But the list keeps growing, peasant struggles, law, forests, Asian cities. There is no end to it.