Mairin Odle is a scholar of early American studies. Her first book, on tattooing and scalping in colonial Anglo-America, is forthcoming with University of Pennsylvania Press in 2022. She lives, birdwatches, and daydreams in Birmingham, Alabama.
A traveling scholar looks to wasps, jaguars, coyotes, bobcats, and owls for a sense of wild recognition, contemplating the mixed consequences of how nature observes itself.