faculty

Casey Golomski

Pronouns: He/Him/His
Professor
Roles
Program Coordinator of Africana Studies
Casey Golomski
Contact
Casey.Golomski@unh.edu
Huddleston Hall,
Durham, NH 03824
(603) 862-1864

faculty Bio

Casey Golomski is a cultural and medical anthropologist and award-winning creative writer. His work explores perennial questions about life and death, asking how people work through and memorialize critical events in their lives and communities.

For his public engagement, creative writing, and applied and academic research, he's been interviewed, reviewed, or cited by the New York Times, New Hampshire Public Radio, The Conversation, News24, Die Burger, Polity, AlexNews, Times of Eswatini, Business Times, and The Johannesburg Review of Books.

All This Information From the Nation is his current project, a 'remixed' critical edition of the rediscovered, sole-surviving, still-unpublished book manuscript of Regina Gelana Twala, a journalist, political activist, and one of the first degreed black African woman anthropologists, writing from her cancer deathbed about modern life in the swinging sixties on the eve of Independence, a project done with the permission of Twala's family and in collaboration with Joel Cabrita and Nosipho Mngomezulu.

Rich in mystery and life lessons, his latest creative nonfiction book, God's Waiting Room, flips the script on racial discrimination in long-term care, showing how older whites and black nurses find grace together among their ghosts and despite the odds. Set thirty years after apartheid and in comparison to the US and featuring the untold story of Nelson Mandela's Robben Island Prison nurse, God's Waiting Room considers how racism, ageism, and sexism impact where we end up, who cares, and what matters in the end--dually published by Wits U Press and Rutgers U Press and winner of a Victor Turner Prize and the Elliott P. Skinner Award.

Golomski's first book is Funeral Culture, by Indiana U Press, the first full documentary account of the AIDS pandemic in Eswatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy and country with the world's highest HIV prevalence for nearly 20 years. A moving, memorable story of families, churches, and businesses, Funeral Culture shows how grassroots responses to pandemics, whether HIV or COVID, drive local innovations and counter conservatives' culture wars. A follow-up to this is Customary Nationalism in Crisis: Protest, Identity and Politics in Eswatini coedited with Vito Laterza for Routledge Press featuring work by local scholar-educators on current affairs.

His work has been funded by three Fulbright Fellowships, the Wenner Gren, Reed, Mellon, and Teagle Foundations, and institutional grants. As an invited speaker on his writing and research, he's given talks for professional groups and universities worldwide: in North America, Africa and Europe.

Currently he is an advisory board member for Anthropology and Humanism and Bristol U Press' Death and Culture book series, and formerly for the Northeastern Workshops on Southern Africa (NEWSA, now WOZA) and the Seacoast African American Cultural Center (SAACC) where he supervised internships and public education through curation of their collections. For his contributions to SAACC, he received a state-wide Spirit of New Hampshire Volunteer Service Award.

He is always happy to meet interested students and consult for interested groups.

Casey Golomski is an award-winning creative writer and cultural and medical anthropologist. His research centers perennial questions about life, death, and their thresholds, asking how people work through and memorialize critical events in their lives and communities.

Aside from authoring two books and much academic and applied research in health and social science, Black and African studies, anthropology, and literary journals and magazines, including pieces awarded the First Prize in Poetry from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, Golomski's been interviewed, reviewed, or cited by media outlets such as the New York Times, New Hampshire Public Radio, The Conversation, News24, Die Burger, Polity, AlexNews, Times of eSwatini, Business Times, and The Johannesburg Review of Books.

Rich in mystery and life's lessons, his latest book, God's Waiting Room, is an innovation in creative nonfiction that flips the script on racial discrimination in long-term care, showing how older 'racist' whites and their Black nurses find grace together among their ghosts and despite the odds. Set thirty years after apartheid and in comparison to the US, it features the untold story of Nelson Mandela's Robben Island Prison nurse as well as stories of queer older adults and healthcare providers, teaching us how racism, ageism, and sexism impact where we end up, who cares, and what matters in the end. God’s Waiting Room is dually published by Wits U Press (African rights) and Rutgers U Press (North American and RoW rights). Professor Golomski was honored for his work on God's Waiting Room with a 2025 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing.

Currently with Joel Cabrita (Stanford U) and Nosipho Mngomezulu (Wits U), he’s preparing a critical first edition of the rediscovered, still-unpublished, and sole-surviving book manuscript of Regina Gelana Twala, an exiled journalist and one of the first Black African women anthropologists, writing from her cancer deathbed about modern life in the swinging sixties on the eve of African Independence, a project done with the permission of Twala’s family.

He's also the author of Funeral Culture, by Indiana U Press, the first full documentary account of the AIDS pandemic in eSwatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy and country with the world's highest HIV prevalence for more than 15 years. A moving, memorable story of families, churches, and businesses, Funeral Culture shows how grassroots responses to pandemics, whether HIV or COVID, drive local innovations and counter conservative culture wars.  

His research been funded by three Fulbright Fellowships, the Wenner Gren, Reed, Mellon, and Teagle Foundations, and institutional awards and grants. And as an invited speaker on his writing and research, he has given talks for professional groups and universities worldwide: in North America, Emory, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Boston, Wisconsin-Madison, Michigan State, and Louisiana State; in Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal, Wits, and Pretoria; and in Europe, EASA, Leiden, Oslo, Zürich, and Cambridge.

Currently he is a board member for the journal Anthropology and Humanism and formerly for the Northeastern Workshops on Southern Africa (NEWSA) and the Seacoast African American Cultural Center (SAACC) in Portsmouth, NH where he supervised internships and public cultural education through curation of their collections. For his contributions to SAACC, he received a state-wide Spirit of NH Volunteer Service Award.

He is always happy to meet interested students and consult for public and private entities.

Courses Taught

  • ANTH 500: Honors/Peoples and Cultures
  • ANTH 525: The Body: Fat, Fitness & Form
  • ANTH 680: Africana Religions
  • ANTH 685: Gendr, Sex, HIV Africa
  • ANTH 699H: Honors Senior Thesis
  • ANTH 700: Internship
  • ANTH 796: Reading and Research

Education

  • Ph.D., Anthropology, Brandeis University
  • B.A., Sociology, Saint Norbert College

Research Interests

  • African Languages/Literature
  • Aging and life course
  • Death and Dying, Behavioral/Social
  • Gender studies
  • Global Health
  • Medical humanities
  • Religious Studies
  • Sociocultural anthropology

Artistic Activities & Publications

  • Laterza, V., & Golomski, C. (2025). Customary Nationalism in Crisis. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003679653

  • Golomski, C. (2025). A Precious Story: Writing a Young Widow’s Life from Postapartheid South Africa. In Pathos and Power Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present (pp. 185-204). Ohio University Press.

  • "SAACC at 25: A Quarter Century of Sharing the Black Experience,” exhibit co-curator and designer, Seacoast African American Cultural Center and Strawbery Banke Museum (2025). Retrieved from https://www.strawberybanke.org/saacc-at-25

  • Golomski, C. (2025). Consequential exposures, or life writing on a wedding day. Safundi, 26(1-2), 137-142. doi:10.1080/17533171.2025.2518771

  • Kim, B., Jeong, C. H., Blood, E., Arthanat, S., Corvini, M., Golomski, C., & Wilcox, J. (2025). Multilevel factors influencing eHealth adoption among older adults during the pandemic.. Front Public Health, 13, 1531173. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2025.1531173

  • Golomski, C. (2024). God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End. Rutgers University Press, Wits University Press. Retrieved from https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/

  • Corvini, M., Golomski, C., & Burns, J. (2024). The Impact of Sharing Recovery Stories in Public: Stigma, Trauma Response, and the Need for Multiple Pathways. Journal of Social Service Research, 50(3), 481-493. doi:10.1080/01488376.2024.2320652

  • Golomski, C. (2024). Review of Hugo ka Canham. Riotous Deathscapes.. The American Historical Review (AHR), 130(3). doi:10.1093/ahr/rhad565

  • Kim, B., Jeong, C. H., Park, S., Golomski, C., Corvini, M., Wilcox, J., . . . Blood, E. (2024). Quality of Life among Low-Income Older Residents in Subsidized Senior Housing: Rural vs. Suburban Comparisons. Journal of Social Service Research, 50(1), 39-53. doi:10.1080/01488376.2023.2271944

  • Golomski, C. (2023). The day Mugabe died. Anthropology and Humanism, 48(2), 355-357. doi:10.1111/anhu.12433

  • Golomski, C., & Laterza, V. (2023). Biopolitics from the Global South: a new generation takes on customary nationalism in eSwatini.. Afr J AIDS Res, 22(4), 257-260. doi:10.2989/16085906.2023.2270963

  • "Richard Haynes, Jr.: The Sum of Us, and Our World’s Leaders in Spiritual Moral Decline,” exhibit co-curator and designer, Seacoast African American Cultural Center (2023). Retrieved from https://www.saaccnh.org/past-exhibits

  • Golomski, C. (2023). Gentleness.. Med Anthropol Q, 37(2), 98-101. doi:10.1111/maq.12751

  • Meek, L. A., Neely, A. H., Chudakova, T., Craig, S. R., & Golomski, C. (2023). Beyond the Limits: Medicine, Healing, and Medical Anthropology - Conversation, Parts I-V. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 37(2). doi:10.1111/maq.12748

  • Laterza, V., & Golomski, C. (2023). Customary nationalism in crisis: protest, identity and politics in eSwatini. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 41(2), 119-140. doi:10.1080/02589001.2023.2234103

  • Golomski, C. (2022). Visiting Hours: Spacetimes of Human-Animal Interaction in South African Elder Care. MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, 36(2), 217-236. doi:10.1111/maq.12702

  • Golomski, C. (2022). Deathnography: Writing, Reading, and Radical Mourning. In S. Dawdy, & T. Kneese (Eds.), The New Death: Mortality and Death Care in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 105-124). Santa Fe: University of New Mexico Press. Retrieved from https://www.unmpress.com/books/new-death/9780826363459

  • “Afrofuturism 2.0: Exploring Justice through Beauty,” exhibit co-designer and supervisor, Seacoast African American Cultural Center and Green Acre Baha’i (2022). Retrieved from https://www.nhpr.org/latest-from-nhpr/2022-05-28/give-back-nh-afrofuturism

  • Golomski, C., Corvini, M., Kim, B., Wilcox, J., & Valcourt, S. (2022). Aspects of ICT connectivity among older adults living in rural subsidized housing: reassessing the digital divide. JOURNAL OF ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES, 16(1), 17-27. doi:10.1108/JET-12-2020-0052

  • Reed, A. R., & Golomski, C. (2022). Ambiguous interventions: The social consequences of assistance in the field. ETHNOGRAPHY. doi:10.1177/14661381211067449

  • Golomski, C. (2021). 12. Dark Matter: Formations of Death Pollution in Southeastern African Funerals. In Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas (pp. 297-316). Duke University Press. doi:10.1515/9781478013112-015

  • “Fashion Forward: Africana Style,” exhibit co-curator and designer, in conjunction with T. Zaidi’s (2020) Sapeurs: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congo (Kehrer-Verlag), Seacoast African American Cultural Center (2021). Retrieved from https://www.seacoastonline.com/

  • Kim, B., Park, S., Golomsky, C., Corvini, M., Wilder, A., Wilcox, J., & Winburn, A. (2020). Multilevel Factors for Life Satisfaction Among Residents in Non-Urban Subsidized Senior Housing. Innovation in Aging, 4(Supplement_1), 109. doi:10.1093/geroni/igaa057.360

  • Golomski, C. (2020). Countermythologies: Queering Lives in a Southern African Gay and Lesbian Pentecostal Church. TRANSFORMING ANTHROPOLOGY, 28(2), 155-168. doi:10.1111/traa.12180

  • Golomski, C. (2020). Society for Humanistic Anthropology 2019 Writing Awards. Anthropology and Humanism, 45(1), 139-141. doi:10.1111/anhu.12277

  • "Obama: An Ancestral Legacy,” supervising exhibit curator and co-designer, in conjunction with Pete Souza’s (2017) "Obama: An Intimate Portrait" (Little, Brown and Co.), Seacoast African American Cultural Center (2020). Retrieved from https://www.seacoastonline.com/

  • Golomski, C., & Dlamini, G. S. (2020). Beautiful Blessings: LGBTIQA Christians’ Reproductive and Parenting Aspirations.. In N. Mkhwanazi, & L. Manderson (Eds.), Connected Lives: Households, Families, Health, and Care in Contemporary South Africa. (pp. 38-44). Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press. Retrieved from https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/connected-lives

  • Golomski, C. (2020). Greying mutuality: race and joking relations in a South African nursing home. AFRICA, 90(2), 273-292. doi:10.1017/S0001972019001049

  • Golomski, C. (2020). "Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery": Dying in South African Frail Care. ANTHROPOLOGY & AGING, 41(2), 9-23. doi:10.5195/aa.2020.243

  • Golomski, C. (2019). Interrogating traditionalism: gender and Swazi Culture in HIV/AIDS policy. “Customary Nationalism in Crisis: Protest, Identity and Politics in Eswatini” special issue, edited by V. Laterza and C. Golomski. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 41(2), 183-198. doi:10.1080/02589001.2019.1701184

  • Golomski, C. (2019). Thumb War. Anthropology and Humanism, 44(2), 194-197. doi:10.1111/anhu.12249

  • Heavy Metal Africa: Art and Metallurgy of Africa,” supervising exhibit curator and designer with D. Toland, M. Maksy, C. Gross-Santos, Seacoast African American Cultural Center (2019). Retrieved from https://www.fosters.com/

  • Golomski, C. (2018). Uhlanga. In African Religions: Beliefs and Practices Through History. Editors: Thomas, Douglas, Alanamu, Temilola, p. 241. ABC-CLIO Greenwood, Santa Barbara.. In D. Thomas, & T. Alanamu (Eds.), African Religions: Beliefs and Practices Through History (pp. 241). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO Greenwood.

  • Wilder, A., Kim, B., Wilcox, J., Golomski, C., Corvini, M., & Winburn, A. (2018). Perceived and Unmet Needs for Health and Social Services in Publicly Subsidized Senior Housing. Innovations in Aging, 2((Supplement 1)), 994. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/innovateage/article/2/suppl_1/994/5183829

  • Golomski, C. (2018). Funeral Culture: AIDS, Work, and Cultural Change in an African Kingdom. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Retrieved from https://iupress.org/9780253036452/funeral-culture/

  • “Guinea to Great Bay: Afro Atlantic Lives, Culture and History,” exhibit curator & designer, Seacoast African American Cultural Center (2018).

  • Golomski, C. (2018). Work of a Nation: Christian Funerary Ecumenism and Institutional Disruption in Swaziland. JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN AFRICAN STUDIES, 44(2), 299-314. doi:10.1080/03057070.2018.1421443

  • Golomski, C. (2018). Elder Care and Private Health Insurance in South Africa: The Pathos of Race-Class. MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, 37(4), 311-326. doi:10.1080/01459740.2017.1417279

  • Golomski, C. (2017). Authority. MEDICAL HUMANITIES, 43(3), 206. doi:10.1136/medhum-2017-011194

  • Golomski, C. (2017). “My Mother Got Annoyed”i. Annals of Global Health, 83(2), 405. doi:10.1016/j.aogh.2017.03.002

  • Golomski, C., & Nyawo, S. (2017). Christians' cut: popular religion and the global health campaign for medical male circumcision in Swaziland. CULTURE HEALTH & SEXUALITY, 19(8), 844-858. doi:10.1080/13691058.2016.1267409

  • Golomski, C. (2016). Game Walk at Pilanesberg. Anthropology and Humanism, 41(2), 216-217. doi:10.1111/anhu.12131

  • Golomski, C. (2016). Religion and Migration: Cases for a Global Material Ethics. AFRICAN STUDIES, 75(3), 449-462. doi:10.1080/00020184.2016.1193379

  • Golomski, C. (2016). Outliving love: marital estrangement in an African insurance market. SOCIAL DYNAMICS-A JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES, 42(2), 304-320. doi:10.1080/02533952.2016.1197510

  • Golomski, C. (2016). Polygamy, Polygyny, and Polyandry. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (pp. 1-3). doi:10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss106

  • Golomski, C. (2016). Purity versus Pollution. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (pp. 1-2). doi:10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss115

  • Golomski, C. (2016). Risk, Mistake, and Generational Contest in Bodily Rituals of Swazi Jerikho Zionism. JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RELIGION, 31(3), 351-364. doi:10.1080/13537903.2016.1206247

  • Golomski, C. (2015). Urban cemeteries in Swaziland: materialising dignity. ANTHROPOLOGY SOUTHERN AFRICA, 38(3-4), 360-371. doi:10.1080/23323256.2015.1087322

  • Golomski, C. (2015). wearing memories: clothing and the global lives of mourning in swaziland. MATERIAL RELIGION, 11(3), 303-327. doi:10.1080/17432200.2015.1082719

  • Golomski, C. (2015). Compassion technology: Life insurance and the remaking of kinship in Swaziland's age of HIV. AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, 42(1), 81-96. doi:10.1111/amet.12117

  • Golomski, C. (2014). Generational inversions: 'working' for social reproduction amid HIV in Swaziland. AJAR-AFRICAN JOURNAL OF AIDS RESEARCH, 13(4), 351-359. doi:10.2989/16085906.2014.961942

  • Golomski, C. (n.d.). A Precious Tale. In B. Lawrance, & J. Davidson (Eds.), Pathos and Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present. Ohio University Press.