Graphic Medicine and Medical Anthropology by Dana Walrath
Introduction When I began my graphic memoir series, Aliceheimers, it focused just on life with my mother Alice before and during dementia. But the revelatory insight that she…
Introduction When I began my graphic memoir series, Aliceheimers, it focused just on life with my mother Alice before and during dementia. But the revelatory insight that she…
The emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China’s Guangdong Province in the winter of 2002 was an exemplary spillover event: it marked the passage of a…
Is ethnographic research analogous to a gold mine project, an extractive industry that makes a social and material landscape knowable, and hence governable? Is knowledge construction a veil…
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary The sex/gender conference succeeded in bringing together people “with dif…
The World Health Organization recently released its long-awaited final report on the organization’s response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic. The report opens by explaining that, however tragic the…
This is the third installment of the series from the University of Cape Town’s First Thousand Day Research Group. My research traces out the pathways of donated milk…
Introduction In the early years of the 21st century, Ian Hacking wrote a series of essays on the theme of autistic subjectivity. These eclectic, occasional essays were, he…
Tuberculosis is curable. Figure 1: Propaganda materials rehearsing the curability of tuberculosis are produced by a variety of institutional actors across India. From left to right: poster from…
We’re a medical anthropologist and a literary critic, and while our research interests seemingly have little overlap, we found ourselves engaged in a series of conversations about how…
Two recent articles by BDS leaders in anthropology have accused boycott opponents of debasing the debate in anthropology, either by playing the “Nazi card” or by introducing the…
We like to think that drugs help put an end to disease, although in the aggregate this is seldom the case. However many individual infections and infestations might…
In conversations with people living with polio in Hungary, I often encountered members of the tight-knit community referring to themselves as “dinosaurs”. We are a breed that is…
In this short essay, I will try to convince you of the importance of earthworms in thinking about politics. If this sounds like an argument, that is because…
Is there a widely accessible yet conceptually rigorous way to convey anthropological insights into the lived complexities and bioethical dilemmas that attend managing chronic illness in two vastly…
Last September, a group of scholars gathered at the State University of Rio de Janeiro for “Autism Spectrum Disorders in Global, Local and Personal Perspective: A Cross-Cultural Workshop”.…
As graduate students and new members of the American Association of Anthropologists, we approach the academic boycott resolution vote with hope. We write today in response to “When…
For this installment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Helen Verran, a historian and philosopher of science who is Adjunct Professor at Charles Darwin…
The web roundup for this month is a sequel to last month’s roundup on Mind, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence. I will address another interface between machines and minds,…
This case begins with an unsettling email. It came from a powerful man of the church, a Mennonite executive, and it was a response to an email from…
Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (University of California Press, 2015) is a story of the influenza pandemic that never…
Choice and the assigning of value in the practices and crafting of life-giving work In healthy birthing initiatives described by, among others, the World Health Organization, emphasis has…
“When It’s Time to Vote, Don’t Boycott Academics – Cut the Purse-strings” raises important questions about the power of economic divestment in the struggle for Palestinian rights. In…
Editor’s note: We received this letter, signed by the authors listed above and by nine anonymous authors, as a reply to our earlier Debate Forum. After far too…
The first time I encountered Judy I was with Dr. Erlich, gathering fact sheets about vulvar pain conditions. Dr. Robichaud, the other physician at the Vulvar Health Clinic…