INTRODUCTION
I came to Cal State LA in 1971 and am a professor in the
anthropology department. I served as Chair of the Department
for ten years and was the principle undergraduate and graduate
advisor during that time. I also served as Director of the
Advisement Center for the School of Natural and Social Sciences
during 2002-2003.
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TEACHING
INTERESTS
During my years at CSULA, I have taught 20 different undergraduate
and graduate courses and seminars in the anthropology department.
My teaching has reflected my varied interests in anthropology,
for example: Medical Anthropology, Culture Change, Applied
Anthropology, and Culture and Innovation. In addition to on
campus offerings of medical anthropology I also taught that
course at eight different hospitals, once as a field methods
course at Rancho Los Amigos, and twice as a televised course
for ITFS. I also developed a three-term sequence of courses
under a Ford Foundation grant, which involved students to
conduct research on the homeless at the Weingart Center in
downtown Los Angeles. I have also taught courses for other
departments and these included Health and the Urban Life for
Geography and Urban Studies, Impact of Technology on Society
for Engineering, and Women in Crisis for Women’s Studies.
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RESEARCH
For most of my professional career my primary interest has
been in medical anthropology with an emphasis on integrative
medicine, as a sampling of my publications demonstrates: Health
and Community: A Rural American Study, Culture, Curers, and
Contagion, “Is There a Right Way to Die?” Psychology Today
(reprinted numerous times, for example in Annual Editions
in Anthropology, Death and Dying: Opposing Viewpoints, and
as “Wake Up and Die Right: Death in the Age of Feeling” in
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum), and “Myth and
Ritual in Chiropractic” in the California Anthropologist.
More recently (since about 1993) my interests have turned
to visual anthropology with a continued emphasis on medical
topics. Research in China and Indonesia resulted in two films.
East Meets West: Traditional and Orthodox Medicine, which
I wrote, filmed, narrated and co-edited, was a winner at a
UCLA film festival and The Balian of Klungkung which I also
wrote, filmed, narrated, and co-edited and was later a finalist
at a UCLA festival. I also co-wrote, narrated and co-edited
the film African and Western Medicine (filmed by Robert T.
Anderson). East Meets West and the African Medicine film are
being distributed by Harcourt Brace. In addition, I participated
in the production of six additional films by narrating, co-editing,
providing footage or assisting in maintaining funding for
the projects. Most recently, in fall 2004, I co-authored a
book chapter with Robert Anderson, “Two Ethnographers and
One Bonesetter in Bali” in Healing by Hand: Manual Medicine
and Bonesetting in Global Perspective. In this chapter we
investigate how two anthropologists (the authors) filming
the same topic could have very divergent interpretations.
Projects in progress have both medical and non-medical themes.
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EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
B.A. 1965
- California State University, Los Angeles
M.A. 1966
- University of California, Los Angeles
Ph.D. 1975
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