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Nancy Chen Home  Directory Nancy Chen
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Title: |
Professor of Anthropology |
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Email: |
nchen@ucsc.edu |
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Phone: |
(831) 459-5198 Office |
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Office: |
Social Sciences 1, 335 |
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Office Hours: |
On leave |
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| Education History | |
Ph.D. Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley and San Francisco
M.A. Anthropology, UC Berkeley
B.A. Stanford University, Human Biology and Humanities Honors |
| Research Focus | |
Teaching Specialties: Medical anthropology, visual anthropology, ethnographic film.
Area of Research: Mental health and cross-cultural psychiatry, traditional and alternative healing practices, new Asian cinema, Asian-American identity.
Area of Fieldwork: China, Taiwan, California, Pacific Rim. |
| Long Description | |
As a medical anthropologist, Nancy Chen focuses on healing practices and health institutions. Her early ethnographic project compared how psychiatry and mental health become national agendas for social integration in Asia while, simultaneously, alternative forms of healing resurged. She has conducted fieldwork in mainland China, primarily, with comparative research in the United States. Her interests include the study of healing narratives, chronic and infectious diseases, traditional medical knowledge, and intersections between the body politic, gender, ethnicity, and medicine.
Chen’s recent research examines the role of biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industries in Asian societies. She regularly teaches on the anthropology of food and focuses on changing meanings of food and medicine.
In addition, Chen is committed to the practice and study of visual anthropology. This includes using ethnographic film history and visual theory to contextualize cultural representations, master narratives and portrayals of identity in addition to promoting ethnographic media production.
Questions of ethnographic research in multisited contexts and urban theory inform Chen’s approach to fieldwork and teaching. She also studies Chinese diasporas and expanding notions of Asian American identify. |
| Selected Publications | |
| Food, Medicine, and the Quest for Good Health, Columbia University Press, forthcoming. |  |
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| Bodies in the Making, Nancy N. Chen and Helene Moglen, Ed. New Pacific Press, 2006. |
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Breathing Spaces: Qigong, Psychiatry and Healing in China, Columbia University Press, 2003. |
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China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Culture, Nancy N. Chen, Constance Clark, Suzanne Gottschang, Lyn Jeffery, Ed. Duke University Press, 2001. |
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"Speaking Nearby, A Conversation with Trinh T. Minh-ha." In Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R. 1990-1994, L. Taylor, ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. |
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