UCONN anthropology graduate student, Olivia Marcus, is a 2017 recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant. This grant allows her to conduct her doctoral dissertation research entitled Ayahuasca -Assisted Therapies for Mental Health in the Peruvian Amazon. This grant will support research in several locations of Peru’s Amazon to investigate uses of Ayahuasca shamanism and western psychotherapy for mental well-being. This investigation addresses the professionalization and medicalization of practitioners of traditional Amazonian plant medicine, with attention to how the rising presence of western-trained therapists in Peru affects local regimes of care. Insights into these relationships will shed light on how culturally-specific mental health treatments become globalized and will provide critical commentary on emergent alternative treatments to problems in global mental health.
Month: September 2017
2017 Armenian Harvest Festival Celebrates Armenian Cultural Heritage
The Norian Armenian Programs at UCONN presents the 2017 Armenian Fall Harvest Festival. The festivities this year will be held on Saturday, September 23 between 12pm and 6pm at the Nathan Hale Inn. The Festival this year will feature a lecture on film making and Armenian cinema by Arsen Bagdasaryan, the Film Commissioner of Armenia at 3pm followed by reception. Other activities include a concert of traditional Armenian music by the Huyser Music Ensemble, as well as two workshops on The Art of Rug Weaving by Hayk Oltaci, and The Making of Armenian String Cheese, by Maggie Stepanian.
This event open to all members of the UCONN community, friends, and family. To RSVP, please visit http://armenia.uconn.edu/.
This event is sponsored by UCONN’s Norian Armenian Programs, Global Affairs, and School of Social Work.
UConn Anthropologist Sarah Willen Awarded Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant to Investigate Americans’ Perspectives on Health Equity
Sarah S. Willen, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, has been awarded a $699,960 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study how Americans of diverse socioeconomic, professional, and racial/ethnic backgrounds think about equity and deservingness in the health domain.
Willen, together with co-investigators Colleen Walsh, an assistant professor of health sciences at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, and Abigail Fisher Williamson, an assistant professor of political science and public policy & law at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, received the grant to support a two-phase study they will launch this October.
The researchers plan to investigate how Americans think about a question that plays a “pivotal but largely implicit role in American public discourse about society’s obligations to its members” – the question of “who deserves what in the health domain, and why.”
“Often we hear health researchers and folks in public health say things like, ‘everyone deserves to live the healthiest possible life,’” Willen said. “That’s a bold statement, and we don’t know whether it’s supported by all Americans. In fact, it’s possible some see things quite differently. Our goal is to develop a better understanding of how people’s moral values and personal experiences influence their views, and their actions.”
In the first study phase, the research team will engage residents of Ohio’s Greater Cleveland area using interviews and ethnographic methods. In the second phase, they will test their qualitative findings in a national survey.
The study will also draw on the expertise of researchers at Brown University, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Cleveland State University, Syracuse University, the University of South Florida, and the Sisters of Charity Foundation. A key partner in the study’s first phase is HIP-Cuyahoga (Health Improvement Partnership-Cuyahoga), a county-wide initiative in Greater Cleveland.
The project will run from October 2017 until October 2019.
About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
For more than 40 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve the health and health care of all Americans. We are striving to build a national Culture of Health that will enable all Americans to live longer, healthier lives now and for generations to come. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook.
Dr. Richard Wilson’s New Book on International Prosecution of Inciting Speech
International and national armed conflicts are usually preceded by a media campaign in which public figures foment ethnic, national, racial or religious hatred, inciting listeners to acts of violence. UCONN anthropology professor Richard Wilson’s new book entitled Incitement on Trial: Prosecuting International Speech Crimesevaluates the efforts of international criminal tribunals to hold such inciters criminally responsible. This is an unsettled area of international criminal law, and prosecutors have often struggled to demonstrate a causal connection between speech acts and subsequent crimes. Wilson argues that inciting speech should be handled under the preventative doctrine of inchoate crimes, but that once international crimes have been committed, then ordering and complicity are the most appropriate forms of criminal liability. Based in extensive original research, this book proposes an evidence-based risk assessment model for monitoring political speech. Dr. Wilson’s book identifies ‘revenge speech’ as the type of rhetoric with the greatest effects on empathy and tolerance for violence.
This excerpt was provided by the publisher, Cambridge University Press. For more information about the book and to purchase a copy, click here.