Erica Prussing
Assistant Professor
Office: 229 Macbride Hall
Phone: (319) 335-0528
erica-prussing@uiowa.edu
- Selected Publications/Projects (PDF)
- Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
Background:
I am interested in the cultural politics of defining and addressing health issues within indigenous and other “minoritized” communities. My projects are frequently interdisciplinary, and emphasize combining anthropology with public health. Topically, my interests center on women and children's health. My major projects to date have considered how women pursue sobriety in a Native North American community, and have documented the persistence of discursive and structural barriers to tribal control over local health services. In the absence of formal institutional control, such services are often “indigenized” in a grass-roots fashion. For example, younger generations of women are creatively transforming the “Twelve Steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous, an American popular psychological discourse made available through local addiction services, into a forum for social commentary shaped by localized identity politics. Topics of other recent projects include perinatal HIV transmission, complementary/alternative medicine use by parents for children with developmental disabilities, youth violence, preterm delivery, and infant mortality.
My current projects examine the production and application of epidemiological knowledge about health within marginalized communities. Using insights from science studies and postcolonial theory, I am completing a cultural analysis of both past and present efforts to define and address “racial” disparities in infant mortality in American epidemiology. I am also developing a multi-sited, international study of how indigenous communities are engaging and/or developing new forms of epidemiology in their efforts to promote maternal & child health (including “cultural epidemiology,” which aims to culturally situate both the causes of health problems and the production of epidemiological knowledge).
Courses Taught: Medical Anthropology
Anthropology & Contemporary World Problems |
Affiliations & Links: Society for Medical Anthropology Society for Psychological Anthropology World Council of Indigenous Peoples |
