Erica C James

Email: ejames@mit.edu
Extension: x3-7321
Office: 16-249
Department: Anthropology Program

Erica Caple James received an A.B. from Princeton University (Anthropology 1992), an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School (1995), an A.M. from Harvard University (Social Anthropology 1998), and a Ph.D. from Harvard University (Social Anthropology 2003). Her research interests focus on medical and psychiatric anthropology, gender and violence, religion and healing, and issues of race, human rights, and the ethics and politics of democratization projects. Her doctoral research, entitled The Violence of Misery: "Insecurity" in Haiti in the "Democratic" Era , examines the psychosocial experience of Haitian torture survivors targeted during the 1991-94 coup period, as well as the politics of humanitarian assistance in "post-conflict" nations making the transition to democracy. To conduct this project she received support from a Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Peace and Security in a Changing World (1998-2000) and an NIMH predoctoral fellowship. In the 2003-2004 year she was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. In addition to developing a manuscript from the dissertation, she has been developing two research projects: the first examines US foreign policy toward Haitian refugees as an index of the changing nexus of global concerns for sovereignty, security, and liberty. The second evaluates the growth of the "alternative" and "complementary" medical sector and the competing notions of embodiment and healing that this domain offers to the economy of care.