Social Sciences Division
Professor
Faculty
Social Sciences 1
By Appointment
Social Sciences 1 Faculty Services
Ph.D. Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley and San Francisco
M.A. Anthropology, UC Berkeley
B.A. Stanford University, Human Biology and Humanities Honors
As a medical anthropologist, Nancy N. Chen focuses on healing practices and health institutions. Her early ethnographic project compared how psychiatry and mental health become national agendas for social integration while, simultaneously, alternative forms of healing resurged. Her interests include the study of healing narratives, chronic and infectious diseases, traditional medical knowledge, and mental health. Chen’s recent research examines medicinal and novel foods.
Teaching Specialties: Medical anthropology, visual anthropology, food and culture.
Areas of Research: food and medicine, mental health and psychiatry, traditional and complementary healing practices
Society of Medical Anthropology - Medical Anthropology Student Association: Graduate Mentorship Award
Social Sciences Division: Golden Apple Teaching Award
UCSC Committee on Teaching: Distinguished Teaching Award
- Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability. Nancy N. Chen & Lesley A. Sharp, eds. SAR Press 2014.
- Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate, Aihwa Ong and Nancy N. Chen, eds. Duke University Press 2010.
- Food, Medicine, and the Quest for Good Health, Columbia University Press, 2009.
- Bodies in the Making, Nancy N. Chen and Helene Moglen, Ed. New Pacific Press, 2006.
- Breathing Spaces: Qigong, Psychiatry and Healing in China, Columbia University Press, 2003.
- China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Culture, Nancy N. Chen, Constance Clark, Suzanne Gottschang, Lyn Jeffery, Ed. Duke University Press, 2001.