Graduate Trainee Profile:
Mara Buchbinder
Graduate Trainee - Anthropology (Medical and Linguistic)
Advisors: Professors Elinor Ochs & Linda Garro
Year Entered Doctoral Program at UCLA: 2005
Undergraduate School/Major: Dartmouth College/Psychology
Graduate School/Degree: Case Western Reserve University/M.A., Medical Anthropology, 2005
Email:

Research:
My research examines how families communicate and collaborate with health care providers to manage children’s chronic illnesses. My dissertation, an ethnographic study of a multidisciplinary pediatric pain program, analyzes how care - as a set of culturally situated dispositions and practices - is articulated and organized across diverse clinical and family settings. I am also working on a study of the social impact of expanded newborn screening.


Publications:

Buchbinder, M. (2009). The Management of Autonomy in Adolescent Diabetes: A Case Study of Triadic Medical Interaction. Health 13(2):175-196.

Buchbinder, M. (2009). You're Still Sick! Framing, Footing, and Participation in Children's Medical Play. Discourse Studies 10(2):139-59.

Buchbinder, M., Longhofer, J., Barrett, T., Lawson, P., and Floersch, J. (2006). Ethnographic Approaches to Child Care Research: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 4(1): 45-63.

Mosavel, M., Simon, C., van Stade, D., and Buchbinder, M. (2005). Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) in South Africa: Engaging Multiple Constituents to Shape the Research Question. Social Science & Medicine, 61(12): 2577-87.

Buchbinder, M.H., Detzer, M.J., Welsch, R.L., Christiano, A.S., Patashnick, J.L., and Rich, M. (2005). Assessing Adolescents with Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus: A Multiple Perspective Pilot Study Using Visual Illness Narratives and Interviews. Journal of Adolescent Health 36(1): e9-e13.

Burman, M.L., Kivlahan, D., Buchbinder, M., Broglio, K., Zhou, X.H., Merrill, J.O., McDonnell, M., Fihn, S.D., and Bradley, K.A. (2004). Alcohol-Related Advice for VA Primary Care Patients: Who Gets It, Who Gives It? Journal of Studies on Alcohol 65(5): 621-629.

Selected Presentations:

2007 "It's Either One Pain or Another Pain": Social Distress and Somatic Disruption in Family Chronic Pain Narratives. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Manhattan Beach, CA, as part of the panel, "Families in Pain: Illness, Suffering and (Inter)subjectivity," co-organized and co-chaired with I. Clemente.

2007 Discourses of Mind and Body in Anti-Depressant Prescription for Chronic Pain. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Washington, DC.

2006 "Health Ideologies in Practice: Socializing Physical Fitness in the Everyday Lives of Families." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association. San Jose, CA.

2006 Stories, Suffering, and Standpoint in Adolescent Diabetes: The Case of the Visual Illness Narrative. Presented at the Narrative Matters Conference. Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

2006 Performing Play, Constructing Cancer: Children’s Knowledge as Embodied Experience. (With J. Longhofer.) Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Vancouver, BC.

2005 Theorizing Children Coping with Crisis: Children’s Play as Emergent Narrative. (With J. Longhofer.). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association. Washington, DC.

2005 Seeing to Know: Visual Research of Youth with Diabetes. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development. Atlanta, GA.

2005 "I'd Have 'em In Therapy": Perspectives on the Emotional Worlds of Kids Coping With Cancer, (With P. Lawson and K. McCue.) Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Santa Fe, NM.

2005 Anthropological Perspectives on the Therapeutic Potential of Play, (With J. Longhofer.) Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Play. Santa Fe, NM.

2004 "Talking Social Structure," Unlocking Status: Hierarchical Power Distributions in the Medical Encounter. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Central States Anthropology Society. Milwaukee, WI.

2004 "Be a Scream and Not a Sigh": Construction of Self Among Youth With Disabilities. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Dallas, TX.

2004 Through Their Eyes: Using Video Technique to Understand Adolescent Diabetes, (With R. Welsch, and M. Detzer). Video presented at the Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Anthropological Society. Hanover, NH.

2003 Providing Patient-Centered Care to Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes: A Video Narrative Approach, (M. Buchbinder, M. Detzer, R. Welsch, et al.) Video presented at the First International Conference on Family-Centered Care: Advancing the Quality of Healthcare in the 21st Century. Boston, MA.

Honors and awards:
Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2008)
NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant (2008)
Ursula Mandel Scholarship, UCLA (2008-2009)
Society for Humanistic Anthropology, Graduate Student Paper Prize (2007)
NSF Summer Institute for Research Design in Cultural Anthropology (2006)
Graduate Student Summer Research Mentorship Grant, UCLA (2006)
Department of Anthropology Graduate Fellowship, UCLA (2005-2006)
Endowment Sponsored Mentorship Award, School of Graduate Studies, CWRU (2005)
Department of Anthropology Urban Health Summer Research Grant, CWRU (2004)
Department of Anthropology Graduate Fellowship, CWRU (2003-2006)
Dartmouth College Senior Fellowship (2001-2002)
Maurice R. Robinson Scholarship, Dartmouth College (2001)
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