Joan Ablon and her esteemed colleague and founder of the Division of Medical Anthropology, Margaret Clarke, helped forge a new discipline by identifying new parameters for anthropological research into the meaning of healing and suffering in social and cultural organization. Their students expanded the horizons which the new discipline could aspire to, the methodologies needed to reach them and established this new intellectual trajectory in many divisions of the academy. Many of the leading intellectuals of the SMA itself were trained in the Medical Anthropology doctoral program Joan and Margaret created.
Friends of the department may also be interested to read the Feschrift (June 2004) edition of Medical Anthropology Quarterly which was devoted to Joan's work and career. Many of her former students, now leaders of the discipline contributed and she provided an extremely witty review of her academic life herself.
Dr. Ablon's research has focused on a wide variety of topics including
stigmatized genetic health conditions, therapeutic self-help groups
and social support systems, neurofibromatosis, dwarfism, alcoholism
and the family, disability and chronic illness, and contemporary
middle-class and ethnic family structure and life styles.
RECENT PUBLICATION INFORMATION
Brittle Bones, Stout Hearts and Minds: Adults with Osteogenesis Imperfecta
Brittle Bones, Stout Hearts and Minds is written for patients with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), their families and those who treat them including physicians, nurses, social workers, genetics counselors, and other persons with interests in differing kinds of physical disabilities. The book chronicles life experiences, coping patterns, and strategies for daily living of adults with OI, through personal accounts of medical experiences, education, economics, physical intimacy, dating, marriage, and general lifestyle issues. There are no other comparable books that deal with psychosocial issues of adults with OI.
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