Tanya Luhrmann is the Max Palevsky Professor in the Committee on Human Development. She trained at the University of Cambridge (PhD 1986), taught for many years at the University of California San Diego, and joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2000. Her work focuses on the social construction of psychological experience, and the way that social practice alters psychological mechanism, particularly in the domain of what some would call the �irrational�. Her first project is a detailed study of the way apparently reasonable people come to believe apparently unreasonable beliefs (Persuasions of the Witch's Craft, Harvard, 1989). Her second project explored the apparently irrational self-criticism of a postcolonial India elite, the result of colonial identification with the colonizers (The Good Parsi, Harvard 1996). Her third book identified two cultures with the American profession of psychiatry and examined the way these different cultures encouraged two different experiences of empathy and two different understandings of mental illness (Of Two Minds, Knopf, 2000). Her current work looks at the experience of voices and visions both in the new style of American religion and among psychiatric clients, and the way the interpretation of these phenomena may affect the experience of God (on the one hand) and the identification, experience and outcome of psychiatric illness (on the other). She is a director of the Clinical Ethnography project in the Committee on Human Development. |
Positions held
2000 - present
University of Chicago
Max Palevsky Professor, Committee on Human Development
1989 - 2000
University of California, San Diego
Full Professor, Department of Anthropology
1985 - 1989
Cambridge University
Research Fellow, Christ's College
Education
Cambridge University
M.Phil. in Social Anthropology, 1982
Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, 1986
Thesis title: 'Scions of Prospero: Ritual magic and witchcraft in present day England '.
Harvard University
B.A. in Folklore and Mythology, 1981 |
Publications
Books
1989: Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: ritual magic in modem culture. Harvard University Press (and Basil Blackwell).
1996: The Good Parsi: the postcolonial anxieties of an Indian colonial elite . Harvard University Press.
2000: Of two minds: the growing disorder in American psychiatry. Alfred A. Knopf; paperback edition 2001, new subtitle: Of two minds: an anthropologist looks at American psychiatry. Vintage.
Articles
1984: 'Popul Vuh and Lacan'. Ethos 12(4):335-362.
1985: "Persuasive ritual: the role of the imagination in contemporary witchcraft'. Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religiones. 60 (1): 151-170.
1985: Audrey Richards: In memorium. Cambridge Anthropology. Special editor; testimonial; bibliography.
1986: 'Witchcraft, morality and magic in contemporary England '. International Journal of Moral and Social Studies. l(l):77-94.
1986:'An interpretation of the Fama Fraternitatis with respect to Dee 's Monas Hieroglyphica. Ambix (Journal for the Society for the History of Chemistry and Alchemy). 33(1):1-10.
1989: 'The Magic of Secrecy. Ethos. September 17(2):131-166.
1990: Review article. Ritual healing in suburban America by M. McGuire. In Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. Summer 1990. 14:133-8.
1990: 'Our master, Our brother: Levi-Strauss' debt to Rousseau'. Cultural Anthropology. November 5(4): 396-413.
1991: Invited response to review essay of Persuasions of the Witch's Craft in Journal of Ritual Studies. 5(2):128.
1992: Entries on magic in Who's Who of Religions Macmillan Reference Books.
1992: "The Goat and the Gazelle". Excerpted from Persuasions of the Witch's Craft. In Introduction to Social Anthropology . Ed. W. Haviland.
1993:'The resurgence of romanticism: contemporary neopaganism, feminism and the divinity of nature.' Anthropology and environmentalism . Ed. K. Milton. Routledge, Kegan and Paul.
1994: 'Psychological anthropology as the naturalist's art'. In The making of psychological anthropology II. Ed. M. Suarez-Orozco and G. and L. Spindler. New York : Harcourt Brace College Publications.
1994: 'The Good Parsi: the postcolonial feminization of a colonial elite'. Man 29(2):333-357.
1998: 'Partial failure: the approach to postmodernist uncertainty in psychoanalysis and in anthropology.' Psychoanalytic Quarteryl 68(3): 449-473.
1998: entries on 'magic', 'cults', 'trance', 'sorcery, 'witchcraft', in The Blackwell Dictionary of Anthropology. Ed. Thomas Barfield. Basil Blackwell.
1999: "Commentary: Alan Wolfe's One nation after all ". Sociological perspectives. 42(l).
2000: 'The traumatized social self. the Parsi predicament in modern Bombay .' In Cultures under siege: collective violence and trauma in interdisciplinary perspectives. Ed. A. Robben and M. Suarez-Orozco. Cambridge University Press.
2001: Commentary, "Missionary positions: Christian, Modernist and Postmodernist," by R.J. Priest. Current Anthropology. 42(l):55-56.
2001: Letter, New England Journal of Medicine. March 22.
2001: Commentary, �Towards an anthropology of managed care,� in Culture, medicine and psychiatry.
2001: "Dissociation, social technology and the spiritual domain." In The Best of Britain : the ethnography of Britain . ed. N. Rapport. London : Berg.
2001: "The Ugly Goddess: reflections on the role of violent images in religious experience." History of Religions 41(2): 114-141.
2001: �Identity in anthropology;� �Thick description: methodology.� The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences . Ed. N. Smelser and N\P. Baltes. Pp. 7134-9; 15665-15668. New York : Elsevier.
2002: "Evil in the sands of time: theology and identity politics among the Zoroastrian Parsis." Journal of Asian Studies . 61(3): 861-889.
2004: �Yearning for God: trance as a culturally specific practice and its implication for understanding dissociative disorders�. Journal of Trauma and Dissocation . 5(2): 101-129. View article.
2004: �Metakinesis: how God becomes intimate in contemporary US Christianity.� American Anthropologist . 106(3): September. View article.
In press: �Modern witchcraft� in the Encyclopedia of Shamanism , ed. M. Walter.
In press: �Anthropology� in the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft , ed. R. Golden.
In press: �The psychoanalyst and the scientist.� Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, VIII . Ed. B. Sadock and V. Sadock
In press: �The Zoroastrian tradition in India .� In Religions in South Asia , ed. G.R. Thursby. London : Routledge. |
Honors and Awards
1981: The Lionel deJersey Scholarship (John Harvard Fellowship) Emmanuel College 1981-1985: National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. (Not 83-4).
1983-1984: The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
1983-1984: The Richards Fund; the Wyse Fund (Cambridge University)
1987-1988: The Nuffield Foundation
1987-1988: The British Academy
1987-1988: The Rotary Foundation
1989: Elected to the Society of Fellows, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University. Declined.
1990: Chancellor's Summer Faculty Fellowship. University of California
1990: Fulbright Senior Research award for research in India
1991: Affirmative Action Faculty Career Development Program Award
1992: National Academy of Education Spencer Fellowship
1992: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
1992: NIMH Grant R03 MH50002-01
1994-1995: Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto
2003: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2004: NIH grant �Models of illness�. R34.
Book prizes
2001 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing: for Of two minds 2001 Bryce Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology: for Of two minds
2001 Gradiva Award from the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis: for Of two minds |
