Athena McLean,
Ph.D
Anthropology
& Sociology
mclea1ah@cmich.edu
Education
Ph.D., Temple University, 1990
M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1980
B.A., Temple University, 1977
Teaching Expertise
Cultural Anthropology
Sociology of Aging
History of Anthropology Theory
Sociology of Health and Illness
Medical Anthropology
Research Interests
Medical Anthropology
Aging
Critical Perspectives
Political Economy
Dementia and Institutionalization
Community Mental Health
Oral History Social Movements Greek Diaspora Identity
Current projects
McLean is currently completing a book based on
two years of research comparing dementia caregiving in two Philadelphia
nursing homes. She is also working on submitting a proposal to various
book editors for an edited volume of contributions examining the
methodological crossovers that occur between research and personal
experiences. This will be based on a session she co-organized at the
American Anthropological Association last year. Next, she has a set of
video tapes of interviews she conducted with elderly refugees from Asia
Minor who were forced to move to Greece in 1922. She will transcribe
them and analyze the results for eventual publication.
Selected Publications
The Person in Dementia: A
Study of Nursing Home Care in the U.S. Broadview Press, Toronto, 2007.
"From Commodity to
Community: An Impossibility?" Forum. Ageing and Society 26: 925-937.
Book review of
Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines: A Reader, edited by
Diane Freedmand and Olivia Frey, for publication in Anthropology and
Education Quarterly, forthcoming, Volume 36.4, December 2005.
"Coherence Without Facticity in Dementia:
the Curious Case of Ms. Fine." Accepted for Thinking About Dementia:
Culture, Loss and the Anthropology of Senility, edited by Annette Leibing
(McGill) and Lawrence Cohen (Berkeley), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Forthcoming 2004.
"Recovering Consumers and a broken mental health
system in the United States: Ongoing Challenges for Consumers/Survivors
and the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health", International Journal of
Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Volume 8: 53-76.
"Power in the Nursing Home: The Case of a Special Care Unit,"
Medical Anthropology 19: 223-257, 2001.
'"Empowerment and the Psychiatric Consumer/Ex-Patient
Movement in the United States: Contradictions, Crisis and Change."
Social Science and Medicine 40 (1995): 1053-71.
"What Kind of Love is This?"
The Sciences 34 (1994): 36 - 40.
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