S. Løchlann Jain is on faculty at the Anthropology Department at Stanford University, where they teach medical and legal anthropology. Professor Jain's research is primarily concerned with the ways in which stories get told about injuries, from car crashes to lung cancer, from mountain climbing deaths to space shuttle explosions. Figuring out the political and social significance of these stories has led them to the study of medicine, law, product design, medical error, and histories of engineering, regulation, corporations, and advertising. Jain’s publications include, among others, Injury (Princeton University Press, 2006) and Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013).
In this public lecture, Jain will contextualize and read from their book Malignant. The book aims to better understand American life and culture through cancer. Nearly half of all Americans will be diagnosed in their lifetimes with an invasive cancer -- an all-too common component of American life. Through a combination of history, memoir, and cultural analysis, Malignant explores why cancer remains so confounding, despite the billions of dollars spent in the search for a cure. It offers an interdisciplinary analysis of medicine, law, patient narratives, and environmental history to identify where and how cancer emerges as a seemingly coherent, and yet entirely problematic concept from the frictions that emerge where these disciplines meet.
Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us received numerous awards, including the School for Advanced Research’s J. I. Staley Prize, the American Anthropological Association’s Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing and Diane Forsythe Prize, the Society for the History of Technology’s Edelstein Prize, and Society for Social Studies of Science’s Ludwik Fleck Prize.
This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative Studies, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and by Project Narrative.
Coffee and tea will be served.
