Anthony Wright, PhD
Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies
Department of Childhood Studies
Rutgers University-Camden
329 Cooper Street – Room 205
Anthony Wright joined the Department of Childhood Studies in 2019 after completing his PhD in medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco. Dr. Wright’s research uses ethnographic methods to explore how a wide range of technologies mediate practices of care and communication among young people in life-threatening circumstances. He is currently working on two projects in this vein. The first is situated in the context of pediatric cancer treatment in the United States. It looks at how biomedical and psychosocial technologies shape care and communication among professionals, patients, and families at a children’s hospital in California. This work has found that despite emerging professional discourses of adolescent cancer care, many cancer patients who are socially identified as adolescents continue to be treated in children’s hospitals, which are regulated by standards of child appropriateness and saturated with media derived from popular children’s culture. For some patients, subjection to child-directed settings and caregiving practices can produce forms of isolation and alienation that exacerbate the psychosocial harms associated with cancer treatment.
Dr. Wright’s second project ethnographically explores how young indigenous people in Michoacán, México are using digital technologies to facilitate activism against forms of violence, political corruption, and environmental exploitation that are threatening the viability of their communities. This project considers the following questions: How have social media and related technologies shaped the ways in which young people engage in activism? What messages circulate between youth activists in México and the United States, and how do these transnational modes of communication shape local activist practices? How are critical understandings of violence, exploitation, and oppression being reiterated and reshaped in the process?
Dr. Wright’s research has been published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry and The Journal of Urban Health. He was also invited to contribute two chapters to Pioneros de la antropología en Michoacán (Universidad Michoacana, 2019), a Spanish-language edited volume on the history of anthropological research among indigenous and agricultural communities in Michoacán, México.
Education:
Ph.D. Joint Program in Medical Anthropology (2019) – Unversity of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco
B.A. in Anthropology (2010) – University of Texas at Austin
Research Interests:
Cultures of pediatric biomedicine; youth and digital technologies; youth activism and the politics of indigeneity; United States and Mexico.
Courses being taught at Rutgers-Camden:
Undergraduate: Pediatric Medicine
Graduate: Childhood and Violence
View Full CV Here
Publications
Refereed Journal Articles
2016 “Protecting urban health and safety: balancing care and harm in the era of mass incarceration.” with Nadia Gaber. Journal of Urban Health, 93 (Supplement 1): 68-77. Special issue on police brutality, Hannah L. Cooper and Mindy Fullilove (eds.)
2015 “Identifying Pious and Heretical Citizens in a Permanent Supported Housing Community.” Care Management Journals 16 (1): 30-40.
2012 “Social Defeat in Recovery-Oriented Supported Housing: Moral Experience, Stigma, and Ideological Resistance.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 37 (1): 660-678.
Peer-Reviewed Chapters
2018a “El sueño de la antropología aplicada: La etnografía del campesinado y la voluntad de mejorar.” In Pioneros de la antropología en Michoacán, Lorena Ojéda Dávila (ed.) Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo Press.
2018b “Más allá del progresismo y el romanticismo: La on-ramp antropógica de Stanley Brandes en Tzintzuntzan.” In Pioneros de la antropología en Michoacán, Lorena Ojéda Dávila (ed.) Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo Press.
Online Publications
2018 “Pediatric Cancer, Racial Formation, and the Existential Weight of Anti-Blackness.” Institute for the Study of Societal Issues Fellows Working Papers. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86w5k7th
2015 “Violence: On the Dangerous Edges.” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Fall 2015. https://clas.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/docs/tertiary/BRLASFall2015-Web-ViolenceattheMargins.pdf
Fellowships
2018 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, UC Berkeley
2017 Center for Race and Gender Graduate Student Research Grant, UC Berkeley
2017 Institute for the Study of Societal Issues Graduate Fellows Program, UC Berkeley
2015 Berkeley Fellowship, UC Berkeley
2013 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
Conference Activity/Participation
Presented Papers
2018 Oncological Timescapes: Pediatric Cancer and the Revision of Biographical Time. Maps, Fictions, Timelines: Institutional Times. American Anthropological Association 117th Annual Meeting, November 25, 2018.. San Jose, CA.
2017 Adolescent Cancer in the Era of Mass Incarceration. Lineages of (Dis)Inheritance, Legacies of Kinship. American Anthropological Association 116th Annual Meeting, December 3, 2017. Washington DC.
2016 La voluntad para saber y mejorar: Antropología aplicada, gobernanza y desarrollo internacional en Michoacán. Pioneros de la Antropología en Michoacán. IV Congreso Mexicano de Antropología Social y Etnología, October 2016, Queretaro, Mexico.
2015 The New Character Education: Rhetorics of Anti-Fixity. A More Perfect Child: Expert Visions of Children and Childhood. Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group Conference. March 2015, Long Beach, CA.
2013 Ethnographic Workshop: Narrating Perspectives: How We Ask, What We Write. With Tanya M. Luhrmann, Neely Laurenzo Myers, Cheryl Mattingly, Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good, and Byron Good. Society for Psychological Anthropology Biennial Conference, April 2013, San Diego, CA.
Organized Panels
2015 A More Perfect Child: Expert Visions of Children and Childhood. With Nadia Gaber, Melina Salvador, and Karina Vasilevska-Das. Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group Conference, March 2015, Long Beach, CA.
Campus Talks
2018 Black Families, Cancer, and the Existential Weight of Racism. The Political Economy of Intervention: Education and Biomedicine in the Neoliberal Era. UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues Graduate Fellows Program. Thursday, April 26, 2018.
2015 Police Brutality and Mass Incarceration: A Crisis in Public Health. With Nadia Gaber. Radical Pedagogies for Medicine, Community Workers, and Patients Working Group, UC Berkeley. September 15, 2015.
2010 Welcome to Pinewood: An Ethnographic Account of Poverty and Illness in Permanent Supported Housing. UT-Austin Dept. of Anthropology Honors Thesis Presentations. May 2010, Austin, TX.
2009 Poverty and Illness in Recovery-Oriented Supported Housing. UT- Austin Undergraduate Research Week Poster Session.
Teaching Experience
University of California, Berkeley, Department of Anthropology
Introduction to Social/Cultural Anthropology, Teaching Assistant, (Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Summer 2015)
Public Anthropology, Teaching Assistant, (Spring 2015)
Critical Medical Anthropology, Teaching Assistant, (Spring 2015)
Additional Research Experience
June 2012 – Dec. 2012 Research Assistant
Center for Social Work Research, UT-Austin
Supervisor: Teresa Granillo, PhD
Helped code qualitative interview data on the experiences of Latina college students using campus mental health services.
March 2012 Editorial Assistant
Book manuscript: Rethinking Autonomy: A Critique of Principilism in Biomedical Ethics) John Traphagan, PhDDepartment of Religious Studies UT-AustinFeb. 2011 – June 2013
Research Assistant
Student Division, College of Liberal Arts UT-Austin
Supervisor: Marc Musick, PhD
Helped prepare grant proposals for college programs aimed at facilitating academic success among first generation students.
Community Involvement/Outreach
August 2015 – May 2016 Organizer, Experiments in Radical Medicine, UC Berkeley
June – July 2014 Volunteer, Associación Mexicana de Ayuda a Niños con Cáncer, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico
Nov. – Dec. 2010 Volunteer, Casa Hogar (Children’s Shelter) Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico
Oct. – Dec. 2010 Volunteer English Instructor
Escuela Secundaria de Zirahuén Zirahuén, Michoacán, Mexico
Professional Memberships/Affiliations
- American Anthropological Association, Member
- Society for Medical Anthropology, Member
- Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group, Member