Two NU Anthropology PhDs have featured articles in the theme section on “Care” in the June 2021 issue of Anthropology News
September 14, 2021
A recent issue of the Anthropology News (June 23, 2021) has a theme section on “Care" and Matilda Stubbs (PhD 2018, Lecturer in the Crown School of Social Work, Policy and Practice, University of Chicago) and Jean Hunleth (PhD 2011, Assistant Professor of Surgery and Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, School of Medicine) have articles that are featured in this section.
“Slimefulness as Self-Care" describes Matilda Stubbs' recent research on the phenomenon of slime play and its increasing popularity and relationship to the experience of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) "a perceptual phenomenon, known for inducing tingling or other euphoric effects, and can occur through sensations or synesthesia from visual imagery, sounds, or touch.” There is now a thriving “slime community” online and offline which Matilda is examining as a technology of self-care. In collaboration with three other Northwestern Anthropology PhDs (Beth Hartman PhD 2016, Alana Glaser PhD 2015 and Darrio Valles PhD 2018) Matilda has proposed a virtual roundtable for the upcoming American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting on the topic "Who Cares? The Truth About Precarious Work in the U.S.”
“Care at the Gate” (Jean Hunleth, Comfort Asante, Sarah Burack and Mutale Chileshe) reports on the study “Caring for Caregivers” initiated in response to the closing of hospital gates in Zambia, including the Children’s Hospital, in response to COVID-19. Closing the gates heightened the challenges that families already faced in attempting to give care or receive care during hospitalization. In particular the practice of bedsiding, an important way that patients are cared for by their kin in hospital settings in Zambia, was made much more difficult because these closures sharply limited the number of individuals who could cross the gate and enter the hospital. Care at the gate emerged as one form of support "to make up for shortfalls as everyone now must embrace their imaginations and creativity to survive.” Jean Hunleth is the author of, Children as Caregivers: The Global Fight against Tuberculosis and HIV in Zambia (2017), which won the 2018 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award presented by the Association for Africanist Anthropology.