Sienna R. Craig

|Professor

Academic Appointments

Jane & Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies
Professor, Department of Anthropology
House Professor, South House
Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

The worlds of healing across culture, the meanings people ascribe to illness, and the social lives of medicines fascinate me. My work is also attuned to how people navigate processes of migration and social change - how families, communities, and cultures endure and support each other while living translocal lives. I am engaged in work on women's and children's health, global health, traditional medicine, and aging across cultures. My research takes me to the Nepal Himalaya and Tibetan regions of China, as well as to diasporic communities from these regions now living in the United States.

As a cultural and medical anthropologist, I am invested in understanding the multiple ways that so-called 'traditional' medical systems interact with biomedicine and global health: from patient-healer relationships and the cultural meanings people ascribe to suffering and affliction; to the wider socioeconomic and political circumstances in which medical practitioners are trained, healing occurs, and medicines are produced, evaluated, and distributed. I also have an abiding interest in studies of ethnicity, identity, and citizenship, including how experiences of diaspora and exile impact subjectivities as well as concepts of "health" and health seeking behaviors, and how they shape possibilities of and for care.

Much of my work is collaborative, interdisciplinary, and trained on applying critical medical anthropology perspectives and insights to ground truth health care realities in a variety of transnational contexts. I enjoy working with colleagues in biomedicine - experts in public health and global health - on issues related to medical education and clinical practice, at the intersections of medical, humanistic, and social scientific ways of knowing, grounded in the lived experiences of patients, families, communities, and health care professionals.

My book, The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York (2020, University of Washington Press) combines literary ethnography with short fiction as a vehicle for theoretical storytelling about migration and social change. I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2018-19) to work on this project.

My book Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine, investigates contemporary Tibetan medicine in Nepal and Tibetan areas of China and as a globalizing "complementary and alternative" medicine. I analyze how practitioners transmit knowledge between generations, and how they are professionalizing. I also address the translation of science across cultural, epistemological, and ideological borders by documenting what happens when Tibetan medicines are made to adhere to biomedical standards of drug safety and quality, and as they are evaluated through clinical research in Asia and the West. In Nepal and China, these dynamics reflect nation-building agendas and the politics of identity; they also illuminate an expanding global market for complementary and alternative medicines and point to the ethical, economic, and environmental challenges inherent in producing traditional medicines for mass markets.

I first traveled to Nepal in 1993, on an undergraduate study abroad program, and have been returning to this part of the world ever since. My earliest ethnographic work centered on ethnoveterinary practices and human-animal interactions, with a specific focus on the role of the horse in local culture and economy, religious symbolism and ritual practice, and as important figures in agro-pastoral life, including during moments of intense and rapid socio-economic change. The research I conducted at this time forms the basis of Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage Through the Himalayas, a work of creative nonfiction. I remain interested in dynamics between human and non-human lives and ways of being.

I am committed to writing across genres. My children's book, Clear Sky, Red Earth: A Himalayan Story, with Nepali artist Tenzin Norbu, is in its third edition and has also been published in Tibetan. I have collaborated with photographer Kevin Bubriski on Mustang in Black and White, a project that combines Bubriski's images of Mustang, Nepal, with my text. I have worked with new music composer Andrea Clearfield on several projects - Tse Go La and Khandroma - which include my original poetry and are inspired by Tibetan and Himalayan cultural worlds.

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Contact

Sienna.R.Craig@dartmouth.edu

(603) 646-9356

Silsby, Room 403B

HB 6047

Education

B.A. Brown University (1995)
M.A. Cornell University (2002)
Ph.D. Cornell University (2006)

Selected Publications

2023 Transgression, Ransom, Cure. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Peer reviewed essay in "Telling Stories from the Limits of Health and Medicine," a special issue edited by A. Neely and L. Meek. DOI: 10.1111/maq.12755.
2023 The Co-Production of Disasters: How the Nexus of Climate Change, Tourism, and COVID-19 Increases Socioeconomic Vulnerability in Mustang, Nepal. E. Amburgey, T.G. Gurung, Y.T. Gurung and S.R. Craig. Critical Asian Studies, 55:2, 211-234. https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2023.2174891
2023 Teacher – A Work of Flash Ethnography. Anthropology Now. 14(1-2): 136-139.
2022 Tibetan Medicine Production in Nepal: Industrial Aspirations, Cooperative Relations, and Precarious Production. C. Blaikie and S.R. Craig. In S. Kloos and C. Blaikie, eds. Asian Medical Industries: Contemporary Perspectives on Traditional Pharmaceuticals. London: Routledge, 253-279.

2022 Buddhist Healing Practices. In K. Trainor and P. Arai, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190632922.013.11
2022 Varied Reproductive Histories of Ethnically Tibetan Women. K. Sarna, G. Cioffi, S.R. Craig, J.S. Barnholtz-Sloan, B. Basnyat, C.M. Beall. Journal of the Nepal Health Research Council 19(53): 1-6.
2021 Art and Ethnographic Form in Dark Times: Revisiting Joy, Considering Suffering. Cultural Anthropology – Theorizing the Contemporary. Y. Stainova and S.R. Craig, eds., invited submission of ten original essays and an introduction by the editors. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/art-and-ethnographic-forms-in-dark-times.
2021. Global Pandemic, Translocal Medicine: The COVID-19 Diaries of a Tibetan Physician in New York City. S.R. Craig, N.T. Gurung, R. Perlin, M. Daurio, D. Kaufman, and M. Turin. Asian Medicine 16: 58-88, special issue on the novel coronavirus and Asian medical responses.
2021. Unsettling the American Dream: Mobility, Migration, and Precarity among Translocal Himalayan Communities during COVID-19. T. W. Gurung, E. Amburgy, and S.R. Craig. Development and Change. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12670.
2021. Healing Through History: A Qualitative Evaluation of a Social Medicine Consultation Curriculum for Internal Medicine Residents. J. Bradley, D. Styren, A. Ward, J. Howe, S.R. Craig, and E. Cohen. BMC Medical Education 21(95): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02505-1.
2020. The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
2020. Responding to an Unfolding Pandemic: Asian Medicines and COVID-19. Cultural Anthropology – Hot Spots Series. S.R. Craig, B. Gerke, and J. van der Valk, eds. URL: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/responding-to-an-unfolding-pandemic-asian-medicines-and-covid-19

[A curated and peer-reviewed collection of 18 essays about Asian medical responses to the pandemic, as well as the historical, cultural, and political-economic contexts of epidemics in Asia, with contributions from scholars and practitioners. Published online June 23, 2020.]
2020. Sowa Rigpa Humanitarianism: Local Logics of Care Within a Global Politics of Compassion. S.R. Craig, B. Gerke, V. Sheldon. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. DOI: 10.1111/maq.12561.
2020. Subversive Maps: How Digital Language Mapping Can Support Biocultural Diversity. M. Daurio, S.R. Craig, D. Kaufman, R. Perlin, and M. Turin. Terralingua: Langscape Journal, May 19, 2020. URL: https://terralingua.org/langscape_articles/subversive-maps-how-digital-language-mapping-can-support-biocultural-diversity/
2020. On Unreliable Narrators. In C. McGranahan, ed. Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 93-98.
2019. Letters for Mother. Book 2.0 9 (1-2): 142-149.
2019. Narrating Disaster through Participatory Research: Responding to Post-Earthquake Nepal. G. Childs, S.R. Craig, D. N. Dhakal, M. Donohue, K. Hildebrandt. Collaborative Anthropologies 10 (1-2): 207-236.
2018. Exploring the Surgical Gaze through Literature and Art. K. Kirkland and S.R. Craig. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 319 (15): 1532-1534. URL: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2678593.
2018. Mustang in Black and White. Photographs by Kevin Bubriski, Text by Sienna Craig. Kathmandu: Vajra Publications.
2018. Orality and Mobility: Documenting Himalayan Voices in New York City. N.T. Gurung, R. Perlin, D. Kaufman, M. Turin, S.R. Craig. Verge: Studies in Global Asia 4(2): 64-80.
2018. Orienting to Medicine: Scripting Professionalism, Hierarchy, and Social Difference at the Start of Medical School. S.R. Craig, R. Scott, K. Blackwood. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-018-9580-0.
2018. The Khora of Migration: Everyday Practices of (Well)-Being between Mustang, Nepal and New York City. S.R. Craig and N.T. Gurung, In D. Gellner and S. Hausner, eds. Global Nepalis: Religion and Culture in a New Diaspora. Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 271-300.
2017. What is Anthropology? In What is …? In D. Rockmore, ed. A guided Tour of the Great Ideas of the Liberal Arts. Lebanon, NH: University of New England Press.
2016. Naming and Forgetting: Sowa Rigpa and the Recognition of Asian Medical Systems. S.R. Craig and B. Gerke. MedicineAnthropologyTheory. URL: http://www.medanthrotheory.org/read/6701/naming-and-forgetting.
2016. Craig, S., C.M. Beall, G. Childs. Closing the Womb Door: Contraception Use and the Fertility Transition among Three Generations of Buddhist Women in Highland Nepal. Accepted, Maternal Child Health, special issue on mountain communities. DOI 10.1007/s10995-016-2017-x.
2015. (Co)Producing Efficacious Medicines: Collaborative Event Ethnography with Himalayan and Tibetan Sowa Rigpa Practitioners. C. Blaikie, S. Craig, B. Gerke, and T. Hofer. Current Anthropology 56(2): 178-204
2015. Alternative Accounting in Maternal and Infant Global Health. V. Adams, S. Craig, A. Samen. Global Public Health. DOI: 10.1080/17441692.2015.1021364
2012. Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2010 Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds. V. Adams, M. Schrempf, and S. Craig eds. London and New York: Berghahn Books.
2008. Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage through the Himalayas . Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications.

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Sienna R. Craig

Jane & Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies

Professor, Department of Anthropology

House Professor, South House

Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

Contact

Education

Selected Publications

Sienna R. Craig

Jane & Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies

Professor, Department of Anthropology

House Professor, South House

Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

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Contact

Education

Selected Publications

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