Rebecca Seligman

Institute for Policy Research

Background

Dr. Rebecca Seligman earned her PhD from Emory University in 2004 after successfully defending her dissertation: “Sometimes affliction is a door: A bio-psycho-cultural analysis of the pathways to Candomblé mediumship”. This work focused on the relationship between mental health and religious participation in Brazil and was later published into a book titled Possessing Spirits and Healing Selves: Embodiment and Transformation in an Afro-Brazilian Religion. 

Her work has been published in the fields of health, psychiatry, and anthropology, as well as the Discover magazine. Her public scholarship on health and medicine has appeared in outlets including STAT News, Scientific American, and the LA Review of Books.  She is also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience.

Dr. Seligman’s research interests include the critical examination of social and political-economic forces that affect the experience and distribution of mental and physical illness, stress, and social disadvantage. She is also interested in cultural models of selfhood to outcomes such as PTSD, dissociation, somatization, diabetes, and depression. Her current research focuses on mental and physical health disparities among Mexican Americans. She is also working on a project that investigates mental health and psychiatric treatment among Mexican American youth. This project investigates the role of personal and social meaning in shaping how bodily sensations and physiological processes are perceived. Specifically, the project examines sociocultural influences on the ways in which Latinx youth and their families conceptualize and experience their emotions, relationships, social identities and sense of self. These influences subsequently affect their help seeking and experiences with mental healthcare. 

Her teaching interests include but are not limited to medical and psychological anthropology, cultural influences on mental health and healing, self and narrative, embodiment and mind-body interaction, cultural neuroscience, Latin America, and ritual.

EDUCATION

• BA – Skidmore College – 1995
• MA – Emory University – 2001
• Certificate, Transcultural Psychiatry – McGill University – 2002
• PhD – Emory University – 2004

PUBLICATIONS & Projects

• Chiao, J.,Seligman R., S. Li, and R. Turner eds. 2015. Oxford Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Seligman, R., Choudhury S., and LJ. Kirmayer. 2015. Locating Culture in the Brain and in the World: From Social Categories to an Ecology of Mind. In Oxford Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Seligman, R. 2014. Possessing Spirits and Healing Selves: Embodiment and Transformation in an Afro-Brazilian Religion. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/possessing-spirits-and-healing-selves-rebecca-seligman/?isb=9781137409591
• Seligman, R., E. Mendenhall, M. Valdovinos, A. Fernandez, and E. Jacobs. 2014. Subjectivity and self-care among Mexican Americans with Diabetes. Medical Anthropology Quarterly.