Bio:
Amy Farnbach Pearson is a historical and medical anthropologist specializing in the social construction of medical knowledge and practice. Dr. Farnbach Pearson completed her undergraduate degree at Princeton University in molecular biology with a focus on immunology. After that, she became curious about disease beyond the cellular level: her graduate training examined how western biomedicine defines, investigates, and treats illness, and the ways this shapes people’s experiences of being ill. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Arizona State University.
Dr. Farnbach Pearson’s teaching centers around biomedical science as a creative endeavor shaped by researchers’ and practitioners’ social contexts and experiences. Her courses seek to excavate the social structures that undergird medical science and practice through historical-anthropological explorations of key developments in medicine, western medical perceptions of the body, and social concepts of health and illness.
Dr. Farnbach Pearson’s research applies these themes on two fronts: tuberculosis in 19th century Scotland and cancer in contemporary LGBTQ+ communities. The former explores the interplay between medical and social concepts of disease during a critical period in medical professionalism, medical science, and social change. The latter seeks to reduce cancer health disparities by identifying and addressing cultural, health system, and individual patient and provider factors contributing to medical trauma and negative health outcomes.
Research Interest:
Social responses to ill health, health disparities, sociocultural influences on health care delivery and outcomes, and health consequences of urbanization and industrialization.
