Research Interests: Psychological and Medical Anthropology; Morality and Ethics; Mental Healthcare; Knowledge and Pedagogy; Selfhood; Emotion and Affect; South Korea

My current research interests revolve around the social life of psychological ideas, cultural understandings of tension and release/relief, and the affective dimensions of knowledge and discovery. Specifically, I am interested in the cultural patternings of “cathartic” experience, and more broadly in exploring the phenomenon of catharsis as an anthropological object – tracing the term’s evolution from its Aristotelian beginnings, subsequent medicalization, and current existence as a diffuse idiom of purgation. I have an ongoing ethnographic relationship with South Korea, where I’ve spent 4+ years teaching English, studying Korean at Sogang University and carrying out fieldwork for my Master’s thesis project on alcoholism and Korean 12-step recovery groups in Seoul.