Emily Cohen completed her PhD in Anthropology at New York University where she earned a certificate in Culture and Media, she also holds a BA in Anthropology from UC Santa Cruz. She is completing revisions for her first book Bodies at War: An Ethnography which is under review at Duke University Press. Her book examines what it means to rehabilitate after landmine injury in Colombia. Her postdoctoral research Military Utopias of Mind and Machine examined the rise of military utopic visions of mind that involve the creation of virtual worlds and hyper real simulations in US military psychiatry for the cultivation of “psychological resilience.”
Dr. Cohen, also a filmmaker, directed Iraq Veterans Against the War Perform Operation First Casualty (2007) and Santa Cruz Prepares for Y2K (1999), short films that reached popular audiences through public access platforms, the Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, and the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. Dr. Cohen recently completed her first feature-length film, Bodies at War/MINA (2015). In March 2016, the film will screen at urban centers and rural areas most affected by landmines throughout Colombia as a part of the Bodies at War Outreach Campaign. Cohen is spearheading the Community Prostheses Project in Colombia where biomedically trained prosthetists will collaborate with Colombian artisans to produce free, easily repairable prostheses out of found objects that also meet international standards. She is currently producing her second feature-length documentary Virtual War: Memories of Abu-Ghraib. Her research and filmmaking have been supported by the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, American Council for Learned Societies, NYU Torch Prize, and Fulbright Colombia. For more information, visit www.acolombianlandminestory.com
Dr. Emily Cohen returns to UC Santa Cruz as the Assistant Director of Research and Academic Programs for the Science & Justice Research Center and Assistant Adjunct Professor of Sociology.
PUBLICATIONS
2015 “Disciplining Pain: Masculinity and Ideologies of Repair in a Colombian Military Hospital.” Body and Society. Web. July 2015. (print publication forthcoming)
2015 “Inhabitable Worlds: Troubling disability, debility, and ability narratives.” Special Series. Co-edited with Michele Friedner. Somatosphere. Web. April 15, 2015
2015 “Scenes from Colombian Minefields”. Cultural Anthropology Hot Spot. Web. April 30, 2015.
2012 “From Phantoms to Prostheses.” Disability Studies Quarterly. Vol, 32(3). Web.
2012 “On Becoming a Colombian Paralympian.” Anthropology News. Web. December 14, 2012.
2010 “War Without End: Technology and the Injured Body.” Anthropology Now, Vol. 2(2), pp. 70-75.
2004 “Orphanista Manifesto: Orphan Films and the Politics of Reproduction.” American Anthropologist, Vol. 106 (4).