Anthony Todd Estes
M.A. Stanford, East Asian Stds;
M.A. Northern Ill U, Philosophy;
B.A. Gardner-Webb U, Psychology, Lib Arts, Religion
Fax: 310-206-7833
E-mail:
aestes@ucla.edu
Subfield
Psychomedical and Sociocultural; 2ndary emphasis: Linguistic Anthropology
Research Interests
How does one write the phenomenon of secularity in a reflective and problemetizing manner, when one's context of writing is unreservedly secularist (i.e., academia, humanities, sciences)? Can we encounter secularity with a beginner's mind? In what ways does it matter where and when this encounter takes place? Keywords: modernity, meditation, group therapy, truth-claims, unknowns, evangelicalism, time, rationality, "Authenticity," Taiwan, PRC, US.
Notes
Languages:
Native: English (native)
Advanced: Chinese (Mandarin)
Beginning: Hindi, Spanish, Classical Chinese
Someday: German, Sanskrit, Pali, Taiwanese (Fujian variety)
My research traces three different sorts of practices, all of which address the cross-cultural transposability of secularity and its various oppositional terms (spirituality, religiosity, New Ageism, etc.). These three areas are:
therapeutic uses of meditation/mindfulness
evangelical encounters with secular/scientific norms
globalization of group therapy
The main focus for dissertation work is on secularity, as a definitional and practical problem for teachers of therapeutic mindfulness. However, grant proposals have often focused on the group therapy issue. The following is an earlier draft that focuses on the latter issue:
My research focuses on the cultural transmission of knowledge and practices of healing in Taiwan and mainland China in contexts of globalization. In context of PhD dissertation research, this will involve studying the approaches of practitioners of group psychotherapy in Taipei, Taiwan, whose practices ostensibly combine the language and procedures of group psychotherapy with Chinese religious and/or healing traditions. While inspired by the work of other anthropologists on issues of the resilience of local knowledge in contexts of globalization, this research departs from the tendency on the part of some such work to treat local traditions and western psychotherapeutic norms as if they are mutually antithetical, and thus competitive with regard to the attainment of authority within local practices. Instead, this work considers the possibility that such practices may site instances of meaningful convergence, in which coherent healing goals emerge from the narratives, reference frames, and felt body-states that occur within therapeutic practices built up from these divergent sources of knowledge about healing.
Further keywords (the longer list):
"authenticity"
meditation, prayer, altered states
emotion work, safety work, journeywork (lots of work)
participant knowing
scientific knowing
religion and secularity in transnational contexts
phenomena: innovations, dispersions, and time
phenomenology and otherwise
“Truth": as a historical, political, interactional, religious, and philosophical problem
interreligious encounter
group therapy
encounter/focus groups
masculinity and gender in group therapy contexts
focus/encounter group processes
primal therapy, breathwork (even more work)
spiritual direction/counseling
psychotherapeutic practice and innovation
transpersonal, Jungian, gestalt psychotherapy
Anthropology of Christianity
Buddhist Studies
"qigong re"
American Vipassana, mindfulness, metta, contemplative prayer
group healing and public spheres (or is it...class?)
healing and "intentional commmunities"
Mindfulness education, contemplative education
Networking in:
Taipei, Keelung/Jilong (Taiwan), Pune (India), China-PRC, LA, UCLA, Northern Cal, Marin/San Francisco, Carrboro and Anytown, North Carolina
Grants and Awards
2006/07, Graduate Research Fellowship, UCLA
2006/07, FLAS, UCLA
2001/02, FLAS, Stanford University and Mandarin Training Center, Taipei, Taiwan
2000/01, Graduate Research Fellowship, Stanford University
1995/97, Graduate Teaching Assistant, NIU
1990/94, Presidential Scholarship, GWU
1994, Huggins Award, GWU
1994, Honors, GWU, thesis: Religion, Liminality, and Relatedness, an Interdisciplinary Model of Hasidic Practice
1993, Alpha Chi President, GWU
Advisors
Jason Throop, chair
Doug Hollan
Yan Yunxiang
more to come...
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