Organizer: Harvard Medical School & Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

Type/Location: Hybrid / Cambridge, MA

All God’s Children (2021, 1hr 7m) courtesy of Robert Lemelson’s Documentary Educational Resources

Description:

Visual Psychological Anthropology (VPA) integrates and adapts the evolving priorities, methodologies, fieldwork techniques, topics, and insights of psychological anthropology into the production of ethnographic films. The orientation of psychological anthropology towards internal struggles, motivations, desires, emotions, dreams, fantasies, sexuality, and phenomenological and subjective individual experiences can serve as a vibrant guide for creating films that narrate compelling and emotionally resonant stories. This presentation will discuss aspects of a multi-decade engagement utilizing the methods of VPA to explore various dimensions of mental illness in Indonesia.

About the Speaker:

Robert Lemelson is an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at UCLA and a psychological anthropologist who has focused much of his career on Southeast Asia, particularly the islands of Bali and Java in Indonesia. His research examines the relationship between culture, history, trauma, psychiatric illness, structural and gender-based violence, and their impacts on subjectivity and phenomenology. As a visual anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker, Lemelson has over twenty years of experience conducting fieldwork and producing longitudinal film studies. In 2007, he founded Elemental Productions, an ethnographic documentary film company. He has produced more than a dozen films covering diverse topics such as mental illness, polygamy and gender-based violence, the sex trade, genocide, kinship and ritual, and trance and possession. Additionally, Lemelson serves as the president of the Foundation for Psychocultural Research, a Los Angeles-based philanthropic organization dedicated to integrating the social sciences and neuroscience since 1999.

Registration Links:

To attend the event in person, please register here.

To attend the event online, please register here.
Please note: This event requires a password to attend virtually. Please email Dr. Rahimi with a brief introduction of yourself to receive the meeting password.