Cecilia Coale Van Hollen
Social Sciences (Anthropology)
Professor
Head of Studies, Anthropology
Email: cecilia.vanhollen@yale-nus.edu.sg
Cecilia Van Hollen is a cultural and medical anthropologist specializing in research on women’s health in India. She received her BA from Brown University in anthropology and religious studies; an MA in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania; and a PhD in medical anthropology from U.C.-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco. Van Hollen has published two books: Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth and Modernity in South India (University of California Press, 2003) and Birth in the Age of AIDS: Women, Reproduction, and HIV/AIDS in India (Stanford University Press, 2013) and is currently working on her third major research project on women and cancer in India. Her book, Birth on the Threshold, received the Association for Asian Studies’ 2005 prize for the best book in South Asia Studies. She received the Steven Polgar Paper Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association for the Best Paper Published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly in 2011-12. She has received research fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
Van Hollen has been on the faculties of anthropology at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and the University of Notre Dame and a visiting faculty member of Asian Studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is on the Board of Trustees of AIIS and a member of the Editorial Board of the Maternal and Child Health Journal. Van Hollen served as the Director of the Department of Education National Resource Center for South Asian Studies at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She has been a contributor to the CSIS Global Health Policy blog and a Delegate to Oxfam-India’s South Asia Maternal-Health Regional Dialogue.
Van Hollen’s ethnographic research focuses empirically on social and cultural dimensions of health, medicine, the body, and global and public health policy in India, and theoretically on globalisation and modernity; feminism and gender studies; critical medical anthropology; and social inequality and power. Her research aims to both expand the empirical and theoretical horizons of anthropology and South Asia Studies and to provide insights to policymakers working in global and public health.
Van Hollen’s current book manuscript in progress is entitled, Cancer and the Kali Yuga: Assessing risks and seeking care for women with cancer in India. She has several forthcoming articles related to this cancer research.
Selected publications (see CV for full publications list):
Books:
2013 Birth in the Age of AIDS: Women, Reproduction, and HIV/AIDS in India. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
2003 Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth & Modernity in South India. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Also published by Zubaan, Delhi, India].
Articles and book chapters:
Caduff, Carlo, Mac Skelton, Dwaipayan Banerjee, Darja Djordevic, Marissa Mika, Lucas Mueller, Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Cecilia Van Hollen (Forthcoming 2018) An Analysis of social science research into cancer care in low- and middle-income countries: improving global cancer control through greater interdisciplinary research. Journal of Global Oncology.
Van Hollen, Cecilia 2018 Handle with Care: Rethinking the rights vs. culture dichotomy in cancer disclosure in India. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Vol. 32(1): 59-84.
2016 Feminist Critical Medical Anthropology Methodologies: Implications for understanding gender and healthcare in India. Special Issue. Economic and Political Weekly 51(18):72-79.
Sheoran, Nayatara; Deomampo, Daisy; Van Hollen, Cecilia
2015 Extending Theory, Rupturing Boundaries: Reproduction, Health, and Medicine Beyond North-South Binaries. Special Issue. Medical Anthropology 34(3):185-191.
Van Hollen, Cecilia
2011 Breast or Bottle? HIV-Positive Women’s Responses to Global Health Policy on Infant Feeding in India. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 25(4):499-518.
2010 HIV/AIDS and the Gendering of Stigma in Tamil Nadu, South India. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 34(4):633–657.
2007 Navigating HIV, Pregnancy, and Childbearing in South India: Pragmatics and Constraints in women’s decision-making. Medical Anthropology 26(7): 7–52.
2005 Nationalism, Transnationalism, and the Politics of “Traditional” Indian Medicine for HIV/AIDS. In Asian Medicine and Globalization. Joseph Alter, ed. Pp. 88–106. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
2003 Invoking Vali: Painful Technologies of Modern Birth in South India. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17(1):49–77.
1998 Moving Targets: Routine IUD Insertions in Maternity Wards in Tamil Nadu, India. Reproductive Health Matters 6(11):98-106.
1994 Perspectives on the Anthropology of Birth. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 18: 501–512
Blogs:
Van Hollen, Cecilia
2015 Maternal Healthcare in South Asia as the MDGs Wind Down. Invited blog for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Health Policy. May 15, 2015. http://www.smartglobalhealth.org/blog/entry/maternal-healthcare-in-south-asia-as-the-mdgs-wind-down/
2014 Reflections on the U.S.- India Standoff on Generics. Invited blog for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Health Policy. November 5, 2014. http://www.smartglobalhealth.org/blog/entry/reflections-on-the-u.s.-india-standoff-on-generics/
2014 Closing the Gap in India: How Shortages of Anti-retroviral Therapies Could Jeopardize India’s Race to Eradicate AIDS. Invited Blog for Stanford University Press on World AIDS Day. http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2014/12/closing-the-gap-in-india-1.html
Anthropology Capstone Project
Medical Anthropology