USC.edu

Cheryl Mattingly

Professor Emerita of Anthropology
Email mattingl@usc.edu Office KAP 348G Office Phone (213) 740-3550

Center, Institute & Lab Affiliations

  • Initiative for Health, Humanity, and Culture, Director
  • NIH Grant, Development of Culturally Competent Mental Health Care, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA, Consultant
  • NIH Grant, Enhancing Social and Behavioral Sciences in Medical School, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University, Consultant

Biography

Cheryl Mattingly is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California.  Her major interests are the anthropology of ethics (especially virtue ethics and the ethics of care), medical anthropology, phenomenology and hermeneutics, philosophical anthropology, narrative, chronic illness and disability, the culture of biomedicine, health disparities, and minority health.  Her primary research has been in the United States. 

 

Some recent awards and honors include an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University, Denmark (2018) and selection as a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (2017-2018), a Dean’s Influential Visiting Scholar of Social Science, UCLA (2016) and a Dale T. Mortensen Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Aarhus University (2013-2015).

 

She has been the PI and Co-PI on multiple large federally funded research grants (primarily from NIH) studying minority health in the United States.  Most significantly, these enabled a fifteen-year ethnographic study following the lives of African American families raising children with chronic illnesses and disabilities in both clinic and home settings.  She has published extensively on this research, including two books:  The Paradox of Hope: Journeys through a Cultural Borderland (2010), which was awarded the 2011 Stirling Book Prize (Society for Psychological Anthropology) andMoral Laboratories:  Family Peril and the Struggle for a Good Life(2014), which received the 2015 New Millennium Book Prize (Society for Medical Anthropology).   

 

Her initial research in medical anthropology focused on the culture of biomedical rehabilitation and the clinical treatment of disability and chronic illness from narrative and phenomenological perspectives.  She received awards from the American Anthropological Society for publications that emerged from this work, including the 1999 Polgar Essay Prize for “In Search for the Good: Narrative Reasoning in Clinical Practice” and the 2000 Victor Turner Book Prize for Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience. Two additional books explored the centrality of narrative to clinical practice, illness and disability: Clinical Reasoning in a Therapeutic Practice (1994), co-authored with Maureen Fleming, andNarrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing (2000), co-edited with Linda Garro.

 

She has a longstanding interest in intersections between anthropology and philosophy (especially moral philosophy and phenomenology), and in thinking through a philosophical anthropology deeply informed by ethnography.  She has collaborated with philosophers on the topics of ethics, critical theory and philosophical anthropology.  Her major cross-disciplinary publications include two co-edited books, Narrative, Self and the Social Practice(2009), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life(2018), and a guest edited special section of HAU:  Toward New Humanism: An Approach from Philosophical Anthropology(2018).     

 

Currently, she is working on a book provisionally titled Category Trouble: Stigma and Moral Experience. This book is both a foray in critical phenomenology and a writing experiment in which she is exploring how to create compelling non-fiction short stories that also have theoretical and existential resonance.  Her aspiration is to rethink stigma on multiple levels:  as a personal (and intimately interpersonal) lived experience, as a social marker of marginalized groups, and as a feature of the human condition. 

 

Her recent research, Aging as a Human Condition: Radical Uncertainty and the Search for a Good (Old) Life, is a collaborative project that involves anthropologists, philosophers and artists. This comparative study of aging and social precarity involves ethnographic fieldwork in five countries:  Denmark, USA, Uganda, India (among Tibetan refugees) and Krygzstan. The overarching questions animating the study are:  How do people who are aging under challenging and uncertain life conditions strive to achieve good lives? What can we learn about aging as a universal human condition through ethnographic, philosophical and artistic projects that take seriously the diversity of ways in which old age is lived and experienced? How may a philosophical attention to the human condition give ethnographic studies more phenomenological depth and theoretical insight? This three year project (2017 – 2020), funded by the Danish research foundation Velux, will not only yield the usual academic publications but also an art installation intended to attract a broader public that will be exhibited at Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus in spring 2020.  

Education

  • post doctorate NIMH Research Fellow in Clinically Relevant Anthropology, Harvard Medical School, 1992
  • Ph.D. Anthropology and Urban Studies, MIT, 1989

  • Tenure Track Appointments

    • Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California: Los Angeles, CA, 2004 –
    • Professor, Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Southern California: Los Angeles, CA, 2004 –
    • Professor (Joint Appointment), Department of Anthropology & Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Southern California: Los Angeles, CA, 2000 – 2004
    • Associate Professor (Joint Appointment), Department of Anthropology & Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Southern California: Los Angeles, CA, 1996 – 2000
    • Associate Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Illinois: Chicago, IL, 1994 – 1996
    • Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Illinois: Chicago, IL, 1988 – 1994

    Research, Teaching, Practice, and Clinical Appointments

    • Director: Health, Humanity and Cultural Initiative, Dornsife College of Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California: Los Angeles, CA, 2004-

    Visiting and Temporary Appointments

    • Professor of Philosophy, Department of Culture and Society, University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark,
    • Professor of Philosophy, Department of Culture and Society, University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark, Spring Fall
    • Guest Professor (Joint Appointment), Department of Anthropology & Department of Philosophy and History of ideas, University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark,
    • International Faculty, Department of Philosophy – Health, Humanity and Culture Research Center, University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark, 2000
    • Professor, Research Center, Health, Humanity and Culture, Department of Philosophy, University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark, 1999
    • Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney: Sydney, Australia, 1995

  • Research Keywords

    Anthropology of Ethics, Ethics of Care, Medical Anthropology, Narrative, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, Culture of Biomedicine, Chronic Illness and Disability, Race and Health Disparities, Philosophical Anthropology.

  • Contracts and Grants Awarded

    • International Conference Grant – Moral Engines: Exploring the Moral Drives in Human Life, (The Carlsburg Foundation), Maria Louw, Cheryl Mattingly, $10,000, 2014
    • International Conference Grant – Moral Engines: Exploring the Moral Drives in Human Life, (Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies), Cheryl Mattingly, Maria Louw, Rasmus Dyring, Thomas Wentzer, $30,000, 2014
    • Dale T. Mortensen Senior Research Fellow, (Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University), Cheryl Mattingly, $240,000, 2012 – 2014
    • Boundary Crossings: Re-situating Cultural Competence, (National Institute of Child Health, NIH), Mary Lawlor, Cheryl Mattingly, $2,530,000, 2005 – 2011
    • Development of Culturally Competent Mental Health Care, (NIH), Steven Lopez, Cheryl Mattingly, $365,000, 2007-2008
    • Long Term Research Supplement for Underrepresented Minorities, (Nat. Institute of Child Health & Human Development), Cheryl Mattingly, $520,447, 2002 – 2004
    • Long Term Research Supplement for Individuals with Disabilities, (Nat. Institute of Child Health & Human Development), Cheryl Mattingly, $657,698, 2001 – 2004
    • Boundary Crossing: An Ethnographic & Longitudinal Study, (Nat. Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research), Cheryl Mattingly, $1,455,400, 2000 – 2004

  • Conference Presentations

    • Hope, Suffering and the Play of Possible Selves: A Narrative Perspective on the Good Life , Narrative, Health, and Social Justice Research Interest GroupKeynote Lecture, Invited, University of Oregon. Eugene, Oregon, 2014
    • Moral Engines , Moral Engines: Exploring the Moral Drives in Human LifeKeynote Lecture, Invited, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, 2014
    • Love’s Imperfection: Moral Becoming, Friendship and Family Life , Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies Conference: The Anthropology and Philosophy of Moral ExperienceKeynote Lecture, Invited, Aarhus University, Denmark, 2013
    • Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Morality , Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies Symposium: Towards a Comparative Study of the GoodKeynote Lecture, Invited, Helsinki, Finland, 2013
    • Hope and Trust. , Occupational Science SymposiumLecture/Seminar, University of Southern California, Los Angles, CA, 2010
    • Hope as Moral Paradox: Thinking Against Suspicion, Trusting the New , International Symposium in Philosophy and AnthropologyLecture/Seminar, University of Aarhus: Aarhus, Denmark, 2009
    • Suffering and Narrative Re-envisioning , Telling Suffering ColloquiumLecture/Seminar, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia: Charlottesville, VA, 2006

    Other Presentations

    • Vulnerability, Trust and the Good Life: Navigating Between Home and Clinic Worlds, Caroline Thompson Memorial Lecture, Wisconsin, 2012-2013
    • Vulnerability, Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Sufferin, Kassen Annual Lecture, Cleveland, Ohio, 2012-2013
    • Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Morality: A Perspective from Narrative Phenomenology, Keynote Speaker: The Influential Scholar Series, Los Angeles, CA, 2009-2011
    • Fragile Border Crossings: A Multi-method Longitudinal Ethnography, Invited Presentation, UCLA, 2006-2007
    • Moral Laboratories: The Creativity of Moral Life, Influential Scholar Series, Los Angeles, CA, 2005-2007
    • Narrative and the Performance of Healing: Using a Narrative Approach to Reconsider the Concept of ‘Cultural Competence’ in Health Care, Narrative in Public Health and Medicine Lecture Series., Atlanta, Georgia, 2005-2007
    • Pocahontas Goes to the Clinic: Race, Health, and Mass Media in a Cultural Borderland, Narratives: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Berne, Switzerland, 2005-2007
    • The Contested Creation of a Machine Baby: Moral Debate From a Narrative Perspective, Telling Stories, Revealing Narratives: Perspectives on Illness and Care, Seattle, WA, 2005-2007
    • Time, Narrative, and the Vulnerability of Practice, Narratives: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Berne, Switzerland, 2005-2007

  • Book

    • Mattingly, C. (2014). Moral Laboratories: Family Peril and the Struggle for a Good Life (In Press). UC Press.
    • Mattingly, C. (2010). The Paradox of Hope: Journeys Through a Clinical Borderland. UC Press. Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C., Jensen, U. (Ed.). (2009). Narrative, Self and Social Practice. Philiosophia Press. Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2000). Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing. UC Press. Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (1998). Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience. Cambridge University Press. Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C., Fleming, M. (1994). Clinical Reasoning: Forms of Inquiry in a Therapeutic Practice. F.A. Davis Company Press. Publisher Link

    Book Chapters

    • Mattingly, C., Jensen, U. (2014). Practical Philosophy and Hope as a Moral Project among African-Americans. Anthropology & Philosophy:Dialogues on Trust and H Oxford, England: Berghahn Press.
    • Park, M., Lawlor, M., Mattingly, C. (2013). Holding Ambiguity in Acted and Emergent Narratives.
    • Liisberg, S., Pedersen, E., Dalsgård, A. (Ed.). (2013). What Can We Hope For? An Exploration in Cosmopolitan Philosophical Anthropology. Anthropology & Philosophy:Dialogues on Trust and H Oxford, England: Berghahn Press.
    • Lawlor, M., Mattingly, C. (2013). Family Perspectives on Occupation, Health and Disability. Willard & Spackman’s Occupational Therapy 12th ed pp. 150-162. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams Wilkins. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C., Jensen, U. (2013). Practical Philosophy and Hope as a Moral Project among African-Americans. Anthropology & Philosophy:Dialogues on Trust and H Oxford, England: Berghahn Press.
    • Mattingly, C. (2012). Pocahontas Goes to the Clinic. Applying Cultural Anthropology New York City, NY: McGraw-Hill. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C., Jensen, U. (2011). Hope as a Moral Practice: Thinking Against Suspicion. Trust and Hope: Negotiating the Future: Dialogues pp. 35. Oxford: Oxford: Berghahn Press.
    • Mattingly, C. (2011). Pocahontas Goes to the Clinic. Applying Anthropology: An Introductory Reader New York City, NY: McGraw-Hill. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2010). Moral Willing as Narrative Re-envisioning. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Chapter Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2010). The Concept of Therapeutic Emplotment. Toward an Anthropology of the Will pp. 501-569. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C., Jensen, U., Throop, J. (2009). Narrative, Self and Social Practice. pp. 5-36. Aarhus: Philiosophia Press, Aarhus University. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2009). Senses of an ending: Self, Body and Narrative. Aarhus: Philiosophia Press.
    • Mattingly, C., Jensen, U., Throop, J. (2009). Introductory Essay. Narrative, Self and Social Practice pp. 5-36. Aarhus, Denmark: Philiosophia Press, Aarhus University. Book, Publisher Link
    • Lawlor, M., Mattingly, C. (2008). Understanding Family Perspectives on Illness and Disability Experience. pp. 33-44. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.: Willard and Spackman’s Occupational Therapy, 11th edition.. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2008). Stories That Are Ready to Break. pp. 79-98. London: Health, Illness, Culture: Broken Narratives. Routledge. Book Link
    • Mattingly, C., Fleming, M. (2008). Action and Narrative: Two Dynamics of Clinical Reasoning. Clinical Reasoning in the Health Professions pp. 55-64. San Diego, CA: Elsevier. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2007). Acted Narratives: From Storytelling to Emergent Dramas. pp. 405-425. Handbook of Narrative Inquiry Methodologies/Thousands Oaks: Sage Publications. Book – Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2004). Performance Narratives in Clinical Practice. Narrative Research in Health and Illness pp. 73-94. Book Link
    • Lawlor, M., Mattingly, C. (2003). Disability Experience from a Family Perspective. Willard & Spackman’s Occupational Therapy 10th ed pp. 69-79. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincot. Book, Publisher Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2000). Emergent Narratives. Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness pp. 181-211.
    • Fleming, M., Mattingly, C. (2000). Action and Narrative: Two Dynamics of Clinical Reasoning. Clinical Reasoning in the Health Professions Oxford, England: Butterworth-Heinemann. Book Link
    • Mattingly, C. (2000). Narrative Turns. Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness pp. 259-269. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
    • Garro, L., Mattingly, C. (2000). Narrative as Construct and Construction. Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness pp. 1-49. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Book Review

    • Mattingly, C. (2011). Illness and the Limits of Expression: A Book Review Essay. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. pp. 292-293. Abstract

    Journal Article

    • Mattingly, C. (2014). Love’s Imperfection: Moral Becoming, Friendship and Family Life. Suomen Antropologi (Finnish Journal of Anthropology), Special Issue: The Morality of Friendship.
    • Mattingly, C. (2014). The Moral Perils of a Superstrong Black Mother. Ethos. Vol. 42 (1), pp. 119-138.
    • Mattingly, C. (2013). Moral Selves and Moral Scenes: Narrative Experiments in Everyday Life. Ethnos. Vol. 78 (3), pp. 301-327. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2012). Two Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Morality. Anthropological Theory. Vol. 12 (2), pp. 161-184. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2011). The Machine-Body as Contested Metaphor in Clinical Care. Genre. Vol. 44 (3), pp. 363 – 380. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C., Gron, L., Meinart, L. (2011). Chronic Homework in Emerging Borderlands of Healthcare. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. Vol. 35 (3), pp. 347 – 375. Abstract
    • Jacobs, L., Lawlor, M., Mattingly, C. (2011). I/We Narratives among African American Families Raising Children with Disabilities. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. Vol. 35 (1), pp. 3 – 25. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2009). Reading Medicine: Mind, Body and Meditation in One Interpretive Community. New Literary History. Vol. 37 (3), pp. 563-581. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C., Lutkehaus, N., Throop, J. (2008). Bruner’s Search for Meaning: A Conversation between Psychology and Anthropology. Special Issue – Troubling the Boundary Between Psychology and Anthropology: Jerome Bruner and his Inspiration. Ethos. Vol. 36 (1), pp. 1-38. Abstract
    • Mattingly, Cheryl, Lutkehaus, N. and Throop, J. (Ed.). (2008). Troubling the Boundary Between Psychology and Anthropology. Ethos. Vol. 36 (1) Abstract
    • Grøn, L., Mattingly, C., Meinert, L. (2008). Chronic Homework: Social Hopes, Dilemmas and Conflicts in Homework Narratives in Uganda, Denmark and USA. Journal of Research in Health and Society. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2008). Reading Minds and Telling Tales in a Cultural Borderland. Special Issue: Troubling the Boundary Between Psychology and Anthropology. Ethos. Vol. 36 (1), pp. 181-205.
    • Mattingly, C. (2006). Pocahontas Goes to the Clinic: Popular Culture as Lingua Franca in a Cultural Borderland. American Anthropologist. Vol. 108 (3), pp. 494-501. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2006). Hoping, Willing, and Narrative Re-Envisioning. Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture. Vol. 8 (3), pp. 21-35. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2005). Toward a Vulnerable Ethics of Research Practice. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. Vol. 9 (4), pp. 453-471. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2005). Introduction: Toward a Context-Based Ethics for Social Research. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine. Vol. 9 (4), pp. 427-429. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2005). The Narrative Turn in Contemporary Medical Anthropology. Journal of Research in Health and Society. Vol. 1 (2), pp. 13-40. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C. (2004). Becoming Buzz Lightyear and other Clinical Tales: Indigenizing Disney in a World of Disability. Folk: Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society. Vol. 45, pp. 9-32. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C., Lawlor, M., Jacobs-Huey, L. (2002). Narrating September 11: Race, Gender, and the Play of Cultural Identities. American Anthropologist. Vol. 104 (3), pp. 743-753. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C., Lawlor, M. (2001). The Fragility of Healing. Ethos. Vol. 29 (1), pp. 30-57. Abstract
    • Lawlor, M., Mattingly, C. (2001). Beyond the Unobtrusive Observer: Reflections on Researcher-Informant Relationships in Urban Ethnography. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy. Vol. 55 (2), pp. 147-154. Abstract
    • Mattingly, C., Lawlor, M. (2000). Learning from Stories: Narrative Interviewing in Cross-Cultural Research. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy. Vol. 7 (1), pp. 4-14. Abstract
    • Dale T. Mortensen Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, 2012-2014
    • Caroline Thompson Memorial Lecture: “Vulnerability, Trust and the Good Life: Navigating Between Home and Clinic Worlds”. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Occupational Therapy Department, 2013/10/24
    • Kassen Lecture: “Vulnerability, Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Suffering”. Case Western Reserve University, Department of Anthropology, 2013/10/15
    • Influential Scholar Series Keynote Speaker, Department of Anthropology, UCLA, 2010-2011
    • Keynote Speaker, International Symposium: Trust and Hope – Intersections Between Philosophy and Anthropology, Aarhus University, Denmark, 2010/09/20
    • Victor Turner Prize, the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, American Anthrological Association. For Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience, 2000-2001
    • Stirling Prize. Society for Psychological Anthropology, American Anthropological Association. For The Paradox of Hope: Journeys Through a Clinical Borderland., 2000
    • Appointment to the Research Study Committee, Maternal and Child Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996-2000
    • Academy of Research. American Occupational Therapy Association, 1999-2000
    • Polgar Essay Prize. The Society for Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association. For In Search of the Good: Narrative Reasoning in Clinical Practice, 1999
    • USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award, for Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience, 1999
    • Corbin/Page Award, The University of Vermont: Burlington., 1992-1993
    • Outstanding Service Award for Excellence in Research. The American Occupational Therapy Association, 1992-1993
    • National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellowship. Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University, 1990-1992

  • Editorships and Editorial Boards

    • Member, Editorial Board, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2006 –
    • Member, Editorial Board, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2002 –
    • Member, Academy of Research, American Occupational Therapy Association, 1999 –
    • Member, Editorial Board, Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 1998 –
    • Member, Executive Board, Society for Medical Anthropology, 2000 – 2003

    Professional Memberships

    • International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory, 2000 –
    • Society for Medical Anthropology, 1989 –
    • Society for Psychological Anthropology, 1989 –
    • American Anthropological Association, 1987 –
    • Society for Cultural Anthropology, 1987 –
    • Society for Humanistic Anthropology, 1987 –