Deborah Jenson

I take the broad mandate of the humanist very seriously: my research is diverse. In the field of neuroscience and the humanities, my work includes an article on mirror neurons and literary bio-mimesis with neuropsychiatrist Marco Iacoboni, a course called “Flaubert’s Brain: Neurohumanities,” and several projects related to traumatic stress, cognition, and culture. In the arena of Global Health and the History of Medicine, we are working with Haiti Lab students on topics ranging from the history of cholera in Haiti and the Caribbean (see our article and digital map in Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2011) to the history of anthropological psychiatry in Haiti, to post-disaster mental health. I am also researching slaves’ African ethnic identities in 18th century Saint-Domingue through study of ads for runaway slaves.