Gelya Frank, Ph.D.

In my 20-year study about Diane DeVries, a woman born without arms or legs, I learned that the most important questions were not about her physical limitations but about the way she viewed her capacities. In Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and Being Female in America, I explore how Diane's life-and her life story-reflect her creative encounter with reality. She refused to cover her body with long-sleeved clothing and cumbersome prostheses that added little function. She found ways to do things that worked for her. I had to catch up with Diane's image of herself as beautiful in her own right, like the Venus de Milo.
In teaching, I now work with students to develop their creativity by going beyond the concept of "adaptation" as it is usually understood in occupational therapy-just as Diane did in her life. I conduct "creativity workshops" in which students engage in any occupation that they have always wanted to try but haven't because of limited time or lack of confidence. The students explore theories of creativity and read studies about how creative people organize their life and work. At the same time, they engage in their creative project--whether writing stories, making jewelry, spending time with their child, or finding a job!
Returning to ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, a doctoral student noticed one day that she was singing. Only then did she realize that she had been depressed for months. By engaging in a creative occupation--which included taking early morning trips to the Los Angeles Flower Mart to buy rare flowers at a discount and having the opportunity write about and share her experiences--the student felt her depression lift.
There are many ways to create new kinds of occupational therapy, including those I call "direct cultural interventions." These are occupations that provide conceptual tools and skills used to re-interpret and navigate the world more successfully. The idea comes from New Stories/New Cultures, an after-school program I founded and directed to teach media literacy and hands-on media production in the hours when children are least supervised, tend to passively watch TV, and are at risk for crime and experimenting with sex and drugs. My team worked to have the children experience themselves as producers of culture, not just consumers of commercial media. In turn, these self-conscious 5th and 6th graders worked hard at skills they found extremely challenging, such as standing before the group to express an opinion or improvising a scene, because they loved the embracing occupation of "making a movie."
Creativity involves our capacity to play and to discover new solutions to life's challenges. When we find this part of ourselves, we improve the quality of life for all."

Biography
Gelya Frank is a founding contributor to occupational science and a leading scholar of life history and life story approaches. She received her BA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees in Anthropology at UCLA. Dr. Frank is a past president of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, has served on the Board of Directors of the American Anthropological Association, and is on numerous editorial boards including Journal of Occupational Science. Her book Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and Being Female in America received the 2000 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize of the Society of Medical Anthropology. Dr. Frank is a recipient of the 2000 Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award and also appears in Who's Who Among America's Teachers 2000. She was named a 2002-2003 National Endowment for the Humanities Resident Scholar at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico to write a book reconstructing the lived experience of a 19th-century Native Californian tribal community.

Selected Publications
Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography

Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability, Biography, and Being Female in America