Gelya Frank
Associate Professor of Occupational Science, Occupational Therapy and Anthropology Associate, Gender Studies Program
Contact at: (323) 442-2885 or gfrank@hsc.usc.edu
Expertise:
- anthropological perpectives on culture and disability
- ethnicity and attitudes toward patient autonomy and end-of-life decision making
- anthropological approaches to life history - empathy and biographical interpretation
- independent living environments for the disabled
- self-empowerment of persons with special needs
- self-image in persons with disabilities
- women's spirituality and Jewish tradition
- Jews, multiculturalism and Boasian anthropology
- story telling and narration among elderly Jews
- politics of race and culture in modern anthropology - the African and Jewish diasporas
- ethnographic films of Barbara Meyerhoff
- ethnographic methods applied to occupational therapy practice
- Author of Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of Dialogue on Disability,
Biography (2000) and Being Female in America (2000)
Co-author of Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography (1981)
Producer of ethnographic films, including Thisabled Lives: The Twenty-
Year Collaboration of Diane DeVries and Gelya Frank (1995)
Past President, Society for Humanistic Anthropology
Board Member, American Anthropological Association and Westside
Center for Independent Living
USC Information