Anna I Corwin
Biographic Data
| ID | 119457 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna I Corwin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna I |
| FAMILY NAME | Corwin |
| SIGNATURE | CORWIN A I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Saint Mary's College of California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4972-6609 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Religion and Medicine
This chapter surveys intersections between the anthropology of religion and the predecessors of current medical anthropology. The discussion starts by looking at how “religion” and “medicine” have been situated in mutual opposition, to explore the kinds of paradigms that have been derived from this division. The chapter then focuses on how anthropologists have worked against the limitations of this dichotomous framework. The goal is to trace how …
Going the Way of the Dodo Bird
Since 1965, the number of American Catholic nuns has declined sharply. Contemporary media have portrayed this demographic decline through the lens of moral failure yet the sisters consistently describe experiences of peace, awe, and hope. The present article draws on ethnographic data gathered in a Franciscan convent in the United States over the past 15 years to ask why Catholic sisters seem to be able to find peace despite an uncertain future w…
Embracing Age
This series publishes books that will deepen and expand our understanding of age, aging, ageism, and late life in the United States and beyond. The series focuses on anthropology
The sense of presence
The sense of presence—or the sense of “being there”—is a poorly understood phenomenon, especially in the case of “unseen others,” e.g., God. We used the tools of virtual reality (VR) to explore the effects of active imagination in creating a sense of presence of an ambiguously real other. We found that adding a visual representation was more effective than verbal language alone in evoking a sense of social presence in a ten-minute intervention, t…
Experiencing presence
This essay brings literature in experimental psychology and visual perception into conversation with psychological anthropology to propose a new theory of presence. We examine data on Catholic nuns' experiences of God's presence, proposing that presence-indeed all perceptual consciousness-can be conceived of as the dynamic and ever-emerging interaction of a perceiver-environment system. By understanding presence as interactional, we shift away fr…
Care in Interaction
Care, as it is instantiated through interaction, can both perform and shape cultural and moral understandings of what it means to be a person in the world. American Catholic nuns have been found to age more "successfully" than their peers. However, in contrast to the successful aging paradigm, an analysis of care interactions from research conducted in a Franciscan Catholic convent in the Midwestern United States reveals that the nuns practice an…
Emerging genders
This article examines how individuals who identify with genders outside a male/female binary make use of the semiotic material available to them in the environment to interactively construct non-binary gender(s). Through microinteractional analysis of the speech produced by individuals who identify as genderqueer, the article demonstrates how individuals draw on an array of signs to create and perform non-normative genders. The article argues tha…
Lord, hear our prayer
This article examines intercessory prayer, specifically, petitions to the divine as they are performed inMass and in prayer groups at aCatholic convent in the midwesternUnitedStates. It demonstrates that these petitions function on multiple levels. Petitions are designed primarily as a form of communication with the divine, intended to elicit divine aid. In addition to functioning as requests to the divine, the petitions function on a number of s…
Let Him Hold You
American Catholic nuns have been found to age more 'successfully' than their lay counterparts, living longer, healthier, and happier lives. Two of the key factors contributing to the nuns' physical and mental wellbeing are the spiritual support they experience from the divine and the social support they provide for and receive from each other in the convent. I argue that by integrating the divine into their everyday interactions, the nuns engage …
Changing God, Changing Bodies
I focus this study on changes in the prayer lives of U.S. Catholic nuns following Vatican II; widespread institutional change in the Catholic Church that, among other things, transformed U.S. Catholic nuns' lives. In the article, I combine a phenomenological model of embodiment with narrative analysis to show how institutional linguistic prayer practices transform elderly nuns' embodied experience as they age. Drawing on naturalistic video- and a…
Changing God, Changing Bodies
I focus this study on changes in the prayer lives of U.S. Catholic nuns following Vatican II; widespread institutional change in the Catholic Church that, among other things, transformed U.S. Catholic nuns' lives. In the article, I combine a phenomenological model of embodiment with narrative analysis to show how institutional linguistic prayer practices transform elderly nuns' embodied experience as they age. Drawing on naturalistic video- and a…
Experiencing presence
This essay brings literature in experimental psychology and visual perception into conversation with psychological anthropology to propose a new theory of presence. We examine data on Catholic nuns' experiences of God's presence, proposing that presence-indeed all perceptual consciousness-can be conceived of as the dynamic and ever-emerging interaction of a perceiver-environment system. By understanding presence as interactional, we shift away fr…
Lord, hear our prayer
This article examines intercessory prayer, specifically, petitions to the divine as they are performed inMass and in prayer groups at aCatholic convent in the midwesternUnitedStates. It demonstrates that these petitions function on multiple levels. Petitions are designed primarily as a form of communication with the divine, intended to elicit divine aid. In addition to functioning as requests to the divine, the petitions function on a number of s…
Emerging genders
This article examines how individuals who identify with genders outside a male/female binary make use of the semiotic material available to them in the environment to interactively construct non-binary gender(s). Through microinteractional analysis of the speech produced by individuals who identify as genderqueer, the article demonstrates how individuals draw on an array of signs to create and perform non-normative genders. The article argues tha…
Care in Interaction
Care, as it is instantiated through interaction, can both perform and shape cultural and moral understandings of what it means to be a person in the world. American Catholic nuns have been found to age more "successfully" than their peers. However, in contrast to the successful aging paradigm, an analysis of care interactions from research conducted in a Franciscan Catholic convent in the Midwestern United States reveals that the nuns practice an…
Let Him Hold You
American Catholic nuns have been found to age more 'successfully' than their lay counterparts, living longer, healthier, and happier lives. Two of the key factors contributing to the nuns' physical and mental wellbeing are the spiritual support they experience from the divine and the social support they provide for and receive from each other in the convent. I argue that by integrating the divine into their everyday interactions, the nuns engage …
Let Him Hold You
American Catholic nuns have been found to age more 'successfully' than their lay counterparts, living longer, healthier, and happier lives. Two of the key factors contributing to the nuns' physical and mental wellbeing are the spiritual support they experience from the divine and the social support they provide for and receive from each other in the convent. I argue that by integrating the divine into their everyday interactions, the nuns engage …
Changing God, Changing Bodies
I focus this study on changes in the prayer lives of U.S. Catholic nuns following Vatican II; widespread institutional change in the Catholic Church that, among other things, transformed U.S. Catholic nuns' lives. In the article, I combine a phenomenological model of embodiment with narrative analysis to show how institutional linguistic prayer practices transform elderly nuns' embodied experience as they age. Drawing on naturalistic video- and a…
Lord, hear our prayer
This article examines intercessory prayer, specifically, petitions to the divine as they are performed inMass and in prayer groups at aCatholic convent in the midwesternUnitedStates. It demonstrates that these petitions function on multiple levels. Petitions are designed primarily as a form of communication with the divine, intended to elicit divine aid. In addition to functioning as requests to the divine, the petitions function on a number of s…
Emerging genders
This article examines how individuals who identify with genders outside a male/female binary make use of the semiotic material available to them in the environment to interactively construct non-binary gender(s). Through microinteractional analysis of the speech produced by individuals who identify as genderqueer, the article demonstrates how individuals draw on an array of signs to create and perform non-normative genders. The article argues tha…
Experiencing presence
This essay brings literature in experimental psychology and visual perception into conversation with psychological anthropology to propose a new theory of presence. We examine data on Catholic nuns' experiences of God's presence, proposing that presence-indeed all perceptual consciousness-can be conceived of as the dynamic and ever-emerging interaction of a perceiver-environment system. By understanding presence as interactional, we shift away fr…
Care in Interaction
Care, as it is instantiated through interaction, can both perform and shape cultural and moral understandings of what it means to be a person in the world. American Catholic nuns have been found to age more "successfully" than their peers. However, in contrast to the successful aging paradigm, an analysis of care interactions from research conducted in a Franciscan Catholic convent in the Midwestern United States reveals that the nuns practice an…
Embracing Age
This series publishes books that will deepen and expand our understanding of age, aging, ageism, and late life in the United States and beyond. The series focuses on anthropology
The sense of presence
The sense of presence—or the sense of “being there”—is a poorly understood phenomenon, especially in the case of “unseen others,” e.g., God. We used the tools of virtual reality (VR) to explore the effects of active imagination in creating a sense of presence of an ambiguously real other. We found that adding a visual representation was more effective than verbal language alone in evoking a sense of social presence in a ten-minute intervention, t…
Going the Way of the Dodo Bird
Since 1965, the number of American Catholic nuns has declined sharply. Contemporary media have portrayed this demographic decline through the lens of moral failure yet the sisters consistently describe experiences of peace, awe, and hope. The present article draws on ethnographic data gathered in a Franciscan convent in the United States over the past 15 years to ask why Catholic sisters seem to be able to find peace despite an uncertain future w…
Religion and Medicine
This chapter surveys intersections between the anthropology of religion and the predecessors of current medical anthropology. The discussion starts by looking at how “religion” and “medicine” have been situated in mutual opposition, to explore the kinds of paradigms that have been derived from this division. The chapter then focuses on how anthropologists have worked against the limitations of this dichotomous framework. The goal is to trace how …
Psychology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (3 works)