Jenelle Doucet
To this day, I am amazed at how I became an anthropologist. My first anthropology class as a freshman was disastrous. I spent nights at home reading my textbook wondering how in the world anyone could make a subject like this so incredibly boring. Fortunately, I could never quite leave the field of anthropology behind. I graduated from the University of Mississippi with a major in anthropology and minors in biology and chemistry.
After finishing my undergraduate degree, I came to the University of Alabama to pursue graduate studies in biocultural medical anthropology. For my thesis, I examined children's cultural understandings of food and the role these understandings have in influencing food decisions. I found that, like adults in the same community, children ascribe values of healthiness to foods. Getting them to eat the foods they deem healthy required more than just "knowing" a cultural model of healthiness, however. My research suggests that children who are more active around their homes through participation in chores and food preparation are more likely to eat the foods they view as healthy.
Although food studies continue to be one of my main research interests, I have transitioned into studying diagnosis decision making related to ADHD in children for my doctoral studies. I am particularly interested in the role that microsocial forces--competing cultural models of ADHD's etiology, financial resources, and status competition--play in the process of diagnosis within families.
My research interests include childhood studies, health and illness, anthropological methods, food and nutrition, and identity construction.
Contact Ms. Doucet at: jctownsend@bama.ua.edu