K. Jill Fleuriet

Assistant Professor and Graduate Advisor of Record

Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at San Antonio

Office: HSS 4.03.22

Phone/Fax: 210.458.5721 / 210.458.7811

Email: jfleuriet@utsa.edu

Professional Statement

I received a BA in Anthropology from Harvard University, two MA’s in Anthropology (San Diego State, Stanford University), and a PhD in Anthropology from Stanford in 2003. I was initially trained in biological anthropology with an emphasis in evolutionary ecology; early in my graduate career, I migrated to medical anthropology and a four-field perspective. I joined UTSA in 2003. My current work is with medically underserved populations along the U.S.-Mexico border on issues of women’s health and chronic illness. Broadly, I consider health and illness from political economic and feminist perspectives, considering effects of transnationalism, biomedical hegemony, and identity on health and illness among minorities, with an emphasis on praxis-oriented research. I have conducted research among the Kumiai and Paipai of northern Baja California, Mexico, as well as research and consulting among diverse Latino populations in San Diego, North Carolina, and south Texas. I grew up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, and I have returned to the Valley for my current research, which considers pregnancy and birth experiences of immigrant Latinas from Mexico within political economic contexts of gender and citizenship.

Teaching Statement

Teaching is fundamental to my research interests and personal career goals. Since my undergraduate days, I have been involved regularly with teaching and education, including teaching at the secondary and college levels, coordinating conferences, working groups, and seminar series, developing a teacher education program for graduate students, and consulting on educational projects. I consider the classroom an interactive environment of feedback and development for learners as well as myself. Lecturing is a component in my teaching style insofar as it corresponds to the needs to the student audience, e.g., a large survey course. Lecturing should be, if at all possible, complemented with other media to demonstrate the robustness of anthropological research and data presentation and to present material in a variety of styles for different types of learners. Pedagogically, in graduate courses I follow a traditional Socratic Method of questioning to produce critical analysis and understanding but within the more recent project-based mode of instruction. I consider ethnography as a research tool as well as a means of reflective analysis on the discipline of anthropology.

Courses Taught at UTSA

• ANT 1013: Introduction to Anthropology
• ANT 2053: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• ANT 3413: The Field Experience
• ANT 3523: Medical Anthropology
• ANT 3883: Death & Dying: Contemporary Cultural Perspectives
• ANT 5033 Paradigms of Americanist Anthropology