Eva Marie Garroutte (Sociology)

Promoted to associate professor with tenure

Ph.D., Princeton University

Faculty member since 1998

Specialization: Cultural analysis; sociology of religion, knowledge, science, and race/ethnicity

Representative publication: Real Indians: Identity, Community, and the Survival of Native America (University of California Press, 2003)

“As an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, I’m concerned with making my research responsible not only to the values and interests of the academy, but also to those of American Indian communities.  My current research focuses on American Indian health. My main project is funded by the National Institute on Aging and examines ethnic disparities in patient outcomes and their relationship to patterns of interaction between doctors and elder patients. I’m trying to determine whether providers vary their communicative behavior according to their American Indian patients’ cultural characteristics, and whether ethnically distinctive patients use distinctive communication patterns. The long-term goal of the project is to design health interventions that improve the medical care of American Indian elders.”