Christine Sargent is the Spring 2019–2020 ACOR-NEH fellow and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver. During her ACOR fellowship, Dr. Sargent will be working on her first ethnographic monograph, which is based on her Ph.D. dissertation.
Dr. Sargent began research for this project in 2013–2014, with support from the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School and International Institute. She returned to Jordan in the fall of 2014 as a Fulbright Student Program fellow. She has conducted over 20 months of fieldwork, primarily in Amman, interviewing family members, teachers, therapists, and activists involved in the lives of children and adults with Down Syndrome.
While at ACOR this spring, Dr. Sargent will continue visiting familiar faces from her previous fieldwork while focusing on developing the book project. She will also start collecting data for a project examining the impacts of prenatal screening and diagnostic technologies on pregnancy and childbirth, from the perspective of both health professionals and women themselves.
Dr. Sargent earned her Ph.D, in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2018. Her scholarly work has been published in The International Journal for Middle East Studies and Somatosphere.