Arthur Kleinman, M.D.
Educational History
1962 A.B. with highest honors Stanford University
1967 M.D. Stanford University
1974 M.A. in Social Anthropology, Harvard University
Dr. Kleinman is a Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), where since 2008, he has been the Victor and William Fung Director of Harvard University’s Asia Center. In 2011, Arthur Kleinman was appointed as a Harvard College Professor and received the 2011 Harvard Foundation Distinguished Faculty Award. From 1990 until 2000, he chaired the then Department of Social Medicine at HMS, and from 2004-2007 he also chaired the Department of Anthropology at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Kleinman was the lead convener of an NSF-supported international conference on Avian Flu in December 2006 and of a conference on Values in Global Health in May 2007. In addition, he formerly co-chaired the Global Health Committee in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, of which he remains a member, and he co-teaches a General Education course on global health. He directs the Medical Anthropology Program in the Department of Anthropology, through which more than 75 students have so far received or will be receiving a PhD (including 17 MD-PhDs). In 2011 he delivered the William James Lecture at Harvard; delivered the Magisterial Lecture at the University of Milan, and the Institut Lecture at the Institut Pasteur in Paris; and gave named lectures at UC Davis, Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis, among other places. Kleinman is a former member of the Advisory Council of Fogarty International Center, NIH, and of NIH’s Council of Councils.
Dr. Kleinman’s collaborative volume on Japanese medical atrocities in China during World War II was published by Routledge. Professor Kleinman’s co-authored collaborative volume, entitled Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. What Anthropology and Psychiatry Teach Us About China Today, was published in 2011 by University of California Press. He is also co-editor of a forthcoming volume: Culture, Mental Illness and Substance Abuse in Africa (Emmanuel Akyeampong, Allan G. Hill and Arthur Kleinman, eds., Indiana University Press). He is co-editor, with Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Matthew Basilico of a forthcoming textbook on global health, Rethinking Global Health (UC Press). His co-edited volume Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience: The quest for an adequate life was published by Routledge. He is currently writing a book on caregiving, and is co-author of a volume on social suffering. He has co-authored articles on stigma and mental illness and on the appropriate uses of culture in clinical practice. He is the author of several articles in The Lancet on caregiving and global mental health; values in global health; reforming medical education via the medical humanities; the search for wisdom; and on culture, bereavement and psychiatry. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Medicine since 1983, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1992. He is also a Distinguished Life Time Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Courses
- Anthro 2862: The Anthropology of Biomedicine
- Anthro 2856: Biography, The Novel, Psychotherapy, Ethnography and Film: Deep Ways of Knowing the Person in the Moral Context
- Societies of the World 25: “Case Studies in Global Health: Biosocial Perspectives” [co-taught with Paul Farmer, Anne Becker, and Salmaan Keshavjee]
- History 1702: “Violence, Substances and Mental Illness: African Perspectives” Co-taught with Prof Emmanuel Akyeampong
- Anthro 2876 “New Ethnographies in the Anthropology of Social Experience”
- Societies of the World 25 (SW 25) “Health, Culture and Community: Case studies in Global Health” (co taught with Paul Farmer, Anne Becker, and Salmaan Keshavjee)
- Anthropology 1886 “Sense and Sensibility: William and Henry James in Anthropological Perspective” (co-taught with Prof. Steven Caton)
- History of Science 249: Caregiving: Historical and Anthropological Perspective (co-taught with Charles Rosenberg)
- Social Analysis 28: Culture, Illness, and Healing
- Societies of the World 25: Health, Culture and Community: Case Studies in Global Health [co-taught with Paul Farmer]
- Anthro 2855 Deep China: What Medical Anthropology and Psychiatry Contribute to the Study of China Today
- Anthro 3000: Reading Course with graduate students
- Anthro 2750: Local Biologies: Anthropological Perspectives
- Anthro 2856 “Biography, The Novel, Film Psychotherapy and Ethnography: Deep Ways of Knowing the Person in the Moral Context”
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
Research Interests
Illness experience
Social suffering, social and mental health
Global Health
Caregiving
China, Taiwan, North America
Current Projects
Book on Caregiving
Volume on Mental Illness in Africa
Social Suffering, co-authored with Iain Wilkinson
Rethinking Global Health (Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Arthur Kleinman and Matthew Basilico, eds.)
Select Publications
Becker, Anne and Kleinman, A. Editors, Special Anniversary Issue on Global Health, Harvard Review of Psychiatry 2012, vol 20 number 1, 2012.
Becker, Anne; Kleinman, A. “An Agenda for Closing Resource Gaps in Global Mental Health: Innovation, Capacity Building and Partnerships,” Introduction to Special Anniversary Issue on Global Health, in Harvard Review of Psychiatry 2012, vol 20 number 1. Pp 3-5.
Tucker, Joseph D., Kaufman, J., Bhabha, J., Brandt, A., and Arthur Kleinman, guest editors: “Sex Work in Asia: Health, Agency, and Sexuality” in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. December 1 2011, Volume 204, Supplement 5, pp. S1203-S1240.
Kleinman, A. “Culture, bereavement, and psychiatry” in The Lancet Vol 379. February 18 2012. Pp 608-609.
Kleinman, A. “A Search for Wisdom” in The Lancet. Vol 378. November 5 2011, pp. 1621-1622.
Kleinman, A., Yan, Y., Jing, J., Pan, T. Lee, S. Zhang, E., Wu, F., Guo, J. Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. What Anthropology and psychiatry tell us about China today. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 2011.
Zhang, Everett, Kleinman, A. and Tu, Weiming, eds.: Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience. The Quest for an Adequate Life. Routledge, 2010.
Nie, Jing-Bao, Guo, N., Selden, M., and Kleinman, A., eds. Japan’s Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative inquiries in science, history and ethics. New York and U.K.: Routledge, 2010.
Kleinman, A. “The Divided Self, Hidden Values, and Moral Sensibility in Medicine” in The Lancet. Vol. 377 March 5 2011, pp. 804-805.
Kleinman, A. “Remaking the Moral Person in China: implications for health. The Lancet: Vol. 375, March 27, 2010, p. 1074-1075.
Kleinman, A. “Four Social Theories for Global Health.” In The Lancet, Vol. 375, May 2010, pp. 1518-1519.
Kleinman, A. “Caregiving: The Divided Meaning of Being Human and the Divided Self of the Caregiver.” In Rethinking the Human, J. Michelle Molina and Donald Swearer, eds, with Susan Lloyd McGarry. Cambridge MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, and Harvard University Press, 2010.
Kleinman, A. “Catastrophe and Caregiving: the failure of medicine as an art.” The Lancet. Vol. 371, Jan. 5, 2008.
Kleinman, A., B. Bloom, A. Saich , K. Mason and F. Aulino. Avian and Pandemic Influenza: A Biosocial Approach. Supplemental Issue, “Avian and Pandemic Influenza: A Biosocial Approach,” Journal of Infectious Diseases: Feb 15, 2008; vol 197, supplement 1. pp S1-S40. (Supplemental Issue Editors: Arthur Kleinman, Barry Bloom, Anthony Saich, Katherine Mason, and Felicity Aulino)
Kleinman, A., B. Bloom, A. Saich , K. Mason and F. Aulino. Asian Flus in Ethnographic and Political Context: A Biosocial Approach. Special Issue, “Asian Flus in Ethnographic and Political Context: A Biosocial Approach,” Anthropology and Medicine, volume 15, Number 1, April 2008, pp. 1-5.
Kleinman, A. “Today’s biomedicine and caregiving: are they incompatible to the point of divorce?” Cleveringa Address delivered at the University of Leiden, 26 November 2007. Published by The University of Leiden, The Netherlands, 2008.
Yang, L.H.,Kleinman, A.,Link, B.G., Phelan, J.C.,Lee, S.and Good, B.(2007) Culture and stigma: Adding moral experience to stigma theory, Social Science and Medicine 64(7), 1524-1535.
Yang, L.H., Kleinman, A. 'Face' and the embodiment of stigma in China: The cases of schizophrenia and AIDS. Social Science and Medicine. 67 (2008) 398-408.
