UCSD Communication

Name:	Marisa Brandt mbrandt@weber.ucsd.edu

Education:	Ph.D. in Communication and Science Studies estimated completion Spring 2012 University of California - Berkeley English Major (Literary Theory and Modern and Contemporary Literature) and Creative Writing Minor 2000 - 2004
Research Interests:	PTSD: Treating Memory in OIF/OEF Veterans Traumatic memory is a text with problematic content that expresses itself through its bearer's suffering. In the context of numerous veterans traumatized during their experience of war, traumatic memory, diagnosed as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), also becomes problematic for the bearer's family and community who must live with the visible manifestations; clinicians who try to access the memory to treat it; scientists who try to innovate cures; the military and Veteran's Administration who must provide medical support; and the government that must justify the expense of not only money and men, but also minds in pursuit of national goals. Each of these groups shares a desire to halt the suffering of the veteran, but for different reasons. My dissertation will compare several recent innovations in PTSD treatment and how each attempts to solve the problem of traumatic memory: prolonged exposure therapy (exemplified by Virtual Iraq), the development of PTSD-specific drugs (exemplified by the trauma pill), and new holistic treatment communities. Each of these treatments codifies a specific conception of what traumatic memory and how it can be accessed. At the same time, each also structures and is structured by the interaction of different groups of actors that uniquely contribute to the pursuit of their overlapping goals. Zapatista Corn Since 2002, Zapatista communities in the southern Mexican region of Chiapas working with a San Diego-based nonprofit have been banking landrace corn seeds and testing their fields for the presence of genetically modified organism DNA (GMOs). This ethnographic study looks at three elements of communication—cultural discourse, communication technology, and scientific translation—in order to understand how GMO corn became articulated as a problem that could be addressed by high-tech scientific practices developed in the North, performed by an anti-corporate, anti-colonial political movement in the South.
Other interests:	science communication and public engagement with science representations of science and medicine in popular culture biomedical identity and disability studies health and science policy and law material culture and technology
Teaching Experience:	Teaching Assistantships Introduction to Communication (COGN 20), UCSD Dept of Communication, Spring 2008. Instructor: Patrick Anderson Communication as a Social Force (COSF 100), UCSD Dept of Communication, Winter 2008. Instructor: Gary Fields Gender and Science (COHI 175), UCSD Dept of Communication, Winter 2008. Instructor: Chandra Mukerji Communication and the Person (COHI 100), UCSD Dept of Communication, Fall 2007. Instructor: Morana Alac Neuroscience in Contemporary Literature (MCB 90E), UC Berkeley Dept of Molecular and Cell Biology, Spring 2004. Instructor: Walter J. Freeman Instructor Thinking About Our World Through Food and Culture, Summer Discovery program for international high school students on the UCSD campus, Summer Session 1, 2008.
Conference Presentations:	"Off With the Helmet: Military, Trauma, and Identity in Doonesbury” A poster presented at The Comic Arts Conference, San Diego, CA July 29, 2007 "Helmets Off: Representations of Soldiers Returning Home with PTSD in the News Media" A paper presented at a panel on health, disease and suffering at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, San Francisco, CA March 20, 2008 Responded to Rebecca Herzig's paper Inhuman Labors: Governmentality and the Global Cosmetic Services Industry, with Monica Hoffman, at the UCSD Science Studies Program's "Technology and Formations of Power" research workshop, San Diego, CA May 2, 2008 "Making Science Real: The role of scientific authority in the comics of Jim Ottaviani" co-authored with Evan Moreno-Davis, presented at a panel on authority at The Comic Arts Conference, San Diego, CA July 26, 2008