Elizabeth Farfan-santos MD, PhD

Dr. Elizabeth was a medical anthropologist interested in the impact of political exclusion and racial inequality on the physiological, emotional, and cultural lives of black and brown groups in Latin America and the United States. Elizabeth's first book, Black Bodies, Black Rights: The Politics of Quilombolismo in Contemporary Brazil (University of Texas Press- 2016) focuses on the formation of new Afro-Brazilian quilombola identities, racial exclusion, and changing multicultural rights in contemporary Brazil. This research, rooted in African Diaspora studies in Latin America, critically examines issues of authenticity, the politics of recognition, black Brazilian identity formation (along historical, political, and social lines), and calls for new modes of understanding that center the embodied experience, especially emotional understandings of racial violence and marginalization, as central to identity formation, articulation, and resistance. More recently, Elizabeth been conducting research in the United States on the medical alienation and exclusion of undocumented immigrant communities especially following recent health care reforms and ongoing policy discussions in health care and immigration. Elizabeth's current book project, Undocumented Motherhood, builds from this research and examines the impact of undocumented status in shaping the everyday health practices and narratives of maternal sentiment among undocumented Mexican mothers in Houston.