About Dr. Mellett
Dr. Mellett is a medical and linguistic anthropologist who joined the Department of Anthropology in the fall of 2023. Dr. Mellett completed her M.S. in Medical Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Practice at Boston University School of Medicine in 2016 and her Ph.D. in anthropology at Brown University in 2023. In dialogue with medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, disability studies, and migration studies, her dissertation research examines the experiences of deaf immigrants in urban and semi-urban areas of the northeastern United States. Her work focuses on how meanings of deafness are configured and reconfigured transnationally, and the role language plays in shaping deaf immigrants鈥� experiences of belonging as members of a family, as part of an imagined 鈥淒eaf鈥� community, and as citizens of the United States. In her work, Dr. Mellett critiques the ways that systemic forms of discrimination manifest through a fundamentally ableist U.S. naturalization process whose policies and procedures function as mechanisms to exclude those whose bodies and minds diverge from what is considered normative.
Expertise and Interests
Medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, deaf studies, disability studies, sign language(s), migration, language and social justice, linguistic discrimination, health inequalities, identity and belonging.
Publications
Mellett, Erin. 2024. "Immigrant deaf students in the United States: Linguistic injustices
brought to light." Deafness & Education International 1-21.
.
Mellett, Erin. 2023. "Deaf Immigrants in the Northeast United States: Intelligibility
and the Interpersonal." Diffractions 7: 152-176.
.
Research Projects
I am excited to be developing a new project that builds on my dissertation. While my previous work focused on the challenges deaf individuals encounter as they navigate the U.S. naturalization process, in this next project I will focus on deaf immigrants鈥� encounters with the U.S. healthcare regime. Multiple and layered language ideologies and ideologies of disability shape deaf immigrants鈥� interactions with the healthcare system and I seek to document how the intersection of deafness and immigration produces vulnerabilities, but also how multilingual, multimodal, and collaborative deaf languaging practices might interrupt systemic forms of marginalization. I will continue to work with deaf immigrants in the northeast U.S. but will expand my research population to include deaf individuals in 糖心Vlog传媒 and the surrounding area. I also hope to ethnographically explore the work of Certified Deaf Interpreters (CDIs) in healthcare settings.
Selected Talks
2022 鈥溾�橠eaf People Have No Country鈥�: Language & Deaf Immigrant Belonging.鈥� At session Encounters Across Difference. Anthropology Fall Symposium, Brown University. September 16. Providence, Rhode Island.
2020 鈥淐hildren of Deaf Adults as Third Culture Kids.鈥� Families In Global Transition Research Network, July 24. Recorded live and shared via YouTube.
2019 鈥淚ntersections of Deafness and Immigration: Sign Language Interpreting and Language Rights in Healthcare.鈥� At session Inter-generational Conversations at the Intersection of Linguistic and Medical Anthropology. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, November 22. Vancouver, Canada.
2018 鈥淒eafness and the Language Gap.鈥� At session Language Learning/Language and Learning. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, November 14. San Jose, CA.
2018 鈥淒eaf Asylum Seekers in the U.S.鈥� At session Deaf Citizenship and Representation. Chicago Disability Studies Conference, April 21. University of Chicago, IL.
Selected Awards
2024 Post-PhD Research Grant. Wenner-Gren Foundation
2018-2019 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development T32 Fellowship, Brown University Population Studies Training Center
Courses
Anthropology of Global Health (ANTH 3500)
Anthropology of Disability
Language & Social Justice
Culture, Kin, and Family (ANTH 3511)