J A M E S. A. T R O S T L E

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in September, 1999.

DISCOVERING THE "WONDROUS" ADAPTABILITY OF HUMAN BEINGS

Associate Professor of Anthropology James A. Trostle knows how to build confidence and self-reliance. As an instructor in the mid-1970s in Outward Bound in North Carolina and at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Wyoming, he instilled confidence in dozens of teenagers and young adults, teaching them how to read topographical maps, place chocks and pitons in mountain faces, and perform wilderness first aid. The experience has influenced his approach to teaching at the college level.

"I warned students in my ‘Field Research Methods in Anthropology’ class last semester that I was going to organize the class a little bit like an Outward Bound course," Trostle recalls. "I told them that they needed to know that they would face the danger of failure, but that I perceived my job as doing everything I could to reduce the possibility that they would fail. They needed to know this was going to be a ‘real’ thing."

The "real" challenge students confronted in Trostle’s methods class was to conduct an actual research study sponsored by the Trinity Center for Neighborhoods (TCN), an office that supports neighborhood initiatives, to determine whether adequate health-care arrangements had been made for certain elderly patients discharged from Hartford-area hospitals. The class first devised a series of questions, then individually interviewed 75 people, including those who had been discharged and their family members, as well as discharge planners, case managers, and social workers from eight Hartford-area health-care facilities. Overall, the students found that discharge planning was uneven. In one extreme case, their research revealed that because one person’s discharge instructions were written only in English and the person’s caregiver couldn’t read English, the former patient died. Their recommendations, including one that would require that discharge instructions be written in languages other than English, are being reviewed by TCN and area health-care organizations.

Anthropology major and Individualized Degree Program (IDP) student Catherine M. Houlihan ’02 describes the experience of interacting with "real people" on a real problem as "wonderful." She says, "Professor Trostle brought a really innovative approach to the research methods class with the discharge planning project. He prepared us to do the research with well-selected readings and in-depth class discussions and cautioned us about respecting the anonymity of our subjects and observing ethics. It was really interesting and a wonderful way to be introduced to field work and anthropology."

A medical focus

Trostle, whose expertise is medical anthropology, joined Trinity’s faculty in 1998 after serving for three years as director of the Five-College Program in Culture, Health, and Science, based at Mount Holyoke College and also involving Amherst, Hampshire, and Smith colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Prior to that, he was senior social scientist at the Harvard Institute for International Development and a consultant to the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization, in which capacity he examined medical issues in South America, Asia, and Africa. He has a master’s degree in the epidemiology and a Ph.D. in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches courses in medical anthropology, anthropology and international health, and the anthropology of development. The author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, he recently co-authored a book on the use of research in Mexican health policy that is under review for publication in Spanish by Edamex publishers in Mexico City. The work’s co-authors are Mario Bronfman, director of the Center for Health Policy of the Mexican National Institute of Public Health, and Ana Langer, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Population Council. He is also co-editor of a forthcoming book on anthropological approaches to epidemiology in the Americas, and is writing a book on anthropology and epidemiology for Cambridge University Press.

Says department chair Dana Professor of Anthropology Frederick K. Errington, "Jim’s teaching provides a vital articulation between social theory and practical application. He conveys to students what they have to know to be both informed and effective in the world. Theorist as well as practitioner, he teaches students not only how to think well but how to transform that thinking into effective action."

Effective communication

Challenging students to sharpen their powers of observation, to synthesize what they’ve learned with what they’ve observed, and to articulate their conclusions is of prime importance to Trostle. "Students in my classes learn about communication," he notes. "The ability to communicate with multiple audiences is critical for human beings." To help students communicate, Trostle places a strong emphasis on clear and concise writing, and usually returns the initial drafts of his students’ papers with comprehensive commentary.

Last semester, anthropology major Ericka R. Lenz ’99 found both Trostle’s insistence on good writing and familiarity with South America very valuable in doing her senior thesis on the politics of beauty among upper class women in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "Professor Trostle was an excellent thesis adviser who was very encouraging every step of the way. He’s very challenging and really pushes us to do more than we’ve ever had to do before."

Like the confidence and self-reliance Outward Bound participants develop, Trinity students can also reap significant intellectual rewards from the discipline he teaches, Trostle contends. "By studying anthropology, people can learn to understand the practically infinite variety of ways in which people explain and order their world and discover the surprising, mystifying, wondrous, adaptability of human beings," he observes.

-Suzanne Zack