Mari Womack
Research Scholar since 1999
mari_womack@hotmail.com

Womack was a print and radio journalist for almost two decades, during which time she practiced ethnography journalism, a term she coined to describe the social and cultural forces that shape what is reported in the news. Womack's career included stints at local newspapers, but she first gained prominence at KZYM Radio in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, then at Voice of America, the U.S. equivalent of the BBC Worldwide Service.

Womack's journalistic achievements including being among the first American journalists to interview former Pakistani president, Benazir Bhutto, covering oil drilling in Alaska and reporting on Stanford's superconductor supercollider. She also interviewed Roger Revelle at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Walter Alvarez, developer of the asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction; and architect Frank Gehry, in addition to covering Hollywood for twelve years.

Medical Anthropology: Models of Health and Healing, is based on the idea that concepts of health shape what we define as afflictions, which in turn shapes the procedures we used for healing. The book takes a cross-cultural look at definitions of self and health and examines cross-cultural variation in what is viewed as the basis for illness and in treatments considered appropriate.

Womack is working on a third book entitled, Journalism by Consensus: The Story Behind the News.