•  3
    Structural studies of truncated forms of the prion protein PrP
    with W. Wan, H. Wille, J. Stöhr, A. Kendall, W. Bian, S. Tiggelaar, J. C. Watts, S. B. Prusiner, and G. Stubbs
    © 2015 Biophysical Society. Prions are proteins that adopt self-propagating aberrant folds. The self-propagating properties of prions are a direct consequence of their distinct structures, making the understanding of these structures and their biophysical interactions fundamental to understanding prions and their related diseases. The insolubility and inherent disorder of prions have made their structures difficult to study, particularly in the case of the infectious form of the mammalian prion …Read more
  •  14
    Merleau-Ponty and a Phenomenology of PTSD begins from the premise that trauma can be better treated if it is better understood. To that end, this book builds a prismatic account of trauma, encompassing neuroscience, psychology, and phenomenology in order to establish that trauma is an embodied, adaptive response to a world without meaning.
  •  39
    Hysterical Girls: Combat Trauma as a Feminist Issue
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 11 (1): 3-21. 2018.
    In the United States, combat veterans are overwhelmingly male. It was not until 2013 that the ban preventing women from serving in combat was removed by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and not until 2016 that women could choose to enlist in Army Ranger School or become a Navy SEAL. Currently, only 6 percent of the veteran population in the United States is female. Why, then, choose combat trauma to show the ways in which our understanding of PTSD is problematically sexist? Why argue that…Read more
  •  27
    Haunted by a Different Ghost: Re-Thinking Moral Injury
    Essays in Philosophy 18 (2): 207-222. 2017.
    Coined by Jonathan Shay, a clinician who works with combat veterans, the term ‘moral injury’ refers to an injury that occurs when one’s moral beliefs are betrayed. Shay developed the term to capture the shame and guilt of veterans he saw in his clinical practice. Since then, debates about moral injury have centered around the ‘what’ and the ‘who’ of moral injury. Clinicians universally acknowledge the challenge of treating moral injuries. I will argue that this is in part because there is an ess…Read more
  •  66
    Trauma, Embodiment, and Narrative
    Idealistic Studies 42 (2-3): 247-263. 2012.
    We do not always survive trauma. Elie Wiesel said of Primo Levi, a holocaust survivor who committed suicide at age sixty-seven, “[he] died at Auschwitz forty years earlier.” Though Levi physically survived the holocaust, psychically he did not. And yet, there are countless stories of incredible triumph over trauma. What makes survival possible? What seems to separate those who recover from those who do not—at least in part—is the capacity and opportunity for adaptation. Adaptation is the phenome…Read more