BA, Smith College
PhD, University of Chicago

Specialties

Social Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Religious Studies Cognition, Mental Health, Gender/Sexuality, Temporality, Technology, Affect, Agency, Environment, Theravāda Buddhism, Contemporary Society in Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Japan, and across Transnational South/East Asia.

I am engaged in research examining the co-construction of culture and mind, with an ethnographic focus on Buddhist and other mental training practices of Southeast and East Asia. In my work I ask how ontological assumptions about mind and world are constructed in and through cultural/religious practice; how they are interwoven into the psychology of everyday social life in the region; and the implications these have for understanding global health and well-being. I teach undergraduate and graduate level courses based on these interests in Buddhism and gender, anthropological theory and methods, culture, mind, religion, and the body, and supervise MA and PhD students on projects engaging with these issues in religious studies and psychological anthropology. I am also currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Ethos, the Journal for Psychological Anthropology.

Current Research

Culture, Change, and Mental Health

For the past twenty years I have been working on a longitudinal, cross-cultural research project that examines Buddhist ideas about impermanence and their implications for cognition and mental health in a changing world. Through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork I am drawing out some of the complex ways that local notions of impermanence are connected non-attachment, moral causation (karma), personhood, and resilience in Thailand, Japan, and across transnational Asia. The project engages with issues of gender, sexuality, emotion, and new forms of modern subjectivities, and involves comparative work in Buddhist and Christian communities. Work on this project can be found in Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community (Cornell U. Press, 2015), winner of the American Anthropological Association’s Stirling Prize for Best Published Book in Psychological Anthropology.

Technologies of Attention: Cultural Variation in Attention, Cognition, and Perception

In a wide-reaching research project on perception and attention I am seeking to understand globally-variable patterns of well-known cognitive heuristics, and their foundations in cultural practices of attention. I am especially interested in the frequency bias, a quirk of perception in which a phenomenon to which one is newly alert suddenly seems ubiquitous.

Spirits of the Mind, Spirits of the Land

Spiritual energies are thought to circulate in psychological and physical space in many parts of the world, inviting people to engage with their surroundings in intriguing, patterned ways. The practical means by which people deal with these forces are thought to have implications for bodily, mental, and environmental health, from psychological dissociation and spirit possession to haze pollution brought on by contract farming and more.

Mindfulness in Global Southeastern Asia

Based on ethnographic data I gathered from more than 600 monks, psychiatrists, and lay Buddhist practitioners in the Theravāda areas of Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, this project reveals some of the cultural aspects of mindfulness considered central to the workings of mental health in the region. I have been increasingly working to connect this regional project with global conversations about attention and perception in mental training practices around the world.

Selected Publications

Cassaniti, Julia. 2015. Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cassaniti, Julia and Usha Menon, eds. 2017. Universalism Without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2018. Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2024. “A Burning Issue: The Spirits of Land and Capital in Thailand’s Agricultural Haze Crisis.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 4-27

Cassaniti, Julia. 2024. “Silent Suasions: Interpersonal Mediation in Thai Meditation.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI). 30: 61-76 Part of a Special Issue on Religious Suasion, Sam Victor and Danny Cardoza, eds.  

Cassaniti, Julia. 2024. “Will Work, Won’t Work? Getting things done in Buddhist Thailand.” Ethnos. 1-13.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2023. “The Precarious Spaces Between Us: The Exchange of Food and Merit in Thailand’s Affective Moral Economy during the COVID Pandemic.” Journal of Religious Ethics. Part of a Special Issue on Buddhist Moral Emotions, Sara Swenson & Jessica Starling, eds. 1-24.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2023. “The Sounds of Silence: Meditation for Personal and Social Change.”American Anthropologist. 125(4), 888-891. Part of a Special Issue on Silent Reverberations: Potentialities of Attuned Listening, Ana Dragojlovic and Annemarie Samuels, eds.

(e.g.Cassaniti, Julia and Michael Chladek. 2022. “Aimless Agency: Precarity and Uncertainty among Buddhist Novice Monks in Thailand.” Ethos, the Journal of Psychological Anthropology, 50(3):315-331

Cook, Joanna and Julia Cassaniti. 2022. “Mindfulness and Culture: The Future of the Mindfulness Movement and the Promise of Anthropology.” Anthropology Today, 38(2), 1-3. Guest Editor in a Special Issue on Cultures of Mindfulness, Julia Cassaniti and Jo Cook, eds.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2022. “Memory, Ghosts, and the Good Life: Sati in Theravāda Cultural Contexts.” Anthropology Today, 38(2), 4-8. In a Special Issue on Cultures of Mindfulness, Julia Cassaniti and Joanna Cook, eds.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2022. “Encountering Impermanence, Crafting Change: A Case Study of Alcoholism and Attachment.” In Impermanence: Exploring Continuous Change Across Cultures. Cameron Warner, Ton Otto, and Haidy Geismar eds. UCL Press.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2021. “Up in Smoke: Cosmopolitical Ecologies and the Disappearing Spirits of The Land in the Haze Crisis of Southeast Asia” In Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia:Places of Power in Changing Environments. Riam Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger, and David Sneath, eds. Routledge. 62-80.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2021. “Mindfulness or Sati? The Cultural Diversity of a Global Concept for Resilience and Mental Health.” In Journal of Global Buddhism. Part of a Special Issue on Buddhism and Resilience, Nalika Gajaweera and Darcie DeAngelo, eds.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2019. “Keeping It Together: Idioms of Resilience and Distress in Thai Buddhist Mindlessness.” Transcultural Psychiatry, 56(4), 697-719. Part of a Special Issue on Idioms of Distress, Lesley Weaver and Bonnie Kaiser, eds.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2017. “Wherever You Go, There You… Aren’t?” In Meditation, Buddhism, and Science.  David McMahan and Erik Braun eds. London: Oxford University Press. 131-152.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2016.  “Return to Baseline: A Woman with Chronic Acute Onset, Non-Affective Remitting Psychosis in Thailand.” Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia across Cultures. T.M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow, eds. U. California Press. 167-179.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2015. “Asanha Bucha Day: Boring, Subversive, or Subversively Boring?” The Journal of Contemporary Buddhism, 16(1): 224-243.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2015. “Intersubjective Affect and Embodied Emotion: Feeling the Supernatural in Thailand.” The Anthropology of Consciousness, 26(2): 132-142

Cassaniti, Julia and Tanya Luhrmann. 2014. “The Cultural Kindling of Spiritual Experiences.”

Current Anthropology. v.55(10): 333-343. (Also published in German, as: "Die kulturelle Erweckung spiritueller Erfahrung." Zeitschrift fűr Anomalistik, 16:85-114. (2016))

Cassaniti, Julia. 2014. “Moralizing Emotion: A Breakdown in Thailand.” Anthropological Theory. Vol.14(3) 280–300. Part of a Special Issue on the Anthropology of Morality, Julia Cassaniti and Jacob Hickman, eds.

Cassaniti, Julia and Jacob Hickman. 2014. “New Directions in the Anthropology of Morality.”Anthropological Theory, 14(3) 251–262. Part of a Special Issue on the Anthropology of  Morality, Julia Cassaniti and Jacob Hickman, eds.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2014. “Meditation and the Mind: Neurological and Clinical Implications of Buddhist Practice.” In Panitan: Chiang Mai University’s Journal of Philosophy and Religion.  p.7-30.

Cassaniti, Julia. 2012. “Agency and the Other: The Role of Agency for the Importance of Belief in Buddhist and Christian Traditions.” Ethos: The Journal of Psychological Anthropology. 40(3): 297–316.