Sarina McCabe

Sarina Adeline’s work is situated within Trauma Studies, a multidisciplinary field that cuts across psychology, medicine, social sciences, and even literary theory. Studying how understandings of “trauma” have evolved into the 21st century, Sarina examines diagnostic and therapeutic models as well as popular culture uses of trauma language.

Following the emergence of the PTSD diagnosis in the DSM-III (1980), discourse about psychological trauma rapidly proliferated through the clinical sector, scholarly research, and media. Across disciplines, approaches to studying trauma varied widely. On the one hand, the lenses of medicine and pathology have largely propelled research around diagnoses and therapeutic models, ultimately intended to be scalable to large populations. On the other, psychosocial and cultural models as well as literary and media representations of traumatized subjects have offered local, intimate understandings of traumatic experiences within the flow of everyday life.

Sarina’s fieldwork and dissertation project will draw from both anthropological and clinical methods to deepen our understanding of how “trauma” has become such a ubiquitous and ever-salient theme across the United States and beyond. How did “trauma-informed” models of care come into existence? How do beliefs about what “trauma” is and its long-term ramifications for individuals impact clinical operations, including who seeks formal care? How do popular understandings of trauma influence patient narratives and become encoded into identity? What do we make of the rise of self-diagnosis and colloquial usage of trauma-language, far beyond the reach of the clinic?

As well as working toward an interdisciplinary PhD in Modern Thought & Literature, Sarina is a Master's Candidate in Anthropology. Prior to Stanford, she completed her bachelor's degree in literature and creative writing at Emory University.