Books

Lester, Rebecca J.  Coming Undone: What Dissociative Identity Disorder Tells Us about the Politics of Truth in the Virtual Age, University of California Press, under contract.

Cubellis, Lauren and Rebecca J. Lester, eds.  Traces of Care: The Work of Discernment and Recognition.  Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, under contract.

Lester, Rebecca J., ed.  Innovations in Psychological Anthropology.  Milton Park, Oxfordshire, Routledge, 2024.

Lester, Rebecca J.  Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America.  Berkeley, University of California Press, 2019.

  • National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) Book of the Month, July 2025.

  • Winner: 2020 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing (third place).

  • Winner: 2020 Ellen Basker Book Prize, Society for Medical Anthropology (honorable mention).

Lester, Rebecca J.  Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent.  Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005.

  • Winner: 2006 Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Anthropology.

Special Issues and Curated Blog Series

Reyes-Foster, Beatriz and Rebecca J. Lester, eds. Trauma and Resilience in Anthropological Fieldwork.  Anthrodendum blog series, 2019. https://anthrodendum.org/2019/06/18/trauma-and resilience-in- ethnographic-fieldwork/.

Myers, Neely, Kim Hopper, and Rebecca J. Lester, eds.  Practical Anthropology for a Global Public Psychiatry: Provocations and Future Directions.  Transcultural Psychiatry 54 (4) 2016.

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

Lester, Rebecca J. Anxious Intimacies: Polyamory, Jealousy, and Lifestyle Politics in America. American Anthropologist, in press.

Lester, Rebecca J.  The Limits of Liberal Care.  Current Anthropology, in press.

Lester, Rebecca J. “Unraveling Care: Feeding Tubes, 'Thick' Objects, and Contested Recovery." In Matters of the Mind: The Materialities of Mental Ill-Health. Edited by Anna Lavis and Karin Eli. New York: Routledge, in press.

.Lester, Rebecca J. Middle Age is a Time When Women are Vulnerable to Eating Disorders. The Conversation March 12, 2025.

Lester, Rebecca J. "Dangerous Intimacies: Resentment, Risk, and PTSD Recovery in ‘Post-Racial’ America.” In Innovations in Psychological Anthropology. Edited by Rebecca J. Lester. New York: Routledge, 2024.

Lester, Rebecca J. "Trigger Warnings: Danger, Desire, and Declensions of the Will in Eating Disorders Treatment.: In Against Better Judgment: Akrasia in Anthropological Perspective. Edited by Patrick McKearney and Nick Evans. Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books, 2023.

Galvin, Michael, Geusly Michel, Eurine Manguira, Edny Pierre, Carolyn Lesorogal, Jean-Francois Trani, Rebecca Lester, Laura Ionnatti. “Examining the Etiology and Treatment of Mental Illness Among Vodou Priests in Northern Haiti.” Culture, Medicine, & Psychiatry (2022) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11013-022-09791-4

Lester, Rebecca J. “Inner Worlds as Social Systems: How Insights from Anthropology can Inform Clinical Practice.” Social Science and Medicine—Mental Health 2 (2022): 100068.

Johnson, Adam P. and Rebecca J. Lester. “Mental Health in Academia: Hacks for Cultivating and Sustaining Wellbeing.” American Journal of Human Biology (2021): DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23664.

Lester, Rebecca J. "Self-governance, Psychotherapy, and the Subject of Managed Care: Internal Family Systems Therapy and the Multiple Self in a US Eating-disorders Treatment Center." American Ethnologist 44, no. 1 (2017): 23-35.

 Lester, Rebecca J. "Ground Zero: Ontology, Recognition, and the Elusiveness of Care in American Eating Disorders Treatment." Transcultural Psychiatry 55, no. 4 (2016): 516-33.

Lester, Rebecca J. and Eileen Anderson-Fye. "Fat Matters: Capital, Markets, and Morality." In Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture, and Symbolic Body Capital, edited by Eileen Anderson-Fye and Alex Brewis, 193-204. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2016.

Myers, Neely, Rebecca J. Lester, and Kim Hopper. "Reflections on the Anthropology of Public Psychiatry: The Potential and Limitations of Transdisciplinary Work." Transcultural Psychiatry 53, no. 4 (2016): 419-26.

Lester, Rebecca J.  “Eating Disorders.”  In International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, edited by James D. Wright, 822-828.  Cambridge, MA: Elsevier, 2015.

Lester, Rebecca J.  “Health as Moral Failing: Medication Restriction among Women with Eating Disorders.” Anthropology and Medicine 21, no 2 (2014): 241-250.

Lester, Rebecca J.  ”Back from the Edge of Existence: A Critical Anthropology of Trauma.” Transcultural Psychiatry 50, no. 5 (2013):753-762.

Lester, Rebecca J.  “Subjectivity.”  In Encyclopedia of Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology, edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms,. 834-837.New York: SAGE, 2013.

Lester, Rebecca J. "Lessons from the Borderline: Anthropology, Psychiatry, and the Risks of Being Human." Feminism & Psychology 23, no. 1 (2013): 70-77.

Lester, Rebecca J.  “Self-Mutilation and Excoriation.” In Encyclopedia of Body Image and Appearance, edited by Thomas Cash, 724-729.  Cambridge, MA: Elsevier. 2012.

Lester, Rebecca J. "How Do I Code for Black Fingernail Polish? Finding the Missing Adolescent in Managed Mental Health Care." Ethos 39, no. 4 (2011): 481-96.

Lester, Rebecca J. "Brokering Authenticity: Borderline Personality Disorder and the Ethics of Care in an American Eating Disorders Clinic." Current Anthropology 50, no. 3 (2009): 281-302. Winner of the Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology 

Lester, Rebecca J. "Anxious Bliss: A Case Study of Dissociation in a Mexican Nun." Transcultural Psychiatry 45, no. 1 (2008): 56-78.  

Lester, Rebecca J. "Critical Therapeutics: Cultural Politics and Clinical Reality in Two Eating Disorder Treatment Centers." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2007): 369-87.

Cabassa, Leopoldo J., Rebecca J. Lester, and Luis H. Zayas. "“It’s Like Being in a Labyrinth:” Hispanic Immigrants’ Perceptions of Depression and Attitudes Toward Treatments." Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 9, no. 1 (2006): 1-16.

Zayas, Luis H., Rebecca J. Lester, Leopoldo J. Cabassa, and Lisa R. Fortuna. "Why Do So Many Latina Teens Attempt Suicide? A Conceptual Model for Research." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 75, no. 2 (2005): 275-87

Lester, Rebecca J. "Commentary: Eating Disorders and the Problem of ‘Culture’ in Acculturation." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28, no. 4 (2004): 607-15.

Lester, Rebecca J. "The Immediacy of Eternity: Time and Transformation in a Roman Catholic Convent." Religion 33, no. 3 (2003): 201-19.

Lester, Rebecca J.  “Like a Natural Woman: Celibacy and the Embodied Self in Anorexia Nervosa.”  In Celibacy, Culture, and Society: The Anthropology of Sexual Abstinence, edited by  Elisa J. Sobo and Sandra Bell, 197-213.  Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

Lester, Rebecca J.  “Let Go and Let God: Religion and the Politics of Surrender in Overeaters Anonymous.”  In Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness, edited by Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer, 139-164. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1999.

Lester, Rebecca J. "The (dis)embodied Self in Anorexia Nervosa." Social Science & Medicine 44, no. 4 (1997): 479-89.

Lester, Rebecca J. "Embodied Voices: Women’s Food Asceticism and the Negotiation of Identity." Ethos 23, no. 2 (1995): 187-222.