Justin M. Nolan was born and raised in El Dorado, Arkansas. He graduated from Westminster College in 1993, and completed his Ph.D. in anthropology in 2000 at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Nolan is a research assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, where he has been a faculty member since 2002. His research interests include ecological and medical anthropology, ethnobiology, and the conservation of folk cultures in the rural US. Nolan has studied the social ecology of the Upper South, ethnobotany in Central Missouri, traditional medicine and folklore in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, and the recent revival of historic hunting and fishing skills in Missouri and Arkansas. His recent publications have appeared in Human Organization, Journal of Ethnobiology, Field Methods, and the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

Together with his colleague Mary Jo Schneider, Nolan recently examined the phenomenon of "medical tourism"-the search for health and well-being through participatory travel-in Arkansas' rural Ozark and Ouachita Mountain regions. The project revealed that medical services, especially those based on shifting "folk" healing traditions, contribute significantly to the economic survival of marginal locales. The study will appear in the forthcoming volume, Reimagining and Sustaining Communities in a Globalizing World, from the University of Georgia Press. Nolan is presently expanding his research on regional tourism through the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas. The findings will reveal how natural resources, such as wilderness areas and historic attractions, and cultural resources, such as wineries, festivals, and historic attractions, can be envisioned and sustained to strengthen rural community development programs.

To view Nolan's webpage at the U of A Anthropology Department, click here:
http://www.uark.edu/depts/anthinfo/nolan.htm

Miracles in the Mountains: Medical Tourism in Rural Arkansas' Ozark and Ouachita Mountains
by Justin M. Nolan and Mary Jo Schneider (pdf)