Ortner, Sherry B. 1941–

(Sherry Beth Ortner)

PERSONAL: Born September 19, 1941, in Brooklyn, NY; daughter of Samuel (in business) and Gertrude (a homemaker) Ortner; married third husband, Timothy D. Taylor, July, 1994; children: (second marriage) Gwendolyn Ida Ortner Kelly. Ethnicity: "White/Jewish." Education: Bryn Mawr College, A.B., 1962; University of Chicago, M.A., 1966, Ph.D., 1970.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Anthropology, 341 Haines Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095; fax: 310-478-4709. E-mail—sortner@anthro.ucla.edu.

CAREER: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, lecturer in anthropology, 1969–70; Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, assistant professor of anthropology, 1971–77; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, associate professor, 1977–84, professor of anthropology, 1984–94; University of California, Berkeley, professor of anthropology, 1994–96; Columbia University, New York, NY, professor of anthropology, 1996–2004; University of California, Los Angeles, distinguished professor of anthropology, 2004–. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, member, 1973–74, visiting member, 1989–90; Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, CA, fellow, 1982–83; National Humanities Center, fellow, 1999–2000. Conducted field work in Nepal, 1966–68, 1976, 1979, 1990, and in the United States, 1992–94, 2004–07.

MEMBER: American Anthropological Association, American Ethnological Society, Society for Cultural Anthropology, Society for the Anthropology of North America, Nepal Studies Association, Tibet Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Guggenheim fellow, 1982–83; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur fellow, 1990–95; Retzius Medal, Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography, 2001; J.I. Staley Prize, 2004, for Life and Death on Mt. Everest; elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992.

WRITINGS:

Sherpas (documentary film), first broadcast by Granada Television, 1977.

Sherpas through Their Rituals, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1978.

(Editor, with Harriet Whitehead) Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1981.

High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1989.

Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture, Beacon Press (Boston, MA),1990.

La teoria antropológica desde los años sesenta, University of Guadalajara (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico), 1993.

(Editor, with Nicholas B. Dirks and Geoff Eley) Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1994.

(Editor) Fate of "Culture": Geertz and Beyond, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1999.

Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering, Princeton University Press, 1999.

New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of '58, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2003.

Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Critical Anthropology Now, edited by George E. Marcus, SAR Press (Santa Fe, NM), 1999. Contributor to anthropology journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Sherry B. Ortner once told CA: "While I think it is vital for anthropologists to continue working in cultures other than their own, and especially among the less powerful or otherwise marginalized, I also think it is important that we bring what we learn back into the critical study of our own culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times Book Review, April 15, 1978, Raymond A. Sokolov, review of Sherpas through Their Rituals; October 24, 1999, Michael Parfit, review of Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering.