RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

Over the last decade, I have conducted research, published, and offered courses in the following areas, which are my enduring interests:

• The Body and Embodiment
  Research Interests: Material, symbolic, gendered and "raced" bodies; discourses of the body; historic and
  contemporary body practices; semiotics of the body; body "extremes," embodiment and aesthetics
  Courses: Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment; Body Politics; Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation: "De-naturalizing" the Body in Culture and Text; Aesthetics and Embodiment
  
  
• Consumer Culture and Aesthetic Consumption
  Research Interests: Transnational consumer culture;  tourism; commodity culture and aesthetics; commodified body and body aesthetics Course: Consuming Culture; Cultural Encounters: The Cultural Politics of Travel, Tourism, and Anthropology; Aesthetics and Embodiment
  
  
• Cultural Encounters
  Research Interests: history, politics, and ethics of cross-cultural encounters; globalization and transnationalism
  Courses: Cultural Encounters: The Cultural Politics of Travel, Tourism, and Anthropology; Writing Cultural Encounter
     
  
• Cultural Representation and Ethnographic Responsibility
  Research Interests: politics and poetics of cultural representation; ethnographic, documentary, and popular film;
  theorizing, reading, and writing ethnography; colonialism and representation; engaged cultural criticism; anthropology and literature; cultural politics; cultural studies
  Courses: Theorizing and Writing Ethnography; Reading Ethnographic Writing; Anthropology Goes to the Movies;
  Constructing Self/Constructing Other: The Politics and Poetics of Hollywood Film; Colonialism and Cultural Representation; Interpreting Text/Interpreting Culture: Anthropology and Literature
  
  
• Gender, Race, and Difference
  Research Interests: cultural, "racial," and gender difference; feminist anthropology; gender and globalization; cultural politics
  Courses: Anthropology of Gender; Gender in Global Perspective; Gender and Modernity; Gender, Culture, and Political Engagement;Cultural Politics of Nazism
  
  
• History and Theory of Anthropology/Production of Knowledge/History of Ideas
  Research Interests: anthropological, critical, postcolonial, feminist, psychoanalytic, and post-structural theory;
  history of anthropology; philosophical anthropology; anthropological discourse and contemporary intellectual, political, and cultural trends; conceptual models/blindspots in contemporary anthropology; knowledge production
  Courses: History of Anthropological Theory; The Exotic and Erotic in the 19th and 20th Century Western Imagination; Contemporary Black Critical Thought; History of the Social Sciences, Feminist Theory; Voices Against the Chorus (Great Books of Modernity); Utopian Thought and Communities
     
  
• Psychology and Culture
  Research Interests: cross-difference identification; theorizing the unconscious; language, subjectivity and embodiment; culture and desire; culture and  imagination; cultural narratives and identity; cultural "disorders"
  Courses: Psychological Anthropology; Psychology and Culture; Culture and Desire; Cultural Stories: Narrative and Identity in the US
     
  
• United States
  Research populations and sites: Mashpee Indians; female adolescents; middle-class consumers; women in the academy; sites of craft production and distribution; multiple sites of consumption (museums, tourist sites, magazine publishing houses, the mall, middle-class homes).
  Courses: Cultural Stories: Narrative and Identity in the U.S.; Consuming Culture; Constructing Self/Constructing the Other: The Politics and Poetics of Hollywood Film
  
  

   

Gender and Difference in a Globalizing World: 21st Century Anthropology will be published in July 2009. It focuses on the history of the study of gender and difference in anthropology; the impact of contemporary global processes on the construction and experience of difference; and the gendered, raced, and classed nature of contemporary global processes. View it at http://www.waveland.com/Titles/Mascia-Lees.htm

Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World: Toward an Engaged Cultural Criticism was published by SUNY Press in 2000. Paul Stoller, author of Jaguar: A Story of Africans in America, writes of Taking a Stand: "Mascia-Lees and Sharpe are keen observers of contemporary culture, scholars who cull evidence carefully to reach their conclusions. What's more, they combine careful scholarship with representational inventiveness. They take creative risks with voice, structure, and subject. I'm sure their various takes on the post-feminist world will please many, anger others, and stimulate all." Read excerpts of this book here. Review of Taking a Stand

Gender and Anthropology was published by Waveland Press in 2000. Of the book, Naomi Quinn of Duke University writes, "Gender and Anthropology is excellent. It is a major accomplishment of synthesis and distillation." - Read excerpts of this book here. Review of Gender and Anthropology

Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text was published by SUNY Press in 1992. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz of Stanford University writes of Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: "This exciting book engages the most current debates about the representation of the human body, especially the female body in various media such as film, literature, and popular magazines. Thoroughly conversant with the latest in feminist criticism, gender theory, and the predicaments of postmodern culture, the authors explore various narratives and images through which the gendered body is currently represented." Read excerpts of this book here.

Toward a Model of Women's Status. American University Studies, Series Xi, Anthropology/Sociology, Vol. 1. Peter Lang Publishers, 1984.

Now in a new edition, Women's Realities, Women's Choices introduces readers to the field of women's studies by examining the contradictions between social and cultural "givens" and the realities that women face in society. Written collectively by nine authors from as many fields and disciplines, the book acknowledges the gap between women's realities and their choices--and both analyzes that gap and looks at ways to bridge it.  Read excerpts from an earlier edition of this book here.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• "Why Women Have Breasts", Anthropology Now, 1(1):4-11, Mascia-Lees. 2008
• “Truth as Cultural Story.” In Teaching Anthropology, edited by P. Rice and D. McCurdy, McGraw-Hill, 2007
  
• “Cruelty, Suffering, and Imagination: The Lessons of J.M. Coetzee,” American Anthropologist, 108 (1): 84-87, 2006 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• “Reimagining Globality: Toward and Anthropological Physics. Anthropology News, 47 (5): 9-11, May 2006 (Mascia-Lees and Himpele).
• “Can Biological and Cultural Anthropology Coexist?” Anthropology News, 47 (1): 9-13, January 2006.
• "Introduction: Language Ideologies, Rights, and Choices: Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Loss, Retention, and Revitalization." American Anthropologist, 2003:105 (4):1-2 (Mascia-Lees and Lees).
• "Drawing Shadows to Stone: The Photography of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902." Journal of Museum Anthropology, 1999:50-57.
• "The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective." Reprinted in Art and Interpretation, edited by Eric Dayton, Broadview Press, 1999:567-582 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "Locked In or Locked Out or Holding Both Ends of a Slippery Pole: Confusion of Metaphors, Collaborations, and Intellectual Travesties." In Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality, edited by S. Aiken, A. Brigham, S. Marston, and P. Waterstone. University of Arizona Press, 1998:227-242 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "Cultural Encounters: Conquest, Colonialism, Travel, Anthropology, and the 'Writing' of Culture." Appendix: In International Studies in the Next Millennium: Meeting the Challenge of Globalization, edited by Julia A. Kushigian, Praeger Publishers, 1998:141-152.
• "The Other as Fetish." Reviews in Anthropology, 1998:337-348.
• "Women Writing [and] Their Bodies: Exploring the Conjunction of Writing Difficulties, Eating Disorders, and the Construction of Self and Body among American Female Adolescents." Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 1996-1997:167-181 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective." Reprinted in Gender and Scientific Authority, edited by E. Hammonds, S. Kohlstedt, and H. Longino, University of Chicago Press, 1996:48-74 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "Piano Lessons." American Anthropologist, 1995:763-769 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "The Anthropological Unconscious." American Anthropologist, 1994:649-660 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "The British Virgin Islands as Nation and Desti-nation: Representing and Siting Identity in a Post-Colonial Caribbean." Social Analysis, 1993:130-151 (Cohen and Mascia-Lees).
• "Always Believe the Victim/Innocent Until Proven Guilty/There is No Truth: The Competing Claims of Feminism, Humanism, and Postmodernism in Interpreting Charges of Harassment in the Academy." Anthropological Quarterly, 1993:87-98 (Sharpe and Mascia-Lees).
• "The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective." Reprinted in Anthropology and Literature, edited by Paul Benson, University of Illinois Press, 1993:225-248 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "Die postmoderne Wende in der Anthropologie: Vorbehalte aus feministischer Sicht." Reprinted in Unbeschreiblich Weiblich? Beitrage zur Feministischen Anthropologie, edited by Gabriele Rippl, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993:209-242 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "Culture, Power, and Text: Anthropology and Literature Confront Each 'Other,'" American Literary History, 1992:678-696 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "Soft-Tissue Modification and the Horror Within," introduction to Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text. SUNY Press, 1992:1-9 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "The Marked and the Un(re)marked: Tattoo and Gender in Theory and Narrative," in Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text. SUNY Press, 1992:145-169 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).
• "Fieldwork as Cultural Process," Reviews in Anthropology, 1991:223-230 (Mascia-Lees and Cohen).
• "Reply to Kirby's Comment on 'The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective.'" Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1991:401-408 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "The Female Body in Postmodern Consumer Culture: A Study of Subjection and Agency." Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Theory and Aesthetics, 1990:29-50 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "White Women and Black Men: Differential Responses to Reading Black Women's Texts." College English, 1990:142-153 (Sharpe, Mascia-Lees, and Cohen).
• "Investigating the Biocultural Dimensions of Human Sexual Behavior." Medical Anthropology, 1989:367-383 (Mascia-Lees, Tierson, and Relethford).
• "The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective." Reprinted in Conversations in Anthropology: Anthropology and Literature, special issue of the Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society, 1990:251-282 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1989:7-33 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "Lasers in the Jungle: Reconfiguring Questions of Human and Non Human Primate Sexuality." Medical Anthropology, 1989:351-366 (Cohen and Mascia-Lees).
• "Double Liminality and the Black Woman Writer." American Behavioral Scientist, 1987:101-114 (Mascia-Lees, Sharpe, and Cohen).
• "The Angel on the Farm." Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 1986 (Sharpe and Mascia-Lees).
• "Evolutionary Perspectives on Permanent Breast Enlargement in Human Females." American Anthropologist, 1986:423-428 (Mascia-Lees, Relethford, and Sorger).

EDITED SPECIAL ISSUES

“Cruelty, Suffering, Imagination: The Lessons of J.M. Coetzee,” Special In Focus in the American Anthropologist, 108 (1): 84-87, 2006 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).

Constructing Meaningful Dialogue on Difference: Feminism and Postmodernism in Anthropology and the Academy. Two special issues of Anthropological Quarterly, April and June 1993 (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe).

Human Sexuality in Biocultural Perspective. Special issue of Medical Anthropology, 1989.

Women in the Eighties: Strategies for Survival. Selected Papers from the 1983 New York State Women's Studies Conference. Siena Press, 1984 (Ognibene and Mascia-Lees).

AWARDS, HONORS, AND FELLOWSHIPS

• 2008                         International Fellow, Open Society Institute, Prishtina University, Kosovo
• 2007-                        International Fellow, Open Society Institute, University of Sofia, Bulgaria
• 2006-2007                Fellow, Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers, New Brunswick
• 2005                         American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) President’s Award
• 2004                         Featured in Biographical Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology,
• 1999-2001                Faculty Mentor, Kellogg Leadership Institute
• 1998                         AAA/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Anthropology
• 1996-1998                Speaker in the Humanities Program, NY Council for the Humanities
• 1992-1999                Associate Fellow, Institute for Research on Women, SUNY Albany
• 1991-1992                Visiting Scholar, Five College Women’s Studies Research Center
• 1991                          NEH Summer Seminar Fellowship
• 1983-1999                60+ Faculty Development Grants, Bard College at Simon's Rock Campus
• 1982                          Honors Convocation Award for Academic Excellence, SUNY Albany
• 1982                          Research Foundation Grant, SUNY Albany
• 1981                          Benevolent Association Fellowship, SUNY Albany
• 1979                          Mashpee Tribal Council Research Grant
• 1978-1982                 Herbert H. Lehman Graduate Fellowship
  

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

• 2004 -                       Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University
• 2004 -                       Graduate Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University
• 2001 - 2006              Editor-in-Chief, American Anthropologist
• 2000 - 2004              Guest Professor, Department of Anthropology, Sarah Lawrence College
• 1999 - 2000              Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, Hunter College
• 1998 - 1999              Professor, Social Studies Division, Bard College-SRC
• 1991 - 1992              Chair, Social Studies Division, Bard College-SRC
• 1986 - 1996              Founder and Co-Director, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Bard College-SRC
• 1990 - 1997              Associate Professor, Social Studies Division, Bard College-SRC
• 1983 - 1989              Assistant Professor, Social Studies Division, Bard College-SRC
• 1983                         Visiting Instructor, Department of Anthropology, SUNY, College at Oneonta
• 1982-1983                Asst. to the Vice President, Office of Research and Educational Development, SUNY Albany
• 1982                         Visiting Instructor, Department of Anthropology, SUNY Albany
• 1977 - 1978              Recorder, Office of Records and Registration, SUNY, College at New Paltz

OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Consultantships in Media Programming
Indigo Films, 2007
Advisor to Earth and Sky Radio Series for new "Human World Project,"
MSNBC, 2000
WGBH, 1999-2000
City Arts, 1999
ABC News, 1992

Mentoring
New Chair Mentor, Rutgers University, 2005-2006
Faculty Mentor, Kellogg Leadership Institute, 1999-2001

COURSES TAUGHT

Graduate Seminars

Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment

Anthropology of Gender

Culture and Desire

Gender, Culture, and Political Engagement

Introductory Courses
Introduction to Anthropology
Introduction to Archaeology and World Prehistory
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Introduction to Cultural Ecology
Introduction to Cultural Studies

Introduction to Human Evolution
Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

Undergraduate Anthropology Seminars

Anthropology Goes to the Movies: Ethnographic, Documentary, and Popular Film

Anthropology of the Body

Anthropology of Gender
Colonialism and Cultural Representation
Consuming Culture: Commodities and Consumption in a Transnational World
Contemporary Black Critical Thought
Cultural Encounters: Travel, Tourism, and Anthropology
Cultural Politics of Nazism and Beyond: Eugenics, Racism, and Sexual Politics
Cultural Stories: Narrative and Identity in the U.S.

Ethnography of Women

Exotic and Erotic in the 19th- and 20th-Century Western Imagination
Gender and Modernity

Interpreting Text/Interpreting Culture: Anthropology and Literature
Reading Ethnographic Writing

Interdisciplinary Courses

Constructing Self/Constructing the Other: The Politics and Poetics of Hollywood Film (honors seminar)

Writing Cultural Encounters (honors seminar)

Contemporary Black Critical Thought

History of the Social Sciences
Research Methods in the Social Sciences 

Women's and Gender Studies Courses

Feminist Theory

Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

General Education Seminars