About Me

My interest in cultural anthropology, public policy, and South Asia sprung from my youth with both parents working on U.S.—South Asia relations for the U.S. State Department and our time spent living abroad. My childhood years spent in Sri Lanka and South India in particular introduced me to a world of vast cultural diversity and global socio-economic disparities. During a yearlong college study abroad program in Madurai, India, I began my formal studies of Tamil language, culture and history and produced a photographic- ethnographic thesis about a festival for the Tamil goddess, Mariamman. After graduating from Brown University in 1987 with a B.A. in Religious Studies and Anthropology, I spent a few years working for international development organizations before returning to graduate school. Under the mentorship of my advisor, Arjun Appadurai, I received an MA in Anthropology in 1992 from the University of Pennsylvania where I wrote a thesis on colonial ethnography in South India. I received my PhD in Medical Anthropology from U.C.- Berkeley and UC-San Francisco in 1998 where Lawrence Cohen served as my advisor for my dissertation project on the medicalization of childbirth in Tamil Nadu.

I have published three single-authored books—Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth and Modernity in South India (University of California Press, 2003); Birth in the Age of AIDS: Women, Reproduction, and HIV/AIDS in India (Stanford University Press, 2013); Cancer and the Kali Yuga: Gender, Inequality, and Health in South India (University of California Press, 2022).

My first book, Birth on the Threshold, received the Association for Asian Studies’ 2005 prize for the best book in South Asia Studies. My second book was one of three books showcased by USAID’s Bureau of Global Health in celebration of the 10th anniversary of their PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) program. My third book received Honorable Mention for the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction Book Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology in 2023.

In addition to my solo-authored books, I am the lead co-editor (with Nayantara Sheoran Appleton) of the 2023 Wiley Blackwell handbook, A Companion to the Anthropology of Reproductive Medicine and Technology. With an Introduction, 28 Chapters, a Conclusion and an Epilogue, this 529-page handbook is an essential resource in the field of the anthropology of reproduction. I have also co-edited a 2019 Special Issue on Cancer and the Global South for BioSocieties with my colleague, Carlo Caduff, and published numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes based on my ethnographic research and on my use of feminist critical medical anthropology methodology. One of my articles received the Steven Polgar Paper Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association for the Best Paper Published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly (2011-12). I have presented my work to audiences at universities, conferences, and other institutes around the world.

My research has been supported with fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the Fulbright Foundation; the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS); Woodrow Wilson Foundation; and the universities with which I have been affiliated.

Currently, I am a professor in the Asian Studies program at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. I also teach for the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program and serve as the Chair of the South Asia Speakers Series Committee at Georgetown University. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, I was Professor and Head of Studies of Anthropology at Yale-NUS College in Singapore—a small liberal arts college that is a joint initiative between Yale and the National University of Singapore. I have also been on the faculties of Anthropology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and at the University of Notre Dame, and was a Lecturer for both the Anthropology and Women’s Studies Departments at U.C.-Berkeley. I have been a Visiting faculty member in the Science, Technology and International Affairs program (Fall 2020) and the Asian Studies program (2012-13) at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

I have enjoyed teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students at each of these institutions. Over the years, I have taught a wide range of courses including (but not limited to): Introduction to Cultural Anthropology; Contemporary Anthropological Theory; Anthropology Capstone Seminar; Ethnographic Techniques; Medical Anthropology; Culture & Reproductive Health & Medicine; Society and Transnational Issues in South Asia; Modern South Asian Cultures; Gender & Sexuality in South Asia; and Medicine and the Body in India. I served as the primary advisor for five students who have received their PhDs and as a committee member for over twenty-five doctoral and Masters’ student and I have supervised numerous undergraduate students on their senior capstone honors projects. In 2016, I was honored to receive the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award to a faculty member whose dedication to graduate students and commitment to excellence in graduate teaching and mentoring has made a significant contribution to graduate education at Syracuse University. And in 2007 I received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for outstanding teaching, research and service by an untenured faculty member in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

From 2016 to 2023 I served on the Editorial Board of the Maternal and Child Health Journal and I currently serve on the Expert Advisory Board for a Wellcome Trust project on “Grid Oncology: Remaking Cancer Care in India.” I have a longstanding affiliation with the American Association of Indian Studies (AIIS), serving on the Board of Trustees (2017-2020) and as a Delegate (2010-2012). From 2010-2012 I was Director of the Department of Education National Resource Center for South Asian Studies at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University and I was an Executive Committee Member and Trustee of the South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI). I have been a contributor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Global Health Policy blog and to the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat blog and I was a delegate to Oxfam-India’s South Asia Maternal-Health Regional Dialogue in Kathmandu in 2015. I am a regular peer-reviewer for anthropology and global public health journals and have served on committees for the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA) and the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction (CAR).

My two children, Lila and Jasper Rodgers, and my husband, Charles Freeman, have been my closest companions throughout.