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Biography

Susan Rodgers received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1978, after conducting two and a half years of fieldwork in Sumatra, Indonesia on issues of ethnic identity construction, ritual oratory, indigenous print literatures and literacies and minority/state relations. She taught at Ohio University from 1978 to 1989, then came to 51С�Ƴ� to help establish an anthropology program. She has returned to Indonesia numerous times for field research to explore issues of state power and indigenous arts. She is especially interested in translating modern Indonesian print literature from the two languages she uses in fieldwork, Indonesian and Angkola Batak. Rodgers has also guest curated museum exhibitions on Indonesian arts: “Power and Gold: Jewelry from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines” for the Musee Barbier-Mueller, the Asia Society and the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service, from 1985-90, and four Indonesian textile exhibitions for 51С�Ƴ�’ Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery. The two most recent exhibitions were “Gold Cloths of Sumatra: Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to Commodity” in 2007 and "Transnational Ikat: An Asian Textile on the Move." Among her recent books are Print, Poetics, and Politics: A Sumatran Epic in the Colonial Indies and New Order Indonesia (2005, Leiden, the Netherlands: KITLV Press); Practicing Catholic: Ritual, Body, and Contestation in Catholic Faith, edited by Bruce T. Morrill, S.J., Joanna Ziegler and Susan Rodgers (2006, New York: Palgrave Macmillan); and Gold Cloths of Sumatra: Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to Commodity, by Susan Rodgers, Anne Summerfield and John Summerfield (2007, Worcester, MA: Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, and Leiden, the Netherlands: KITLV Press).

Susan Rodgers teaches Anthropology 101, an introductory level class, and courses on topics such as: "Food, Body, Power" (ANTH 135), “The Imagined Body” (ANTH 256), “Genders and Sexualities in Cross-Cultural Perspective” (ANTH 255), “Anthropology of Religion” (ANTH 262), “Art and Power in Asia” (ANTH 274) and an ethnographic fieldwork seminar (ANTH 310). She particularly enjoys conducting joint fieldwork in Asia with students.