Cultural Anthropology

Barbara D. Miller is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs of the George Washington University in Washington, DC. She is Director of the Elliott School's Institute for Global and International Studies as well as Director of two of its affiliated research groups, the Culture in Global Affairs Program and the Global Gender Program. Before coming to GW in 1994, she taught at Syracuse University, the University of Rochester, SUNY Cortland, Ithaca College, Cornell University, and the University of Pittsburgh. For over 30 years, Barbara's research has focused on gender-based inequalities in India, especially the nutritional and medical neglect of daughters in northern regions of the country, and sex-selective abortion. She has also conducted research on culture and rural development in Bangladesh, on low-income household dynamics in Jamaica, and on Hindu adolescents in Pittsburgh. Her current interests include continued research on gender inequalities in health in South Asia and the role of cultural anthropology in informing policy, especially as related to women, children, and other disadvantaged groups. She teaches courses on introductory cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, development anthropology, culture and population, health and development in South Asia, migration and mental health, and global gender policy.

Barbara has published many journal articles and book chapters and several books including The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children in Rural North India, Second Edition (Oxford University Press 1997), an edited volume, Sex and Gender Hierarchies (Cambridge University Press 1993), and a co-edited volume with Alf Hiltebeitel, Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures (SUNY Press 1998). In addition to Cultural Anthropology, Eighth Edition, she is the author of Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World, Third Edition (Pearson 2012) and the lead author of a four-field textbook entitled Anthropology, Second Edition (Pearson 2008).

She launched a blog in 2009 called anthropologyworks where she and other contributors present informed opinion pieces about important social issues, a weekly feature covering anthropology in the mainstream media, and other features. Since its beginning, the blog has had 120,000 visits from people in nearly every country of the world. You can follow her, along with over 5,000 other people worldwide, via Twitter @anthroworks and Facebook. In 2010, she launched a second blog called globalgendercurrent, which highlights new research and debates about global women's issues as informed by grounded research and cutting-edge policy questions. She is also Tweeting and Facebooking about global gender issues.