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SIPA Faculty
Maxine Weisgrau
Milbank Hall, Room 411B
Adjunct Lecturer of International and Public Affairs
Phone: 212-854-2236
mkw3@columbia.edu
Biography:
Maxine Weisgrau is an associate visiting professor at the Department of Anthropology, Barnard College.
Prof. Weisgrau's teaching areas are introductory level courses in anthropology; culture, tourism, and development; ethnography of South Asia; gender, politics, and development; indigenous peoples and states; and cultural ideology of the fetus. She is the author of "Vedic and Hindu Traditions" in Religion and Culture: An Anthropological Focus (Prentice Hall 1999) and three articles: "Rajasthan," "Tribalism and Tribal Identity" and "Gavri" in the forthcoming South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia (Garland Press). She has also authored Interpreting Development: Local Histories, Local Strategies (University Press of America 1997), Beyond the Boundaries of Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion, coedited with Barnard colleague Morton Klass (Westview 1999), and Experiencing Life and Death Before Birth (Waveland Press 2001).
She has conducted fieldwork research in Rajasthan, India since the late 1980s, studying nongovernmental organizations and rural development programs in villages in and around the Udaipur District. This research has also included inquiry into the construction of tribal identity and analysis of ritual cycles among Bhils of the area. Her current projects include an exploration of Bhil identity in Rajasthan through its expression in colonial and post-colonial discourse.
Maxine Weisgrau received her PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1993.