About

Sherry B. Ortner is a Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. She received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before joining UCLA in 2004, she taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University. Her research has included extensive fieldwork with the Sherpas of Nepal, focusing on religion, politics, and Himalayan mountaineering, with her final book on the Sherpas, 'Life and Death on Mt. Everest,' awarded the J.I. Staley prize for the best anthropology book of 2004. In the early 1990s, she shifted her research focus to the United States, exploring social class through ethnography of her high school graduating class and examining the world of independent filmmaking and its critique of American society. She publishes regularly in cultural theory and feminist theory, and her work encompasses critical cultural and social theory, feminist theory, late capitalism, contemporary American culture, media ethnography, and Hollywood and indie film scenes. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the Retzius Medal from the Society of Anthropology and Geography of Sweden.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Gender studies
• Law
• Criminology
• Anthropology

Selected publications

• Screening Social Justice

  2023-01-13 · 1 citations

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• Screening Social Justice

  2023-02-10

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• Screening Social Justice

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

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• Screening Social Justice

  2022-12-19

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  In Screening Social Justice, award-winning anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner presents an ethnographic study of Brave New Films, a nonprofit film production company that makes documentaries intended to mobilize progressive grassroots activism. Ortner positions the work of the company within a tradition of activist documentary filmmaking and within the larger field of “alternative media” that is committed to challenging the mainstream media and telling the truth about the world today. The company’s films cover a range of social justice issues, with particular focus on the hidden workings of capitalism, racism, and right-wing extremism. Beyond the films themselves, Brave New Films is also famous for its creative distribution strategies. All of the films are available for free on YouTube. Central to the intention of promoting political activism, the films circulate through networks of other activist and social justice organizations and are shown almost entirely in live screenings in which the power of the film is amplified. Ortner takes the reader inside both the production process and the screenings to show how a film can be made and used to mobilize action for a better world.

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• Patriarchy

  Feminist Anthropology · 2022 · 36 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Gender studies
  • Sociology

  Abstract Patriarchy is more than just “sexism.” It is a social formation of male‐gendered power with a particular structure that can be found with striking regularity in many different arenas of social life, from small‐scale contexts like the family, kin groups, and gangs, up through larger institutional contexts like the police, the military, organized religion, the state, and more. At the same time, patriarchy never stands alone, and always exists in complex intersections with other forms of power. In this article, I look at patriarchy from both points of view—that is, from both an exclusively gendered perspective, and from a perspective in which patriarchy cannot be divorced from white supremacy, normative heterosexuality, and normative able‐bodiedness. Finally I briefly consider contemporary right‐wing extremist (fascist) politics, in which the toxic intersectional brew of patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and ideologies of bodily perfection are mobilized in pursuit of mass political control and domination.

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• Another Description: Serious Games

  University of Toronto Press eBooks · 2021-12-19 · 2 citations

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• Gegen Hollywood.

  Springer Reference Sozialwissenschaften · 2021-01-01

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• Gegen Hollywood: Der amerikanische Independent-Film als kulturkritische Bewegung

  2021-01-01 · 1 citations

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• Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-04-13 · 6 citations

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• INTRODUCTION

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-04-13

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Frequent coauthors

• Nicholas B. Dirks

  New York Academy of Sciences

  189 shared

• Geoff Eley

  187 shared

• Bernard Cohn

  185 shared

• Jacob Price

  Drexel University

  181 shared

• Geoffrey Hawthorn

  181 shared

• Eric Wolf

  University of Colorado Boulder

  181 shared

• Jack Goody

  181 shared

• Keith Hopkins

  181 shared

Labs

• Sherry B. Ortner LabPI

Education

• B.A.

  Bryn Mawr College

• M.A.

  University of Chicago

• Ph.D.

  University of Chicago

Awards & honors

• J.I. Staley Prize for the best anthropology book of 2004
• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Retzius Medal of the Society of Anthropology and Geography o…