Holy Cross Anthropology Professor Recognized for Work in Indonesian Research

WORCESTER, Mass. – Susan Rodgers, professor of anthropology and chair of the sociology and anthropology department at the College of the Holy Cross, has been named the W. Arthur Garrity Sr. Professor in Human Nature, Ethics and Society. This rotating professorship was established in 2002 to honor the legacy of W. Arthur Garrity, class of 1905.  It is awarded to Holy Cross faculty for a term of three years.

Rodgers studies indigenous peoples and their print literatures, focusing on Southeast Asia and, in particular, Indonesia. She specializes in the translation and interpretation of Indonesian novels, epics, and memoirs and has published seven books, all but one of them about Indonesian writing and art.  She has guest curated numerous exhibits on the vibrant art of Indonesian golden textiles for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at Holy Cross.

As the Garrity chair, Rodgers will continue her research on the politics of literature and art in Indonesia.  She will also work on a new book on the political history of the vernacular press of Sumatra in the late Dutch colonial era.  In addition, she will prepare a new exhibition of Indonesian textiles, for a Cantor Art Gallery show titled Transnational Ikat, for spring 2013.

As the Garrity Chair, Rodgers will also develop a course titled “Body, Power, and Global Health” that will introduce first- and second-year students to the political anthropology of global health through an analysis of the body in relation to poverty and structural violence in places like Haiti, Indonesia, and mainland Southeast Asia.  The course will conclude with an examination of local health conditions in Worcester through the lens of the anthropology of structural violence and poverty.  Guest speakers will form a central part of the class.

Rodgers earned her B.A. from Brown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.  Joining the Holy Cross faculty in 1989, after 11 years at Ohio University and a tenured position there, Rodgers was instrumental in developing the College’s anthropology program. She has also been involved in the Women’s and Gender Studies program and was a former director of the Asian Studies program.

Rodgers, an internationally respected scholar in her field, has received research grants from numerous institutions including the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Association, and the Southeast Asia Council.  In 2001, she was awarded a fellowship at the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, and in 2004 she was the first recipient of the distinguished Holy Cross Marfuggi Faculty Scholarship Award.  Recently, she has served as the Southeast Asia book review editor for the Journal of Asian Studies.

Rodgers, who resides in Worcester, will formally assume the Garrity professorship on July 1, 2010.