Ayala Emmett : Faculty & Staff : Department of Anthropology : University of Rochester

Professor Emmett received her B.A. from the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem Israel, in English Literature, Sociology, and Anthropology and
her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Rochester.
Professor Emmett's research interests include politics, gender, peace and
justice, medical anthropology and text analysis. The United States and
Israel have been her main geographic research areas. Her research in the
United States includes fieldwork at Strong Memorial Hospital focusing on
adolescent pregnancy and infant feeding patterns and among dual career
families. Her research on parenthood, work and gender was supported by the
National Institute of Mental Health. In 1990-91 and in 1993 she did
fieldwork in Israel on politics, gender and peace. She has published a
book, articles in edited volumes and journals and has edited two special
volumes.

Women in Black Peace Vigil, Jerusalem, 1990

Professor Emmett's book on Israeli politics and women's peace activism, Our Sister's Promised Land: Women, Politics and Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence, was supported by a grant from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation and published by The University of Michigan Press in 1996. Her book was reissued in a paperback 2003 edition with a new, updated introductory chapter.

Professor Emmett's current research focuses on women and religion in America and the ways that the public square and secular ideas on gender, citizenship and justice have penetrated and affected faith communities. She is doing fieldwork on Jewish women who in their synagogues take on traditionally religious male rituals, objects and roles; this research follows her earlier fieldwork among Presbyterian women ministers. Professor Emmett has widened her scholarly, publication, and teaching interests to include creative ethnography. She was the recipient of the 2000 Humanistic Anthropology Fiction Award for her story "Going to America Under the Jacaranda Tree." The story was published in Anthropology and Humanism in the June 2001 issue. Professor Emmett is currently revising her ethnographic novel, After the Disappearance, about the shocking disappearance of a beloved and well-known Israeli journalist in the 1950s.

Professor Emmett is the founder of Seeds for College, a university affiliated and community-based foundation with the goal of helping inner city minority children to successfully graduate from high school and awards them seed money to go to college. Professor Emmett is an Associate Editor of Sex Roles. She is the 2008 Chair of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology Fiction Award.

Curriculum Vitae

1973 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, B.A., English Literature, Sociology, and Social Anthropology
1977 University of Rochester M.A., Anthropology
1980 Ph.D., Anthropology. Dissertation: Parenthood by Choice: Transition to Parenthood Among White Middle Class Couples in Rochester, New York.

List of Current Courses

ANT 101: Cultural Anthropology

List of Past Courses

ANT 103: Women in Society: A crosscultural Perspective
ANT 204: Ethnographic Themes
ANT 216: Medical Anthropology
ANT 217: Kinship on the Medical Frontier
ANT 244: Marriage, Families and Community in a Global Perspective
ANT 245: American Culture
ANT 274: Creative Ethnography
ANT 303: Advanced Topic Seminar: Piety and Politics

Books

1996	Our Sisters' Promised Land: Women's Peace Politics And The Israeli Palestinian Conflict. .Michigan University Press.
1994	(With Douglas P. Fry) Cross-Cultural Perspectives Aggression in Women and Girls. Sex Roles. Special Issue, 30, Nos. 3/4.
1998	(With Ellen Kintz) Globalization and Local Cultures: Maya Women Negotiate Transformations. Sex Roles. Special Issue, 39, Nos. 3/4

Articles

1989	"Politics, Ideology and Scholarship: Anthropology Facing Women's Studies." Urban Anthropology, 18, No 1, 113-122.
1991	"De-Mystifying the Poor and the Peasants: Women Making Reproductive Choices." Reviews in Anthropology, Vol. 18, 75-84.
1992	"Living With Medea and Thinking After Freud: Greek Drama, Gender and Concealments" Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 7, 346-373.
1992	"Rage and Grief: Collective Emotions in the Politics of Peace and the Politics of Gender in Israel" Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry , Vol. 16, 311-335.
1994	"The Cultural Construction of Gender and Aggression" Sex Roles, 30, No 314, 165-167.
1998	"Sex and Gender as Raw Political Material: Local Women Negotiate Globalization" Sex Roles, 39, Nos. 7/8, 503-513.
2001	"Going to America Under the Jacaranda Tree" Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 26, No 1.

Selected Research

1977-1979	Rochester, New York. Dual-career couples: Gender, work and family.
1980-1981	Rochester, New York. Adolescent pregnancy and maternity: gender, class and race. (Rochester Adolescent Maternity Program, Strong Memorial Hospital, Division of Adolescent Medicine.)
1983-5	Rochester, New York. Cultural values and biomedical knowledge: Research on infant feeding patterns (at Strong Memorial Hospital).
1987	Israeli women's responses to the Hebrew Bible: Scripture, gender and politics
1990-1993	Women's peace activism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
1995	The Gender of a Calling: Women Pastors in the Presbyterian Church
1999	Community and the Common Good in America