Sherry Beth Ortner was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1941. She grew up in a White middle-class Jewish family, and graduated from Weequahic High School in 1958. She earned her bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. (Levine 1996). When she graduated from Bryn Mawr she continued to study anthropology at the University of Chicago where she received her masters degree in 1966 and her Ph.D. in 1970. Once she received her Ph.D. she began teaching at Sarah Lawrence College.
During 1966-1968, Ortner completed her first field work experience in Nepal. It took 10 days by foot to reach the Sherpa village where her work would commence. Her first husband, also a graduate of the University of Chicago, accompanied her to the village (Levine 1996). Ortner chose Nepal because her interests were in the geosocial regions of Tibet, Himalayas, southeast Asia, and the contemporary United States. They also include cultural anthropology, social theory, ideology, class, and gender (Bratton 1998).
Ortner is still one of the leading feminist theorists and is noted for her influential work in anthropology. She first gained attention when she published "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture" (in Women, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 1974). This was her second publication but her first published feminist piece. In this work she makes her now famous argument that culture is associated with men, and although women are important participants in culture, they are more aligned with nature (Bratton 1998). Ortner reflected on and continued her structuralist argument in more than twenty years later "So, Is Male to Female as Nature is to Culture?" (in Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture, 1996)
Ortner moved to the University of Michigan in 1977 where she taught Anthropology for 17 years. During that time she was Chair of the Department of Anthropology. She published The Virgin and the State (1976), was an editorial consultant for the Journal of Cultural and Social Practice, and was one of the several rotating directors for the Womens Studies program. In 1990, Ortner received the MacArthur Award for her work in anthropology. She subsequently moved from 1994 to 1996 to the University of California at Berkeley where she was part of the South Asia Consortium- West, an undergraduate program. Ortner currently teaches at Columbia University while also researching contemporary American society.
Bratton, Angela R. "A LOOK AT SHERRY ORTNER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY." May 1998. http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/Ortner.htm.
Levine, Joe. " The long way home." February 1996. http://magazine.uchicago.edu/9602/9602Ortner.html.
Written by: Michelle Barta
Edited by: Emily Hildebrant, 2007