Sarah Strauss
Education
A.B. 1984 Dartmouth College Comparative Religion
M.P.H. 1987 San Jose State University Community Health Education
Ph.D. 1997 University of Pennsylvania Cultural Anthropology
My Background is eclectic. I was born and raised on the East coast, living at various points in
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia and New Hampshire. During high school and college, I was quite
involved in biomedical research, and until my senior year in college, I fully expected my
professional career to be based on laboratory science. I enjoyed philosophy and religion, and so
although I worked in molecular biology laboratories and took science classes, I chose to major in
Comparative Religion. During my final year in college, I discovered Medical Anthropology, and
that changed everything. It seemed that a career in Anthropology would allow me the
opportunity to pursue all of my research interests, from health and human biology to myth and
religion. After graduating from college, I moved to the West coast, and worked as a marketing
director for a small medical research software company in Silicon Valley. I decided to pursue a
Master's degree in Public Health, in order to learn more about health-related aspects of human
interaction with the environment, and to see for myself how community health programs are
developed and implemented. I went on for a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, and for this degree
focused on aspects of culture change through transnational flows of ideas, products, and
practices. I have found that all of my previous experiences, no matter how seemingly diverse,
have contributed to my ongoing research goal: to understand what it means to be healthy, and
how people in different cultural contexts go about achieving and maintaining health. Since
moving to Laramie in 1995, I have been pursuing on various projects in several geographic
locales, each of which addresses this basic concern.
Research Interests include health beliefs and practices, transnational processes and public
culture, and human-environment interaction. For my Ph.D., I conducted research on yoga and
health in India and Germany; my dissertation explores the ways that yoga has been understood
and practiced in relation to changing notions of health and well-being over the past century, with
special emphasis on the version of yoga promoted by Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh,
India , and
his disciples around the world. One of
my current projects is an exploration of perceptions of water
resources in the Swiss Alpine community of Leukerbad,
Switzerland. Another project now underway, which involves an investigation of American
alternative health practices, is a collaborative endeavor with Dr. Anne Bowen of the UW
Psychology Department and Dr. Mary Burman of the UW School of Nursing addressing patterns of herbal product use in Laramie, Wyoming.
This project has generated four Master's thesis topics.
Courses I teach include World Ethnography, Medical Anthropology,
Linguistic Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, and Culture Change. I am also on the governing committee of
the International Studies Program at UW.
Fun things I enjoy when I can make the time include equestrian sports (dressage/combined
training -- yes, there are people in the West who do not ride Western!), playing and listening to
Celtic music , hiking, rockclimbing, and skiing in the beautiful mountains and foothills around
Laramie, and just hanging out in the park with my husband, Carrick, and our
kids
(Rory, 9, and Lia, 4).
If you would like to contact me, my office telephone number is 307-766-5310
and the fax number is 766-2473.
Sarah Strauss
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