Professor Evelyn Blackwood

Evelyn Blackwood is Professor of Anthropology and affiliated faculty in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Asian Studies at Purdue University. Dr. Blackwood received her MA in anthropology from San Francisco State University and her PhD from Stanford University. Author of numerous journal articles and books, her work investigates the critical intersections where local, state, and transnational processes meet individual understandings and experiences of gender,...See more

Evelyn Blackwood is Professor of Anthropology and affiliated faculty in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Asian Studies at Purdue University. Dr. Blackwood received her MA in anthropology from San Francisco State University and her PhD from Stanford University. Author of numerous journal articles and books, her work investigates the critical intersections where local, state, and transnational processes meet individual understandings and experiences of gender, sexuality, identity, and kinship. She explores these topics through two related areas of ethnographic research: the study of a matrilineal society in West Sumatra, Indonesia, and the study of the social construction of sexualities and genders, focused on Indonesia and the United States. Dr. Blackwood was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship for her research on emerging sexual and gender identities in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. In addition to several articles on the topic, she wrote the award-winning monograph Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia (2010). This book explores the complexities of gender and sexuality in Indonesia for trans-identified masculine tombois and their girlfriends. Her current project combines anthropology and history to explore the construction and negotiation of identity, selfhood, and community among baby boomers in the United States, focusing on women in the first generation of "out" lesbians in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s. See less