Robert R. Desjarlais

Robert R. Desjarlais is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College since 1994. He holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and MA and PhD degrees from the University of California-Los Angeles. His academic work focuses on the cultural construction of experience, death and mourning, and the political economy of illness and healing, informed by ethnographic fieldwork in the Nepal Himalayas, Boston homeless shelters, and among competitive chess players.

• Education:
  • BA, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
  • MA, University of California-Los Angeles
  • PhD, University of California-Los Angeles

Desjarlais has authored influential works such as Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas and Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard, blending phenomenological approaches with sensory biographies and hauntologies. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Humboldt Research Award, underscoring his contributions to anthropological scholarship.

He teaches courses like Ethnographic Research and Writing, Specters of the Subject: Hauntologies in Contemporary Life, and Understanding Experience: Phenomenological Approaches in Anthropology, emphasizing interdisciplinary and experiential learning.