Sherry B. Ortner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. She received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She joined the UCLA faculty in 2004 after teaching at the University of Michigan and University of California, Berkeley. Her prize-winning book Life and Death on Mt. Everest (1999) reflected her extensive fieldwork on the Sherpas. In the early 1990s Ortner switched her research focus to the U.S. Her first project was on the meanings and workings of “class.” She is currently developing a project on the relationship between Hollywood films and American culture. She also publishes regularly in the areas of cultural theory and feminist theory.