Susan Sered, Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor

 

Mailing address:
Department of Sociology
Suffolk University
8 Ashburton Place
Boston, Massachusetts 02108

 

Phone: 617.305.1970
Fax: 617.994.4278
ssered@suffolk.edu
Office:  73 Tremont Street, 5th Floor, Room 567

Office Hours, Spring 2008

TH, 11:30AM-12:30PM, 3:00-4:00PM

 

Research Interests
Women’s health. Culture, illness and healing. Anthropology of religion.  Gender and religion.

 

Education
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ph.D., Sociology and Anthropology and Religious Studies, 1986.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
M.A., Religious Studies, 1983.
University of Chicago
B.A., Religious Studies, 1978.

 

Employment
2006 – present, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Suffolk University.
2004-2006, Senior Research Associate, Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University.
2000-2004, Research Director, ‘Religion, Health, and Healing’ Research Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University.
1986‑2002, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar‑Ilan University, Israel.

 

Selected Publications
2005 Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity, University of California Press.
2002 “Healing and Religion: A Jewish Perspective,” Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine.
2000 What Makes Women Sick?: Militarism, Maternity and Modesty in Israeli Society, University Press of New England.
1999 "’You are a Number, Not a Human Being’: Israeli Breast Cancer Patients’ Experiences with the Medical Establishment," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 13(3): 223-252.
1999 Women of the Sacred Groves: Divine Priestesses of Okinawa, Oxford University Press.
1994 Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women, Oxford University Press. 
1992 Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem, Oxford University Press.

 

Recent Oral Presentations
"Synergy, Syncretism, and Appropriation: The Gendering of Ritual Healing in the United States," University of Stockholm and University of Uppsala, January 2006.
"Women’s Health Care Access in Rural America,” University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, November 2005.
“The Death Spiral: How ‘The Uninsured’ Became an American Caste,” Boston University School of Public Health, September 2005.
“Women’s Health Briefing,” Kaiser Foundation briefing for policy makers and congressional aids, Washington DC, July 2005

 

Professional Activities
Book Series Editor, ‘Religion, Health, and Healing Series,’ Praeger Publishers.
Member of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (American Anthropological Association), 2001-2005.
Healing and Medicine Consultant, Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan Press.

 

Other Activities
Academic advisor to various women’s interfaith initiatives, including “Women, Tradition and Change: A Multi-Faith Conference on Contemporary American Religious Practice,” May 2000, Boston.
Chairperson and then member of the Board of the Association for the Advancement of Women’s Health in Israel.
Consultant on health care systems and on holistic healing for Our Bodies Ourselves.

 

Recent Grant Support
Kaiser Family Foundation, Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, for research on the near elderly and on the health care safety net (2004).
Commonwealth Fund, for research on the uninsured  (2004).
Germeshausen Foundation, for ‘Women Healing Women’ project on women as healers (2002).
Social Science Research Council, Religion and Immigration Program for study of religion, health, and gender in the U.S. Okinawan diaspora (2000).

Courses Taught
Cross-cultural medicine
Orientation to the health professions
Death and dyingGender in Middle Eastern societies.