Sherry B. Ortner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is author of Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture, and High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism. She has received many awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.