Susan Rodgers received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of   Chicago in 1978, after conducting two and   a   half years of fieldwork in Sumatra,   Indonesia, on issues of ethnic identity construction, ritual oratory, indigenous print   literatures and literacies, and minority/state relations.  She taught at Ohio University   from 1978 to 1989, when she came to   Holy   Cross to help establish an anthropology   program.  She has returned to Indonesia numerous times for field research, to   explore   issues of state power and indigenous arts.  Translating modern Indonesian   print literature from the two languages   she uses in   fieldwork (Indonesian and Angkola   Batak) is a special interest.  Prof. Rodgers has also guest curated museum   exhibitions on   Indonesian arts: “Power and Gold: Jewelry from Indonesia, Malaysia,   and the Philippines” for the Musee   Barbier-Mueller, the   Asia Society, and the   Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service, in 1985-90, and three   Indonesian   textile exhibitions   for Holy Cross’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery   (www.holycross.edu/cantorartgallery/).   The most recent of these was   “Gold Cloths   of Sumatra: Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to Commodity” in 2007.    Among her   recent books are Print,   Poetics, and Politics: A Sumatran Epic in the Colonial Indies   and New Order   Indonesia (2005, Leiden, the Netherlands: KITLV   Press); Practicing Catholic: Ritual, Body, and Contestation in Catholic   Faith edited by Bruce T. Morrill, S.J., Joanna Ziegler, and   Susan Rodgers (2006, New York: Palgrave Macmillan); and Gold   Cloths of Sumatra: Indonesia’s Songkets from Ceremony to   Commodity, by Susan Rodgers, Anne Summerfield, and John   Summerfield (2007, Worcester, MA: Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art   Gallery, and Leiden, the Netherlands: KITLV Press). 
  Susan Rodgers teaches Anthropology 101, the basic introductory class, and courses on such topics as “The Imagined Body”   (ANTH 256), “Genders and Sexualities in Cross-Cultural Perspective” (ANTH 255), “Anthropology of Religion” (ANTH 262), “Art and Power in Asia” (ANTH 274), and the ethnographic fieldwork seminar (ANTH 310).  She is teaching a new first year student course in the Montserrat program entitled “Writing Southeast Asia” in fall, 2008, and is developing a 12-person course on the anthropology of Southeast Asia which she hopes to teach for Holy Cross students next “May term,” 2009, in Cambodia, Singapore, and Indonesia.  In addition, most spring semesters, she offers Directed Research, ANTH 495, on Holy Cross’s Cantor Art Gallery’s special study collection of Southeast Asian textiles.