I am a cultural anthropologist. I earned my BA from Sarah Lawrence College in anthropology and French (1975), and my MA (1978) and PhD (1983) in cultural anthropology from the University of Virginia. Among other works, I am the author of The Afterlife Is Where We Come from: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa (2004), and Under the Kapok Tree: Identity and Difference in Beng Thought (1992); the co-author of Parallel Worlds: An Anthropologist and a Writer Encounter Africa (1993--winner of the Victor Turner Award/Society for Humanistic Anthropology); and the co-editor of Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation (1988--winner of the Most Enduring Edited Collection Award/Council for the Anthropology of Reproduction) and A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies (2000).

Since 1983, I have taught anthropology, women's studies, and African studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; I have also been a visiting professor and researcher at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), the Ecole des Hautes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas (Lisbon), the National University of Côte d'Ivoire (Abidjan), Lewis and Clark College (Portland), and elsewhere. My major field research has been among the Beng people of Côte d'Ivoire and, more recently, among Cape Verdeans with Jewish heritage (on and off the islands). I am past president of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. My research has been funded by the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Social Science Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and other agencies.