Ellen Lewin

Ellen Lewin received her A.B. (Bachelors of Arts) in 1967 for linguistics from the College of the University of Chicago. She went on to obtain her AM (Masters of Arts) in Anthropology in 1968 and later her Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1975 at Stanford University. She concluded her studies at Stanford University with one of her earlier works, Mothers and Children: Latin American Immigrants in San Francisco.

While studying at Stanford University, Lewin conducted fieldwork on bilingualism in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico and compared research on post-baccalaureate nursing to qualitative research she acquired through interviews with nurses in San Francisco, California. She also conducted research on Latin American women in San Francisco for her dissertation and then another study comparing aspects of motherhood among lesbians and heterosexual single women.

Lewin went on to conduct more research for her later works focusing in the New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Iowa areas. Her research included lesbian and gay commitment rituals and ceremonies, health care utilization among elderly Jewish immigrants, and gay fatherhood,

Ellen Lewin is most recently conducting research on a coalition of black LGBT Pentecostal churches and ministries for her upcoming work, Filled with the Spirit: Reconciling Transgressive Sexualities and Traditional Spiritual Practices in a Black Pentecostal Church Coalition.

• Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture (Cornell University Press, 1993)
• Recognizing Ourselves: Lesbian and Gay Ceremonies of Commitment (Columbia University Press, 1998)
• Editor of Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America (Beacon Press, 1996) and Feminist Anthropology: A Reader (Blackwell, 2006)
• Co-editor of Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (University of Illinois Press, 1996), Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology (University of Illinois Press, 2002), and Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World with William Leap.

• “Women, Health and Healing: A Theoretical Introduction” (with V. Olesen), in Women, Health, and Healing: Toward a New Perspective,

London/New York: Tavistock/Methuen, pp. 1–24.

• “By Design: Reproductive Strategies and the Meaning of Motherhood,”

in The Sexual Politics of Reproduction, edited by Hilary Homans, London: Gower, pp. 123–138.

• “Commodifying Same-Sex Marriage in the United States: Medicalization, Morality and Mental Health,” disClosure: Family, Sex, Law, 20:2-23.
• “On the Outside Looking In: The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood,” in

Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Stratification of Reproduction, edited by Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 103–121.

• “Everything in its Place: The Co-Existence of Lesbianism and

Motherhood” (with T. A. Lyons), in Homosexuality: Social, Psychological and Biological Issues, edited by William Paul and James Weinrich, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, pp. 249–274.

• “The Nobility of Suffering: Illness and Misfortune Among Latin American Immigrant Women,” Anthropological Quarterly, 52(3):152-

158.