Gilbert Herdt
(1949 - living) U.S.A.
Anthropologist
Herdt was born in Oakley, Kansas, and educated in Wichita and the University of California, San francisco. In 1974 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Australian National University (Canberra), where he spent two years studying the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea.
He subsequently became Professor of Human Development at the University of Chicago, and is currently Professor of Sexuality and Anthropology and Director of the Human Sexuality Studies Program at San Francisco State University.
His work brought together historical, psychlogical and anthropological studies to explore the boundaries of sexual difference, the fluidity of the relationships between the two biological sexes and the nature of sexuality and eroticism in different societies. He is the most prominent anthropologist working in these areas.
His work include:
- Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity - A Study of Ritualized Homosexual behaviour (1981)
- Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia (1984)
- Culture and Sexual Risk: Anthropological Perspectives on Aids (1995)
- Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History (1994)
Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001
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