Career

Academic Appointments -- Regular:

2002 - present: Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC); 1983 - 2002: Professor of Anthropology, UIC; 1972 - 1983: Associate Professor of Anthropology, UIC; 1970 - 1972: Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UIC; 1965 - 1969: Assistant Professor of Anthropology, California State College at Hayward.

Administrative Appointments:

1997 (fall): Acting Director, Center for Research on Women and Gender, UIC; 1981-1983: Coordinator, Office of Gerontology, UIC; 1977-79: Chairman, Department of Anthropology, UIC.

Academic Appointments -- Visiting and Courtesy:

2005 - 2006 (winter): Visiting Scholar, Telugu University, Hyderabad, India; 2001 (fall): Visiting Scholar, Telugu University, Hyderabad, India; 2000 (April): Visiting Professor, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London; 1998 -1999: Visiting Scholar, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India; 1998 - 1999: Visiting Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Brown University; 1994 (fall): Directeur d’Études Associe, Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asiedu Sud, Écôle des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; 1989 - present: Associate Member, Committee on Southern Asian Studies, University of Chicago; 1988 (summer): Visiting Fellow, Center for Comparative Development Studies, Brown University; 1986 – 1987: Fellow-by-Courtesy, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University (Hopkins - Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, Nanjing, China); 1987 (spring): Visiting Professor, Nanjing Normal University; 1986 (fall): Visiting Professor, Nanjing University; 1969 (winter): Lecturer in Social Sciences, Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz; 1985 to present: Associate Member, Committee on Southern Asian Studies, University of Chicago.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Marriage and Its Discontents Women Islam and The Law In India

    (Debates around Muslim Personal Law, the Dissolution of Mu...)

    2017
  • American Studies in the Anthropology of India 1978
  • Kinship and Urbanization: White Collar Migrants in North India 1972

Views

Sylvia Vatuk's theoretical interests in social anthropology lie in the area of kinship and social organization, with a regional specialization in South Asia. She conducted field research in India in several urban settings on changing kinship and family structures, marriage and gift exchange, gender roles, aging and intergenerational relations, family history and family law.

Sylvia's earlier research and publications dealt with Hindus in northwestern India, specifically western Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Later she turned to the study of Muslim society in southern India, beginning with a long-term social-historical study of a large extended family of Islamic religious scholars. In that study, she examined the family’s adaptation to the economic, political and social transformations of the colonial and post-colonial eras, from the early 19th century to the present.

More recently she has been engaged in a study of Muslim Personal Law and its impact on women, in connection with which she has carried out ethnographic and archival research in the cities of Hyderabad and Chennai.

Membership

• Fellow

  Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

• Member

  Association for Asian Studies

Interests

• Social anthropology, kinship, urban anthropology, legal anthropology, gender, aging.

Connections

Sylvia J. Vatuk was married to renowned India scholar, George Rosen, emeritus professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Spouse:

George Rosen

Son:

Mark Rosen