Renato Rosaldo

Renato Rosaldo was born in Champaign, Illinois, on 15 April 1941. At a young age, Rosaldo spoke Spanish with his Mexican father and English with his mother. When he was four, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught Mexican and Latin American literature at the University of Wisconsin. When he was twelve, they moved to Tucson, Arizona, where his father taught in the Spanish department at the University of Arizona. Rosaldo attended Tucson High School, where he became a member of a social club called The Chasers, about which he later wrote an eponymous book of poetry.^[2] Rosaldo has described having to relearn el trato, the interactional social contract, in different cultural settings.^[3]

He entered Harvard University in 1959, taking classes in anthropology, Spanish history, and literature. His teachers included Beatrice Whiting and Laura Nader.^[2] Rosaldo graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. degree in Spanish history and literature in 1963. He spent a year in Spain after graduating, but saw no future for Spanish scholarship under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Returning to Harvard, Rosaldo studied social anthropology, receiving his Ph.D. in 1971 for his work in the Philippines on Ilongot social organization.^[2]

Rosaldo joined the Stanford University anthropology faculty in 1970.^[2] He became the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, and was professor emeritus.^[4] In 2003, Rosaldo left Stanford to teach at New York University,^[5][6] where he was also a professor emeritus and previously served as the inaugural director of Latino Studies.^[7] He was a New York Institute for the Humanities Fellow.^[8]

He served as director of the Stanford Center for Chicano Research from 1985 to 1990, president of the American Ethnological Society from 1991 to 1995, and chair of the Stanford Department of Anthropology from 1994 to 1996.^[9][10]

Rosaldo's published anthropological works include: Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974: A Study in Society and History (1980); Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (1989); The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800: Anthropology and History (co-edited with George Allen Collier, 1982); Anthropology/Creativity (co-edited with Smadar Lavie and Kirin Narayan, 1993); and The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (co-edited with Jonathan Xavier Inda, 2002).^[11]

Rosaldo conducted research on cultural citizenship in San Jose, California, from 1989 to 1996,^[9][12] and he contributed two chapters (one co-written with William V. Flores) to Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights (1997).^[13]

He was also a poet and published five volumes of poetry, including The Day of Shelly’s Death (2014),^[14][15][1] The Chasers (2019),^[16] and Into the World Outspread: Notes from a Walker (2022).^[17] The first, Prayer to Spider Woman/Rezo a la mujer araña (2003) in Spanish and English, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.^[2] The second, Diego Luna's Insider Tips (2012), won the Many Mountains Moving Press Poetry Book Prize for 2009.^[18] Rosaldo's poetry has also appeared in Bilingual Review, Many Mountains Moving, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, and The Texas Observer.^[19] He coined the term antropoeta to describe his movement between anthropology and poetry.^[14]

Rosaldo was married to anthropologist Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo until her death in 1981.^[20][21] He was then married to Mary Louise Pratt, a scholar of language and literature. He had three children, Sam, Manuel and Olivia, and three grandchildren.^[22]

Rosaldo died on 26 May 2026, at the age of 85.^[23]

• 1997 American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership^[24]
• 2004 American Book Award^[16]