Susi Keefe
Susi Krehbiel Keefe teaches in the Sociology/Anthropology department as a Visiting Professor. Susi received her BA from Mount Holyoke College with a self-designed major “Culture, Health, & Science” combining her interests in anthropology and medicine. She spent her junior year abroad with the School for International Training in coastal Kenya and Zanzibar where she learned to speak kiSwahili and developed her passion for East Africa. Susi earned her Ph.D. from Brown University in 2010 from the Department of Anthropology. In addition to her graduate education in the Department of Anthropology, Susi was a trainee at the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC) at Brown. This training culminated in dissertation research in Tanzania funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award. Her dissertation, entitled Romantic Desires and Polygynous Intentions: Islam, Gender and Divorce in Coastal Tanzania enriches our understanding of gender and religion in the African Muslim world. Her investigation of how Swahili women and men navigate the processes of marriage and divorce and address their gender specific needs, concerns, and aspirations illuminates this intertwining of gender and religion. The multiple meanings surrounding the practices and interpretations of Islam as well as those surrounding modern African love are vital to understanding the ties between women and men’s motivations, values, and goals associated with these demographic processes.
Susi currently lives in Saint Paul with her husband, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, her son Aidan, and her daughter Safi. These days, when she’s not writing or grading, she loves to cook with her son and cross-country ski.
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Publications include:
Islam and Permanent Contraception: Pragmatic Decisions in Northern Tanzania. In Muslim Medical Ethics: From Theory to Practice. eds Jonathan Brokopp & Thomas Eich, University South Carolina Press, pp 101-117, 2008.
“Women Do What They Want”: Islam and Permanent Contraception in Northern Tanzania. Social Science and Medicine, 63 (2006), pp 418-429.
Visit: www.susikeefe.net for more information about Susi’s research.
Courses Taught
So/An 128 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
So/An 297 Topical: Environmental Anthropology
Office Hours
Tuesday 2:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.
Thursday 11:00 a.m-noon
and by appointment
Contact Susi:keefe@stolaf.edu
