Professor Anne Bolin was the invited speaker for the The Cultural Anthropology Graduate Speaker Series at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo., on March 18. Her presentation was titled “Complicating Gender: Border Crossings and Back.”
Bolin addressed her career path as a cultural anthropologist with its unexpected turns and serendipities. Her research spans several related themes including human sexuality, transgender identity and community, and the anthropology of sporting bodies. Books resulting from this work include: Human Sexuality: Biological, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives with Patricia Whelehan (2009); Perspectives of Human Sexuality with Patricia Whelehan (2004, [1999]); Athletic Intruders: Women, Culture, and Exercise with Jane Granskog (2003) and In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage (1988).
After reflecting on these pursuits, Bolin focused her comments on two key trajectories in her research that considered the intersection of embodiment and gendered ideologies through her work with transgendered communities and the physique culture of bodybuilding. Via the portal of culturo-historical change, Bolin interrogates the malleability of embodiment, cultural debates on feminine corporality and its discontents, and issues of power, particularly agency and structural containment.
As a qualitative researcher, her primary method is ethnography, experiential, situated, sensual and multi-sited.