Bio

Cindi Sturtz Sreetharan received her PhD in linguistic anthropology from UC Davis. After teaching for 12 years at CSU
Sacramento, in 2015, she joined SHESC at ASU, teaching in the Anthropology and Global Health programs. She
has received funding from the National Science Foundation, KCCJEE, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science,
and the Japan Foundation for her work on issues relating to Japanese language, gender, and dialect.
Sturtz Sreetharan’s work on Japanese language and gender is novel because of its focus on men and non- Tokyo
language varieties. Her keen interest in the Osaka variety of Japanese showcases the ways in which language
varieties can be mediatiz ed and commodified to signal new social meanings.
 
Recently Sturtz Sreetharan has been working at the intersection of masculinity, obesity, and stigma in both US and
Japan contexts. Her work with post- bariatric men’s narratives has demonstrated the ways in which close attention to
food choices and consumption techniques becomes a signal of moral goodness. Most recently she has been
working on a cross cultural ethnographic analysis of the lived experience of women and weight in Japan, Samoa,
Paraguay, and the US. This work has made clear that (married) Japanese women bear a strong burden of obesity
and overweight especially with regard to managing the household waistline. Next, she aims to learn more about
how US and Japanese men’s lives are impacted by and how they experience fat and overweight. She is particularly
interested in the role that health policy plays in felt stigma around obesity and overweight.