Sarah Lamb is an award-winning teacher and mentor who is deeply committed to interdisciplinary learning and engaged, student-centered teaching. A cultural anthropologist, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropology as well as affiliated programs including Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, South Asian Studies, and Health: Science, Society, and Policy. Her courses explore topics such as gender, aging, medical anthropology, personhood, the body, transnationalism, ethnographic research methods, contemporary anthropological theory, and South Asian cultures and societies. She is especially passionate about mentoring students in ethnographic research and critical social inquiry, and she has taught thousands of students in her popular ANTH 1a class, Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies.
Teaching
Courses Taught
Contemporary Anthropological Theory
Anthropology of Gender
Aging in Cross-Cultural Perspective
South Asian Cultures and Societies
Anthropology of the Body, Medicine, Body and Culture
Introduction to the Comparative Study of Human Societies
Advanced Ethnographic Research Methods
Personhood, Self, and Identity
Medicine, Body, and Culture
Anthropology of the Body
Global, Transnational, and Diasporic Communities
South Asian Cultures and Societies
Sages and Seekers: A Fieldwork Practicum in the Life Course and Generations
Teaching Awards
(2019-2020) Provost's Teaching Innovation Grant, Brandeis University
(2016-2017) Teaching Innovation Grant: "The Body Project: An Anthropology Research Lab", Brandeis University
(2016) Lerman-Neubauer ’69 Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring, Brandeis University.
(1998) Michael L. Walzer '56 Award for Excellence in Teaching, Brandeis University.
Mentorship
Sarah has been the dissertation advisor to several Anthropology PhD students at Brandeis University, including:
2027 - Hui Wen. Dissertation: (forthcoming)
2026 -Medha Asthana. Dissertation: Masculine Daughters: Gender, Natal Kinship, and Queer Transmasculinities in North India
2026 - kimcraig. Dissertation: Bare Branches and Clashing Doors: Masculinity, Morality, and the Marriage Economy in Contemporary China.
2024 - Jessica Basile. Dissertation: I Want to Work Myself Out of a Job: The Struggles and Hopes of Campus Sexual Violence Prevention.
2013 - Casey Miller. Dissertation: Inside the Circle: Sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and Civil Society in Post-Socialist Northwest China.
Was turning into the book: Inside the Circle: Queer Culture and Activism in Northwest China (2023)
2011 - Samia Huq. Dissertation: Women's Religious Discussion Circles in Urban Bangladesh: Enacting, Negotiating and Contesting Piety.
2011 - Ellen Rovner. Dissertation: “It's Just Like Coming Home!” Food, Gender, and Memory in a Jewish Community
2009 - Keridwen Luis. Dissertation: Ourlands: Culture, Gender, and Intention in Women's Land Communities in the United States.
2000 - Kelly Nelson. Dissertation: Gender and Sexuality at Play: Women Professional Athletes and the People who Watch Them