Joseph S. Alter

Joseph S. Alter received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. His research specialization is in medical anthropology with interest in the relationship among religion, nationalism, health and the body in South Asia. Specific projects have focused on sport, sexuality, yoga, ayurvedic medicine, unani medicine and transnational transformations of medical knowledge. He is currently involved in a project to study the relationship among Nature Cure, ecology and worldview in contemporary India. A new project focuses on the relevance of biosemiotics to the development of ecologically grounded social theory. Teaching and research interests are combined by directing a semester-long study abroad program each Fall term, “Pitt in the Himalayas.”