Rebecca Upton

An anthropologist at an early age, Rebecca spent most of her early years living on the Pacific island of Kwajelein in the Marshall Islands.  Eventually moving to the east coast Rebecca received her A.B. from Colgate University (1992) as a major in Sociology and Anthropology and Africana studies.  Prior to college she traveled to Kenya and while at Colgate spent part of a year at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, Nigeria.  Her research interests shifted from east and west to southern Africa.

Rebecca received her A. M. (1994) and Ph.D. (1999) in Anthropology from Brown University.  For her doctoral dissertation she conducted research in Botswana on the cultural constructions of infertility, personhood and women’s health.  She continues this research and currently works on the connections between fertility and HIV/AIDS and has published several articles on these topics.  Rebecca has been a postdoctoral research fellow and adjunct professor of Anthropology for the last several years at the University of Michigan at the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life.  Her research at U of M has centered on the lives of middle class Americans and the changes that dual earning couples experience at the birth of a second child.  She is currently finishing a book entitled, The Next One Changes Everything, on this research.  She enjoys teaching courses on American culture in addition to African studies.

In her spare time Rebecca enjoys a life full of marathon running, scuba diving, visits to Maine, a not-so-secret addiction to talk shows, repeated attempts to learn the violin and a lot of laughter with two exuberant and well-traveled dogs, Thamalakane and Jackson.

rupton@depauw.edu