Renato Rosaldo

Renato Ignacio Rosaldo (15 April 1941 – 26 May 2026) was an American cultural anthropologist. He conducted field research among the Ilongots of northern Luzon, Philippines. He served on the faculties of Stanford University and New York University. He also published several collections of his poetry.

Early life and education Renato Rosaldo was born in Champaign, Illinois, on 15 April 1941. Rosaldo has described having to relearn el trato, the interactional social contract, in different cultural settings.

He entered Harvard University in 1959, taking classes in anthropology, Spanish history, and literature. His teachers included Beatrice Whiting and Laura Nader. In 2003, Rosaldo left Stanford to teach at New York University, where he was also a professor emeritus and previously served as the inaugural director of Latino Studies. He was a New York Institute for the Humanities Fellow.

He served as director of the Stanford Center for Chicano Research from 1985 to 1990, president of the American Ethnological Society from 1991 to 1995, and chair of the Stanford Department of Anthropology from 1994 to 1996.

Published work Rosaldo's published anthropological works include: Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974: A Study in Society and History (1980); Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (1989); The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800: Anthropology and History (co-edited with George Allen Collier, 1982); Anthropology/Creativity (co-edited with Smadar Lavie and Kirin Narayan, 1993); and The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (co-edited with Jonathan Xavier Inda, 2002).

Rosaldo conducted research on cultural citizenship in San Jose, California, from 1989 to 1996, and he contributed two chapters (one co-written with William V. Flores) to Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights (1997).

He was also a poet and published five volumes of poetry, including The Day of Shelly’s Death (2014), and Into the World Outspread: Notes from a Walker (2022). The first, Prayer to Spider Woman/Rezo a la mujer araña (2003) in Spanish and English, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Rosaldo's poetry has also appeared in Bilingual Review, Many Mountains Moving, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, and The Texas Observer. He coined the term antropoeta to describe his movement between anthropology and poetry. He was then in 1983 married to Mary Louise Pratt, a scholar of language and literature.

Rosaldo died in Manhattan, New York, on 26 May 2026, at the age of 85, from complications of a stroke.

Awards 1997 American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership 2004 American Book Award

Selected works Poetry collections

Anthropology books

As author

As editor

Chapters and articles