Serena Nanda

Serena Nanda (; born August 13, 1938) is an American author, anthropologist, and professor emeritus. She received the Ruth Benedict Prize in 1990 for her monograph, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India.

Biography Serena Young was born on August 13, 1938, in New York City. She has an identical twin sister called Joan. She is the co-author of two anthropology textbooks: Culture Counts: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (5th Edition) and Cultural Anthropology (12th edition). Among her areas of specialty was the topic of gender diversity, having written the major reference book on the hijras of India. As of August 2021, she was a professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Awards 1990, Ruth Benedict Prize, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India

Selected works Urban Systems Analysis: An Anthropological Perspective, 1971 Social honor and informal social relationships : a study of kinship, friendship and neighbor relations in Bombay, India, 1973 Teaching Nonanthropology Majors, 1979 Cultural Anthropology. Van Nostrand, New York, New York, 1980. More Dialogue on the "Bloodthirsty" Semai, 1988 Neither Man nor Woman. The Hijras of India. Wadsworth, Belmont, California, 1990. American Cultural Pluralism and Law: An Innovative Interdisciplinary Course, 1990 Getting away with murder: Cultural diversity and the criminal justice system, 1994 Trouble in paradise: Native Hawaiians V. The United States of America, 1996 Goes With Everything, 1999 Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations., 2000, Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc. . North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment: From Prehistory to the Present , 2002 Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us: Perceptions and Representations of “the West” by Other Peoples of the World , 2003 South African Museums and the Creation of a New National Identity, 2004 with Joan Gregg and Beth Pacheco: 40 Perfect New York Days. Walks and Rambles in and around the City. iUniverse, New York, New York, 2004. Arranging a marriage in India, 2006 The gift of a bride : a tale of anthropology, matrimony, and murder, 2009 Assisted dying : an ethnographic murder mystery on Florida's gold coast, 2011 Motivating New Students, 2012 Gender diversity : crosscultural variations, second edition, 2014, Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. . Culture counts : a concise introduction to cultural anthropology, 2015 Love and marriage : cultural diversity in a changing world, 2019, Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. . with J. Michael Ryan: COVID-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities, 2022.