Mary Cameron, presently the Director of the Women’s Studies Center at Florida Atlantic University, is a 1974 graduate of the Hudson Falls School System. She received her BS (with honors) from Russell Sage College in Biology and went on to earn her MA and Ph.D. from Michigan State University in the field of Anthropology. Areas of research include: cultural anthropology in Nepal and South Asia, feminist anthropological theory, medical anthropology, caste and gender politics, Ayurvedic medicine, farmers and artisans, women and international development, body and culture.
Dr. Cameron credits her love for languages and cultures of the world to her maternal grandmother, Madeline Carmody, of Hudson Falls, who took her to important cultural and religious sites in Montreal as a child. Her grandmother also admired President John Kennedy, the founder of the American Peace Corps, and from an early age, Dr. Cameron aspired to be a Peace Corps volunteer. She achieved that goal, and as a volunteer in Nepal, Dr. Cameron taught high school mathematics and science in a remote Himalayan community, in Nepali language. She continued her volunteer activities when she returned to this country. While at Michigan State University, she was a crisis counselor for The Listening Ear which was a recipient of “A Thousand Points of Light” Presidential Award and at Auburn University, she served as a Board Member of the East Alabama Task Force on Battered Women.
The author of the award-winning ethnography of people of lower caste, On the Edge of the Auspicious: Gender and Cast in Nepal, Dr. Cameron has also written extensively in journals on anthropological topics. She is credited with a number of book chapters and also has a number of works pending. Dr. Cameron’s original research on untouchables, on third world women, and on indigenous medical systems has been funded through a number of competitive grants, including two Fulbright fellowships. Dr. Cameron is much in demand as illustrated by presentations at numerous conferences on anthropological topics in India, Nepal, Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin. This by no means exhausts the list!
While working toward her Ph.D., Dr. Cameron held positions in both teaching and research. Upon completion of that degree she secured a position as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Auburn University, was promoted to Associate Professor within five years, was selected as a teacher of the year, and rose to become the Director of the Women’s Studies Program at the University, where she successfully secured the program’s future as a permanent and regularly funded academic program. As indicated above, she is now the Director of the Women’s Studies Center at Florida Atlantic University, administering the top graduate program in Women’s Studies in Florida, and teaching courses on gender, health care, international development, and ethnographic research and writing. Dr. Cameron is married and the mother of twins, Deven and Aisha.
Each of the institutions at which Dr. Cameron has studied has seen fit to bestow upon her fellowships, grants and other academic awards. The Hudson Falls School District has now joined this elite group as she is inducted to the Wall of Distinction.