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I found it interesting when Anne pulled out Sherry Ortner's footnote in class: "I went to a woman's college, and in retrospect I think it was for essentially these kinds of reasons [referencing the woman mountain climbers who do not have to rely on men or expect to have their abilities questioned by them]. Perhaps this is the place to thank Bryn Mawr College, without which I am quite sure I would not be doing what I am doing today."

As a junior at Bryn Mawr, I can identify with the reasons underlying her choice to attend a women's college, and I do feel a sense of empowerment as a student here. I would really love to hear more about Ortner's time at Bryn Mawr and how she feels it has influenced her work, in the sense of how her time here shaped/changed her point of view about issues of gender, class, etc., but also how it led her to be doing what she is doing, as she mentioned in the footnote.

We've been discussing whether women's colleges are still valid/useful categories, and I am curious to hear what Ortner thinks about this, from the point of view as an anthropologist who has been examining gender over the course of a few decades, and as an alum of BMC who clearly credits her experience here as being an important inflence on her life/work.