Peggy Reeves Sanday, a professor emerita of anthropology in the School of Arts & Sciences, died on June 13. She was 87.

Born in Long Island City, New York, Dr. Sanday forged a path in academia at a time when few women occupied such spaces. She received her BS in anthropology from Columbia University in 1960, followed by a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1966. She served as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh until 1967, then briefly joined the faculty of the School of Urban and Public Affairs at Carnegie-Mellon University as an assistant professor of anthropology and urban affairs before coming to Penn.

Dr. Sanday joined Penn’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences (today the School of Arts & Sciences) in 1972 as an associate professor of anthropology. She also had a faculty affiliation with the Penn Museum, where she did much of her teaching. She became a full professor in 1985 and in 2001 was named the R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Chair (Almanac March 6, 2001). While at Penn, Dr. Sanday also taught in the College of General Studies, the precursor to today’s College of Liberal & Professional Studies; lectured in SAS’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing; and helped to form the Center for Public Interest Anthropology (CPIA). She retired from Penn in 2007 and assumed emeritus status.

Over the course of a career that spanned four decades, Dr. Sanday conducted pioneering research in women’s studies, Southeast Asia, the anthropology of gender, multiculturalism, sexual culture, and public interest anthropology. She created an influential theory of “matrifocality,” which challenged western assumptions about male dominance in human societies. Her work took her around the world from Indonesia to West Africa, where she studied cultures that embraced female-centered social structures, leading to her seminal book Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality. In particular, she spent 20 years living with and studying Minangkabau, the fourth largest ethnic group in Indonesia and the largest and most modern matrilineal society in the world today; this research led to the book Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy. Through this research, she offered a powerful counter-narrative to male-centric anthropological models.

In addition to her ethnographic research, Dr. Sanday conducted field work on American college campuses, exploring institutional responses to sexual assault. Her books Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus and A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial were landmarks in feminist scholarship and social advocacy, drawing national attention to issues of consent, culture, and justice. Her later work, including Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System, explored the intersection of culture, ritual, and art through a symbolic and feminist lens. She also studied Aboriginal art, emphasizing the importance of Aboriginal perspectives in interpreting cultural and spiritual meaning. Dr. Sanday was a Guggenheim Fellow and a National Science Foundation grant recipient.

“Peggy Reeves Sanday lived with extraordinary intellectual courage and deep commitment to social change,” said her family. “Her work will continue to shape the field of anthropology and gender studies for generations to come.”

Dr. Sanday is survived by her son, Eric; her daughter, Julie; her daughter-in-law, Eve; her son-in-law, Greg; and her grandson, Alex.