Biography

A scholar of development and cultural change, Prazak’s work in East Africa centers on globalization, inequality, gender- and age-based hierarchies, reproduction, and family formation. Her work has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been conducted under the auspices of Yale University, the Australian National University, University of Nairobi, and Bennington College.

Her monograph Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting is forthcoming from Ohio University Press in 2016. She has contributed chapters to African Families at the Turn of the 21st Century and Africa Today: A Multi-Disciplinary Snapshot of the Continent in 1995, and published extensively in academic journals including Africa Today, African Studies Review, Journal of African Cultural Studies, The Anthropology of Work Review, and the Journal of African Studies. Prazak was born in the Czech Republic and educated there and in Pakistan, the United States, and Australia. She has taught at Yale University, Australian National University, the University of Nairobi, Williams College, and the Community College of Vermont. BA, Smith; MPhil. and PhD, Yale; postdoctoral, Australian National University. Prazak has taught at Bennington since 1996.

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