Claudia Strauss
Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology, Pitzer College
Resident Associate 2026–27
- Current Project
- How to Analyze Interviews and Other Speech for Cultural and Psychological Complexity
- Project Discipline
- Anthropology
- Fellowship Title
- Resident Associate
About Fellow
Claudia Strauss is the Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College. She studies personal and cultural meanings of work policies, immigration, government social welfare programs, and other social issues. She is widely cited as a theorist of the way people mentally represent and express conflicting cultural messages. In 2025 she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Psychological Anthropology.
Selected Publications
- Strauss, Claudia. What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024.
- Strauss, Claudia. “Small Work Pleasures and Two Types of Well-Being.” Economic Anthropology 11, no. 2 (2024): 1–10.
- Strauss, Claudia. Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses About Immigration and Social Programs. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Strauss, Claudia. “Analyzing Discourse for Cultural Complexity.” In Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods, edited by Naomi Quinn, 203–42. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
- Strauss, Claudia, and Naomi Quinn. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.