Janice Boddy is a Canadiananthropologist. As Professor of Anthropology at theUniversity of Toronto,[1] Boddy specializes inmedical anthropology, religion, gender issues, andcolonialism inSudan and the Middle East. She is the author or co-author ofWombs and Alien Spirits (1990),Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl (1995), andCivilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (2007).
In a paper "Womb as oasis: the symbolic context of Pharaonic circumcision in rural Northern Sudan" (American Ethnologist, 1982), Boddy argued for a cultural contextualization offemale genital mutilation in Africa by those who wish to see the practice abandoned.[2]
Boddy obtained her BA fromMcGill University, her MA from theUniversity of Calgary[citation needed] and, in 1982, her PhD from theUniversity of British Columbia.[1]
Boddy is believed to be the first women from the University of Toronto Scarborough to be selected to theRoyal Society of Canada. The second woman,Lisa Jeffrey, was elected in 2007.[3]