Joseph S. Alter teaches in the anthropology department at the University of Pittsburgh. His research is in the field of medical anthropology and he has published on a range of topics including sport, sexuality, physical fitness, nationalism, health and medicine in South Asia.
His publications include:

• The Wrestlers Body: Identity and Ideology in North India (University of California Press, 1992)
• Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)
• Gandhi's Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)
• Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2004)
• "A Heaps of Health, Metaphysical Fitness: Ayurveda and the Ontology of Good Health in Medical Anthropology," Current Anthropology, 1999, 40s: S43-S66

Photo Gallery
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Two young wrestlers from akhara Karan Ghanta in Banaras striking a pose. Boys often join gymnasiums at the age of 10 and, with the aid of a guru, transform themselves into young men with "bodies of one color."

(See The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992)

Two wrestlers in a village gymnasium engaged in jor (wrestling practice). Jor is part of the morning training in regimen and is thought of as a kind of exercise that produces a "body of one color."

(See The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992)

A Banaras wrestler after having won a regional championship bout. The numerous garlands of flowers around his neck and the safa cloth draped around his shoulders symbolize his status and his success in having "earned a name for himself."

(See The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992)

The high Himalayas viewed from the settlement of Landour on the eastern edge of Mussoorie, established as a colonial hill station in the 19th century and now a tourist resort town in north India.

(See Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)

A Garhwali village in the Tehri valley.

(See Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)

Tulsi Das weaving scrub bamboo ito a lamp shade. Once a craft used to produce winnowing baskets and storage bins, weaving has been adapted to the tourist economy of modern Mussoorie.

(See Knowing Dil Das: Stories of a Himalayan Hunter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)