Carolyn Rouse


Carolyn Moxley Rouse is an anthropologist, professor and filmmaker. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University.

Early life and education

Rouse grew up in Del Mar, California, the daughter of a physicist and a psychologist. She encountered discrimination at an early age as her family was prevented from buying a home in Rancho Sante Fe because of their race.
Rouse attended Swarthmore College, graduating in 1987. In her junior year, she studied abroad in Kenya in a program focused on wildlife biology, but found she was much more interested in the people around her, which prompted a turn toward documentary film, then eventually a master's in visual anthropology and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Southern California.

Personal life

Rouse's siblings are both academics; her brother is a professor of physics and her sister, Cecilia Rouse, is the dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Rouse's brother-in-law is Ford Morrison, son of Nobel Prize-winning author and Princeton professor emeritus Toni Morrison.

Filmography