Carol Laderman
Carol Laderman (October 25, 1932 – July 6, 2010) was a pioneering medical anthropologist who studied pregnancy and childbirth, shamanism, and Southeast Asian cultures, especially the Malays of rural Terengganu in Malaysia. She was also a respected writer and professor who served as Chair of the Anthropology Department at City College.
She grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the daughter of Philip Ciavati (formerly Cohen) and Sylvia Sugarman, with an older sister, Irma Cavat, who became a university art professor. Carol showed musical talent and studied piano, music theory, and counterpoint. She married composer Gabriel Laderman, Ezra Laderman’s younger brother. After marrying at 20, Gabriel was drafted, and Carol paused her music studies at Brooklyn College to support him near Fort Leonard Wood.
In 1969 she returned to college at Hunter College, initially as a music major but switching to anthropology after a course with Rena Gropper. While an undergraduate, she did research with Mt. Sinai Hospital on how Latina mothers in Spanish Harlem and the South Bronx viewed the health care system, which introduced her to the humoral system as a living belief. She later explained ideas about how humoral concepts affect food in a New York Times article.
She graduated with honors from Hunter College in 1972 and received a Danforth Foundation fellowship to study at Columbia University. As a master's student at Columbia, she wrote Malaria and progress: Some historical and ecological considerations, a work that is still cited today.
In 1975 Laderman, her husband, and their younger son Michael moved to Malaysia for two years of doctoral research in Merchang, Terengganu. She learned from a locally famous bomoh (traditional healer) and a village midwife. Her doctoral dissertation, Conceptions and Preconceptions: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia, earned her Ph.D. with distinction, and her book Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia challenged many earlier beliefs about Malay culture. She showed that postpartum dietary restrictions did not cause malnutrition and that many Malay women breastfed for long periods without bottle feeding. She also clarified misunderstandings around the word sayur and the nuances of local vegetables and fluids.
Her later book, Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance, includes full translations of Main Peteri healing ceremonies and presents a non-Western form of psychotherapy. It explains Malay archetypes called angin (winds), comparable to Jungian ideas. A monograph in the Federation Museums Journal of Malaysia published the original texts in dialect Malay.
Laderman returned to Malaysia for further research in 1982 and 2003. She had a long career as a professor, editor, and writer, teaching at Yale, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Fordham University, and City College, with her strongest association at Fordham and City College. Her honors included a Rockefeller Foundation Resident Scholar fellowship in Bellagio, Italy and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her archive is preserved at the Smithsonian Institution.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:48 (CET).