Ruth Fulton Benedict
Personal Information
Born: 1887
Died: 1948
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
Vassar College BA English Literature 1909; The New School-no degree, credits transferred to Columbia University; Columbia University PhD Anthropology 1923
Professional Life
Field of Study: Anthropology
Institution/Corporation: Barnard College; Columbia University
Degrees & Memberships: Member: American Anthropological Association; American Folklore Society; American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1947); Phi Beta Kappa (1909)
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1946 Achievement Award, American Association of University Women; 2005 National Women's Hall of Fame
Achievements: studied the relationships between personality, art, language, and culture and insisted that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency, a theory that she championed in her 1934 book Patterns of Culture; believed in cultural relativism; wanted to show each culture has its own moral imperatives that can only be understood if one studies the culture as a whole; her theory was culture is "personality writ large" meaning what can be said of an individual & personality can be said of a society & culture; was a champion of racial & sexual equality & cultural relativity; wrote "Tales of the Cochiti Indians" in 1931, a 2-volume "Zuni Mythology" in 1935, "Race: Science & Politics" in 1940, & edited the Journal of American Folklore 1925-1940
did fieldwork in the American west among the Serrano, Zuni, Cochiti, Pima, & Mescalero Apache
collected Native American's folklore stories
1922 as a first-time teacher at Barnard College taught Margaret Mead who became her close friend & occasional lover over a 25-year period even though both were married
believed the greatest taboos in life were crying in front of people & showing expression of pain
went partially deaf as a child due to measles
was fascinated with death as a child & throughout her life
father died when she was 21-months-old & her mother never recovered from the grief of his death & the stresses of being a single-mother of two daughters, she was a teacher & struggled financially
began writing short verse when she was 7
published her poems under the pseudonyms Ruth Stanhope, Edgar Stanhope, & Anne Singleton
after her death, Margaret Mead supervised projects she had begun & edited & published studies she had begun
was among the leading cultural anthropologists recruited by the US government for war-related research & consultation after the US entered WWII
began teaching at Barnard College in 1922 & Columbia University in 1924
the American Anthropology Association awards a yearly prize named for her, she appeared on a 1995 US postage stamp & Benedict College in Stony Brook University is named after her
her mentor was Franz Boas, often considered the Father of American Anthropology & a father-figure for Benedict
until her divorce in 1931, she was unable to draw a salary for her teaching at Columbia because it was believed married women did not require a salary
her husband refused to grant permission for her to have surgery to cure her infertility & surgeons at the time would not perform surgery on married women without the consent of their husbands
her partial deafness caused her to develop an approach for decoding visual information to analyze a culture & it became known as a subfield of anthropology known as visual anthropology which was not widely accepted until the 1970s
her papers from 1905-1948 are housed at the Vassar College Library & 8,000 pages are available online at Alexander Street Press Anthropology database list