Women and the Invention of American Anthropology

 

Nancy Oestreich Lurie

 

Lurie’s essay profiles six remarkable women who helped to establish anthropology from its self-taught beginnings in the last quarter of the nineteenth century through its recognition as an academic discipline by the twentieth century: Erminnie Smith, Alice Fletcher, Matilda Stevenson, Zelia Nuttall, Frances Densmore, and Elsie Clews Parsons. Sharing exceptional intellectual curiosity and a sense of adventure to step beyond the place society reserved for the average woman, they were not only accepted but welcomed by enlightened male contemporaries. E. B. Tylor thought women were needed to carry out “half the work of investigation” because of what were believed to be their “special adaptations” as females. In fact, each brought her own unique nature and adaptations as an individual in shaping the development of anthropology as a whole.

The Nicolet Corrigenda