Description
Book SynopsisA Maverick Boasian explores the often contradictory life of Alexander Goldenweiser (1880–1940), a scholar considered by his contemporaries to be Franz Boas’s most brilliant and most favored student. The story of his life and scholarship is complex and exciting as well as frustrating. Although Goldenweiser came to the United States from Russia as a young man, he spent the next forty years thinking of himself as a European intellectual who never felt entirely at home. A talented ethnographer, he developed excellent rapport with his Native American consultants but cut short his fieldwork due to lack of funds. An individualist and an anarchist in politics, he deeply resented having to compromise any of his ideas and freedoms for the sake of professional success. A charming man, he risked his career and family life to satisfy immediate needs and wants.
A number of his books and papers on the relationship between anthropology and other social sciences helped fo
Trade Review"Kan's excellent biography is deeply researched, easy to read, and economically written. It does a good job of telling the story of an important but little-known figure in the history of folklore and anthropology."—Alex Golub,
Journal of Folklore Research“Alexander A. Goldenweiser is a unique figure among American anthropologists. A Maverick Boasian is a valuable contribution to the history of anthropology, specifically to the study of the first generation of Franz Boas’s students and the establishment of professionalized anthropology in the United States.”—Robert Brightman, author of
Grateful Prey: Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships“An authoritative contribution to the history of anthropology.”—Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, author of
Franz Boas: Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social JusticeTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Introduction
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Russian Beginning and the Early American Years
2. Early Scholarship, the Iroquois Fieldwork, and Columbia
3. The New School, Academic and Popular Writing, and a Devastating Divorce
4. The West Coast Exile
5. The End
Notes
References
Index
