Description
Book SynopsisRosemary Lévy Zumwalt tells the remarkable story of Franz Boas, one of the leading scholars and public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first book in a two-part biography, Franz Boas begins with the anthropologist’s birth in Minden, Germany, in 1858 and ends with his resignation from the American Museum of Natural History in 1906, while also examining his role in training professional anthropologists from his berth at Columbia University in New York City.
Zumwalt follows the stepping-stones that led Boas to his vision of anthropology as a four-field discipline, a journey demonstrating especially his tenacity to succeed, the passions that animated his life, and the toll that the professional struggle took on him. Zumwalt guides the reader through Boas’s childhood and university education, describes his joy at finding the great love of his life, Marie Krackowizer, traces his 1883 trip to Baffin Land, and re
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“[Franz Boas] has its rewards, especially in its generous use of correspondence.”—Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Review of Books
"Zumwalt's book is a testament to far-reaching, thorough, and careful archival work."—Diana E. Marsh, Journal of American Folklore
"Zumwalt has woven together a variety of materials from a range of sources into a comprehensive and coherent story."—Elliott Oring, Journal of Folklore Research
“Zumwalt leads us to know Franz Boas as never before, and we should be grateful. She gives us his engrossing love and life story across vast continents. She lets us walk with him into the classroom as well as into his home. She marvelously gives him voice, so we can discern his message for our time as well as in his.”—Simon J. Bronner, author of American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History
“Rosemary Zumwalt has written a biography of Franz Boas truly for the twenty-first century. Going beyond George Stocking and Douglas Cole, she focuses here on Boas’s early life in its historical and cultural setting. We eagerly await her second and concluding volume.”—Ira Jacknis, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Introduction
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Note on Translations
1. Ardently Desired Boy: Young Boas and His Family
2. Student Life into Its Deepest Depths: Boas at University
3. In Heaven, in Love, and Separation: Preparing for the Arctic Voyage
4. Creating a Future for Us: To Baffin Land and Back
5. Divided Desires: Pulled between New York and Germany
6. West to the Indians: Northwest Coast Fieldwork, Employment by Science, and Marriage
7. All Our Hopes Came to Such a Disgrace: Boas at Clark University
8. The World’s Columbian Exposition: Boas and Frederic Ward Putnam
9. Your Orphan Boy: Struggling to Find a Place
10. The Greatest Undertaking of Its Kind: The Jesup North Pacific Expedition
11. Taking Hold in New York: From the amnh to Columbia University
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
