Benedict was perhaps the most important theorist and writer among Boas' students who wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, though, unlike Kroeber, Sapir, and other males she was not head of a department and she did not become a full professor until a few months before her death. She is usually thought of as a founder of the "culture and personality" "school" - a group of anthropologists (Sapir, Mead, Benedict, Linton, Dubois) who, influenced by Freudian theory, began to focus on the role of the individual in culture. Newer scholarship acknowledges Benedict with her interest in philosophy, humanism and poetry, as an early "interpretivist" anthropologist, a precursor of the anthropology of the 1970-90s lead by Clifford Geertz and others.
Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin
Mintz, Sidney, 1981. "Ruth Benedict," pp. 141-166 in Totems and Teachers,
ed. by Sydel Silverman. New York: Columbia Univ. Press (3 copies on reserve)
Geertz, Clifford. 1988. "Us/Not-Us: Benedict's Travels, pp. 102-128 in Works and
Lives. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press (5 copies on reserve)
Babcock, Barbara. 1992. "Not in the Absolute Singular: Rereading Ruth Benedict."
Frontiers 12(3):39-78 (3 copies on reserve)
Caffrey, Margaret M. 1989. Ruth Benedict: Strangers in this Land. Austin, TX:
Univ. of Texas Press. Chapters 8 & 9 (pp. 183-240) (Schwerin)
Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrystanthemum and the Sword. Boston, MA: Houghton
Mifflin (Schwerin)
Once you are finished here, please feel free to return to the Anthropology 546 syllabus, the UNM Homepage, or the UNM Fall 1998 course listing.