Professor of Anthropology, 1974–2003
男人的镜子: Anthropology and Modern Life (1949), by Clyde Kluckhohn (1905-1960). I discovered anthropology as a 14-year-old high school student. An English teacher assigned Kluckhohn’s 男人的镜子 in a literature class. A literature class, you might ask? 是的. 我们的老师，Mrs. Ergil, thought that Kluckhohn was a good essayist. 对我来说, it was a revelation that there was a discipline that studied all facets of Homo sapiens – from our biological origins to our cultural and linguistic variability. At the time, I said to myself, “If there is such a discipline, then I want to study it.” I wanted to understand better what Kluckhohn called, “Queer Customs, Potsherds, and Skulls.” Kluckhohn also provided me with an ideal that helped inspire my teaching at Pitzer. The book opens as follows: “Anthropology provides a scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance, mutually unintelligible languages, and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together?” While inspiring to a 14-year-old, I soon realized that my discipline could not solve the world’s problems but it could be used to enhance students’ cross-cultural understanding.
六个文化: Studies of Child Rearing (1963), edited by Beatrice B. 鳕鱼(1914 - 2003). On my path to becoming an anthropologist, my graduate advisor sent me to work with John and Beatrice Whiting, two psychological anthropologists at Harvard who were leaders in the systematic study of comparative childrearing research. Under their tutelage, I read field notes on which 六个文化 为基础, was trained in the methodologies the Whitings had innovated, 最关键的是, was introduced to their conceptual model for examining the relationship of childrearing practices to environmental and sociocultural factors and to child and adult behavioral outcomes. The result was my research on changing families, childrearing practices, and gender systems in India – longitudinal research that continues today and that inspired such courses at Pitzer as “The Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” “文化 and Personality/Psychological Anthropology,” and “女人 in Asia.”
Women, 文化, 和社会 (1974), edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo (1944-1981) and Louise Lamphere (1940-). The publication of this book coincided with my arrival at Pitzer and the birth of Women’s Studies (now Gender & Feminist Studies) at Pitzer and then at The Claremont Colleges. The book raised all the big questions about gender inequality such as: Is it universal? 如果不是，为什么?? Are there matriarchal societies? Why are patriarchal institutions and beliefs so prevalent? Other disciplines looked to anthropology for answers. This book could only theorize about these big issues, but it inspired a lot of teaching and research. And it helped to inspire my increasing focus on gender in my research in India as well as the classroom. 多年来, Professor Sheryl Miller and I co-taught a course at Pitzer entitled, “女人, 文化, 和社会.”
男人的镜子: Anthropology and Modern Life (1949)
六个文化: Studies of Child Rearing (1963)
Women, 文化, 和社会 (1974)
