Biography
Redfield's father, Robert Redfield, was also a University of Chicago professor, teaching anthropology and ethnolinguistics, and serving as Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences from 1934 to 1946.
Robert Redfield was an American anthropologist and ethnolinguist, whose ethnographic work in Tepoztlán, Mexico is considered a landmark of Latin American ethnography. He was associated with the University of Chicago for his entire career: all of his higher education took place at Chicago, and he then joined Chicago as faculty in 1927 and remained there until his death in 1958, serving as Dean of Social Sciences from 1934-1946.
Anthropology is the scientific study of humans and human behavior and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the norms and values of societies. Linguistic anthropology studies how language affects social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.
Ethnolinguistics is a field of linguistics that studies the relationship between language and culture and how different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics. The former refers to the way of life of an entire community: all the characteristics that distinguish one community from the other. Such characteristics make the cultural aspects of a community or a society.
James Redfield is a member of the Department of Classical Languages and Literature and the Committee on Social Thought at Chicago. He took his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1954, studied at New College, Oxford from 1956 to 1958, and returned to Chicago for his Ph.D. in 1961. He was appointed as a professor at The College at the University of Chicago in 1976. He retired in 2016.
The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins.
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham, the full name of the college is St Mary's College of Winchester in Oxford. The name "New College", however, soon came to be used following its completion in 1386 to distinguish it from the older existing college of St. Mary, now known as Oriel College.
Redfield holds the distinction of having been awarded the University's Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching twice, once in 1965 and again in 1987.
In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Hector was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. He acted as leader of the Trojans and their allies in the defence of Troy, "killing 31,000 Greek fighters", offers Hyginus.
In Greek mythology, as recorded in Homer's Iliad, Patroclus was a close friend and wartime companion of Achilles. He was the son of Menoetius, grandson of Actor, King of Opus.
Marshall David Sahlins is an American anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He is currently Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.
Conrad Phillip Kottak is an American anthropologist. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and he did extensive research in Brazil and Madagascar, visiting societies there and writing books about them.
Sol Tax was an American anthropologist. He is best known for creating action anthropology and his studies of the Meskwaki, or Fox, Indians, for "action-anthropological" research titled the Fox Project, and for founding the academic journal Current Anthropology. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1935 and, together with Fred Eggan, was a student of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown.
Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah was a social anthropologist and Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor (Emeritus) of Anthropology at Harvard University. He specialised in studies of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tamils, as well as the anthropology of religion and politics.
Simon David Goldhill, FBA is Professor in Greek Literature and Culture and fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at King's College, Cambridge. He was previously Director of Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, succeeding Mary Jacobus in October 2011. He is best known for his work on Greek Tragedy.
Frederick Russell Eggan was an American anthropologist best known for his innovative application of the principles of British social anthropology to the study of Native American tribes. He was the favorite student of the British social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown during Radcliffe-Brown's years at the University of Chicago. His fieldwork was among Pueblo peoples in the southwestern U.S. Eggan later taught at Chicago himself. His students there included Sol Tax.
Cathy A. Small is a cultural anthropologist, with a Ph.D. from Temple University, and a professor and graduate coordinator of anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She has written under the pen name of Rebekah Nathan. During a leave of absence from teaching, during the fall of 2002 at the age of 52 she enrolled as a student at Northern Arizona University, signing up for a standard first year range of courses. After teaching for more than fifteen years, she realized that she no longer understood the behavior and attitudes of her students, as fewer of them participated in class discussions or discussed problems during her office hours. Her contributions to anthropology have focused on understanding long-term social change including the rise and fall of social institutions, the long-term implications of social structures, and the processes by which culture changes. Her work is characterized by a critical empathetic feminism, reflexivity, and a creative re-adaptation of focus: From Tonga to computer simulations of gender in Polynesian hierarchies, to U.S. college life. In 1997, Dr. Cathy Small was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for 1998 and 1999 to model and simulate Polynesian social systems. It was the publication of her ethnography of American university student life under the pen name 'Rebekah Nathan', and the ensuing discussions of ethnographic ethics, for which she has most received attention.
Michael Lee Wesch is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. Wesch's work also includes media ecology and the emerging field of digital ethnography, where he studies the effect of new media on human interaction.
William L. Jungers is an American anthropologist, Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Chair of the Department of Anatomical Sciences at State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island, New York. He is best known for his work on the biomechanics of bipedal locomotion in hominids such as the 3.4-million-year-old Lucy, and the 6.1- to 5.8-million-year-old Millennium Man Orrorin tugenensis. He devoted much of his career to the study of the lemurs of Madagascar, especially giant extinct subfossil forms such as Megaladapis. More recently, Jungers has been a subject of media attention due to his analysis of the remains of Homo floresiensis, which he believes to be legitimate members of a newly discovered species based on remains of the shoulder, the wrist, and the feet.
Elizabeth Vandiver is an American classical scholar. She is the Clement Biddle Penrose Professor of Latin and Classics at Whitman College, having previously taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Philological Association in 1998. She garnered awards for her teaching from Northwestern University and the University of Georgia. In May 2013, she was awarded Whitman College's "G. Thomas Edwards Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship," the highest award that Whitman College gives to a faculty member.
Paul James Bohannan was an American anthropologist known for his research on the Tiv people of Nigeria, spheres of exchange and divorce in the United States.
John L. Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. He is also Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. He is recognised for his study of African and African-American society. Comaroff and his wife, anthropologist Jean Comaroff, have collaborated on publications examining post-colonialism and the Tswana people of South Africa. He has written several texts describing his research, and has presented peer-reviewed anthropological theories of African cultures that have relevance to understanding global society.
Maurice Bloch is a British anthropologist. His widowed mother remarried an Englishman, and moved with her son to England when he was eleven. He did all of his college and graduate work there, and has had most of his academic career at the London School of Economics, where he was made full professor in 1983.
Donald Nathan Levine was an American sociologist, educator, social theorist and writer. He was a central figure in Ethiopian Studies. Within sociology, he is perhaps best known for his work in sociological theory and his translations and interpretations of Georg Simmel's classical texts into English, which led to a resurgence of interest in Simmel's work in the discipline.
Ernestine Friedl was an American anthropologist, author, and professor. She served as the president of both the American Ethnological Society (1967) and the American Anthropological Association (1974-1975). Friedl was also the first female Dean of Arts and Sciences and Trinity College at Duke University, and was a James B. Duke Professor Emerita. A building on Duke's campus, housing the departments of African and African American Studies, Cultural Anthropology, the Latino/Latina Studies program, and Literature was named in her honor in 2008. Her major interests included gender roles, rural life in modern Greece, and the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin.
Oswald J. Werner, known as Ossy, was a Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics for thirty years at Northwestern University and retired in 1998 as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics. During this period he researched the Navajo language and culture. Although specializing in their medicine and science, he impacted anthropology, linguistics, ethnography, ethnographic methodology, ethnoscience, and cognitive anthropology.
