Meredith Francesca Small (born 20 November 1950) is a professor emerita of Anthropology at Cornell University, a popular science author, as well as a prominent primatologist and anthropologist. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She has been widely published in academic journals, and her research is presented in her most popular books: Our Babies, Ourselves Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children, and What's Love Got to Do with It?. She spent many years studying both people and primate behavior. Her areas of interest are in the intersection of biology and culture, and how that has influenced parenting with an evolutionary focus. She specializes in female primate reproductive strategies, mating behavior, and is renowned for challenging cultured stereotypes regarding how we view infancy, parenthood, and various non-human female primates.
Small entered the field in the late 1970s working on captive macaques at the California Primate Center in Davis, California, where she received a Ph.D. in 1980 within biological anthropology. She trained as a primatologist and worked in the anthropological genetics laboratory of David Glenn Smith and spent one year in France studying the mating and mother-infant behavior of Barbary macaques. Meredith Small focused on four types of macaque monkeys, as she spent field-time observing them as our closest non-human primates. Notably, Small spent some time in Bali, Indonesia, working on crab-eating or long-tail macaques. In 1988 Small moved to Cornell University where she was a professor of anthropology until 2016, the first woman in the department to become a full professor. In 1995, she was named a Weiss Presidential Fellow, the highest teaching award at Cornell.
In Small's research, she challenged gendered and cultural regarding infancy and parenthood. She highlighted in her career that female primates exhibit agency and are not passive actors in reproduction, and even challenges male primate stereotypes arguing that they, too, can participate in parenting. In her publishing's, she explores complex social dynamics in non-human and human primates, observes differing mating partnerships, studies evolutionary mating and parenthood theories, and counters earlier male-centric models of fatherhood and mating systems. She frequently explored intersections of human culture and her research on non-human primates and how evolutionary history and culture influence reproduction, mating pairs, and parenthood and how those are all connected. For these reasons, Meredith Small is unique in her field and is regarded highly for her in-depth research.
Small began writing extensively for the popular audience just before her move to Cornell, and by the 1990s, Small shifted into mainstream journalism, writing articles for such publications as Natural History, Discover magazine, Scientific American and New Scientist. She regards this work as a form of teaching.[1]
In 2005, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) awarded her an Anthropology in Media award for "the successful communication of anthropology to the general public through the media" and for her "broad and sustained public impact at local, national and international levels.". This was due to her making her research highly accessible to the general public and translating complex scientific research into more digestible forms for diverse audiences, notably through articles and book publishing's. Small's attention to detail and ability to expand and elaborate on topics whenever translating these scientific terms to the public sustained a lasting public impact and brought attention to anthropology and primatology.
Her articles have twice been in included in The Best Science and Nature Writing series.[2][3]
From 2007 until 2010 she wrote a weekly column called Human Nature for LiveScience.com and these can still be viewed online.[4] In 2014, she published her first fiction book, the beginning of a series featuring detective Grace McCloud.[5] Meredith Small still frequently participates in science journals and publishing.
In 2016, Small retired from Cornell where she taught for over three decades and moved to Philadelphia.[6]
Books
1984 - Female Primates: Studies by Women Primatologists (edited by Meredith F. Small). A. R. Liss: New York
1993 - Female Choices; Sexual Behavior of Female Primates. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY.
1995 - What's Love Got to do with it? The Evolution of Human Mating. Anchor Books (Doubleday)
1998 - Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way we Parent. Anchor Books (Doubleday).
2001 - Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children. Doubleday.
2006 - The Culture of Our Discontent; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness. Joseph Henry Press: Washington, DC.
2014 - Fall Creek. Lavori a Mano Press: Ithaca, NY
2020 - Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization. (Simon and Schuster)
2023 - Here Begins the Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk, and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of the World. (Simon and Schuster)
External links
Prime Mates: The Useful Promiscuity of Bonobo Apes by Meredith F. Small ...: www.nerve.com/Dispatches/Small/bonobo/ Written by Meredith Small
DNA Kits: Secrets of Your Past or Scientific Scam? LiveScience: www.livescience.com/history/071207-hn-dna-kits.html
Babies, Ourselves with Meredith F. Small: www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=54322
Meredith Small - Department of Anthropology at Cornell University: [7] (accessed 6 Sept 2014)
Meredith Small, personal webpage: (accessed 6 Sept 2014)
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