Ruth Benedict & Margaret Mead After high school, Ruth Benedict took a year
off to travel overseas. Upon returning home she was unsure of what she wanted to
do with her life. Years later, she married Stanley Benedict, a Biochemistry
Professor at Cornell Medical School. In the fall of 1919, Ruth went back to
school and began to focus more on anthropology.
She studied under the famous diffusionist Franz Boas and became his
assistant. Ruth taught Margaret Mead. Ruth and Margaret became good friends and
developed a shared need of each other. Ruth concentrated most of her efforts on
researching and studying different cultures on which many of her writings were
based.
She wrote of the differences between the cultures around the world and talked
about different patterns related to culture and behavior. Ruth was very talented
in summarizing and clearly arranging facts which were characteristic of her
writings and ultimately her approach to anthropology; this, perhaps, may be the
reason many of her reviews were published in professional papers and magazines
throughout her career. Ruth Benedict was a very important figure in early
anthropology and even more so in cultural anthropology.
She was one of the first female anthropologists of her time. Her books serve
as a referral of humanistic thought in the 20th century. Ruth Benedict has
helped shape the discipline of anthropology not only in the United States, but
also for the rest of the world. After a year at Depauw University at
Greencastle, Indiana, Margaret Mead, entered Barnard College, Columbia
University.
It was here that she decided to make anthropology her major. She later
received her B.A. degree. She also got her M.A. degree in psychology. In 1929,
she received her Ph.D. Dr. Margaret Mead is a specialist in what she herself
describes as “conditioning of the social personalities of both sexes.”
She had several field trips. First, she was in the Samoan Islands and than
the Manus tribe of the Admiralty Islands in the West Pacific Ocean. In 1930, Dr.
Mead went to study an American Indian Tribe the identity that is hidden by the
name of “the Antlers” in her book noting her findings and conclusions. Between
1931 and 1933, Dr. Mead went in the New Guinea area to do research on three
contrasted tribes, the Arapesh, the Mundugumor, and the Tchumbuli. For three
years, starting in 1936, Dr. Mead was busy on fieldwork in Bali and New Guinea.
She has always found her profession so different that she has not felt the need
for a hobby; she reportedly enjoys the theater and reads good poetry.
