Ruth Landes papers | Collection: NAA.1991-04 (original) (raw)

Summary

Collection ID:

NAA.1991-04

Creators:

Mead, Margaret, 1901-1978

Wallis, Ruth Sawtell, 1895-1978

Wagley, Charles, 1913-1991

Whitecloud, Thomas St. Germain

Kaberry, Phyllis Mary, 1910-

Imes, Elmer Samuel, 1883-1941

Strong, William Duncan, 1899-1962

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 1879-1962

Ritzenthaler, Robert E. (Robert Eugene), 1911-1980

Densmore, Frances, 1867-1957

Quain, Buell H. (Buell Halvor), 1912-1939

Benedict, Ruth, 1887-1948

Ewers, John C. (John Canfield), 1909-1997

Arensberg, Conrad M. (Conrad Maynadier), 1910-1997

Malherbe, E. G. (Ernst Gideon), 1895-

Lowenfeld, Margaret, 1890-1973

Peschel, Keewaydinoquay M.

Merwe, Hendrik W. van der

Dates:

1928-1992

Languages:

Physical Description:

26.5 Linear feet

(63 document boxes and 1 oversized box)

Repository:

Most of Ruth Landes's papers relate directly or indirectly to Landes's American Indian research, her work in Brazil, and her study of bilingualism. There is also a considerable amount of material that relates to her experiences (sometimes fictionalized) at Fisk University. There is only small amount of material related to her other interests. Her collection also has material of and relating to the Brazilian folklorist and journalist Edison Carneiro. There is also noteworthy material concerning Herbert Baldus, Ruth Benedict, Elmer C. Imes, Charles S. Johnson, and Robert E. Park. There is a large amount of printed and processed materials in the collection, mainly in the form of newspaper clippings and a collection of scholarly papers.

Scope and Contents

Scope and Contents

This collection is mainly comprised of the professional papers of Ruth Schlossberg Landes. Included are correspondence, journals, published and unpublished manuscripts of writings, research materials including field notes and reading notes, photographs, drawings, scholarly papers and publications by other scholars, and clippings from newspapers and periodicals.

Landes's field research on Candomblé in Brazil is well-represented in this collection, consisting of her field journals, writings, and photographs. Also present are Maggie Wilson's stories that were the basis for Landes's

The Ojibwa Woman

. Unfortunately, Landes was unable to locate her journals for her early research with the Ojibwa/Chippewa, Potawatomi, and Dakota. There are, however, field photographs of the Ojibwa/Chippewa and Potawatomi in the collection. There is also a great deal of her research on groups, especially minorities, in multilingual states with particular focus on the French of Quebec, Basques of Spain and the United States, Boers and Blacks of South Africa, the several socio-linguistic groups of Switzerland, and Acadians (Cajuns) of Louisiana. In the collection are several drafts of her unpublished manuscript on bilingualism, "Tongues that Defy the State." There is also a small amount of material about Black Jews of New York and considerable material about Landes's experience among African Americans when she taught briefly at Fisk University, including her unpublished manuscript "Now, at Athens," containing fictional and autobiographical accounts of her time at Fisk.

Reflections of other facets of Landes's professional activities are also included. Some materials concern her teaching activities, and there is also documentation of her work with the Fair Employment Practices Commission (a federal government agency during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt) and a similar private organization which immediately succeeded the FEPA; Gunnar Myrdal's research into the plight of African Americans ("The Negro in America"); the Research in Contemporary Cultures project at Columbia University; and the American Jewish Congress.

Among Landes's correspondents are Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ralph Bunche, Herbert Baldus, Edison Carneiro, Sally Chilver, Frances Densmore, Sol Tax, Elmer S. Imes, Charles S. Johnson, Robert E. Park, and Hendrik W. van der Merwe.

Arrangement

Arrangement

The collection is organized into 6 series: (1) Correspondence, 1931-1991; (2) Research Materials, circa 1930s-1990; (3) Writings, circa 1930s-1990; (4) Teaching Materials, 1935-1975, undated; (5) Biographical and Personal Files, 1928-1988; (6) Graphic Materials, 1933-1978, undated

Biographical Note

Biographical Note

Ruth Schlossberg Landes was born on October 8, 1908 in New York City. Her father was Joseph Schlossberg, an activist in the Yiddish labor socialist community and one of the founders of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. She studied sociology at New York University (B.A. 1928) and social work at the New York School of Social Work, Columbia University (M.S.W. 1929). While in graduate school, Landes studied Black Jews in Harlem for her master's thesis, a topic that developed her interests in anthropology.

After graduating in 1929, she worked as a social worker in Harlem and married Victor Landes, a medical student and son of family friends. Their marriage ended after two years when she enrolled in the doctoral program in anthropology at Columbia against her husband's wishes. She kept his surname due to the stigma of being a divorced woman.

At Columbia, Landes studied under Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, her main advisor. Under the guidance of Benedict, Landes moved away from further study of African Americans to focus on Native American communities. Upon Benedict's suggestion, Landes studied the social organization of the Ojibwa in Manitou Rapids in Ontario from 1932 to 1936 for her Ph.D. fieldwork. Her dissertation,

Ojibwa Sociology

, was published in 1937. Landes also contributed "The Ojibwa of Canada" in

Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples

(1937), a volume edited by Margaret Mead. In 1938, Landes published

Ojibwa Women

(1938), a book written in collaboration with Maggie Wilson, an Ojibwa interpreter and informant.

In addition to studying the Ojibwa in Ontario, Landes also conducted fieldwork with the Chippewa of Red Lake, Minnesota in 1933, working closely with shaman or midé Will Rogers. Her book,

Ojibwa Religion and the Midéwiwin

(1968) was based largely on her research with Rogers and Maggie Wilson. In 1935 and 1936, she undertook fieldwork with the Santee Dakota in Minnesota and the Potawatomi in Kansas. Like

Ojibwa Religion and the Midéwiwin

, her books on the Santee Dakota and Potawatomi were not published until several years later—

The Mystic Lake Sioux: Sociology of the Mdewakantonwan Sioux

was published in 1968 while

The Prairie Potawatomi

was published in 1970. In between her field research in the 1930s and the publication of

The Prairie Potawatomi

, Landes returned to Kansas to study the Potawatomi in the 1950s and 1960s.

Landes's plan to continue her studies with the Potawatomi in 1937 changed when Benedict invited her to join a team of researchers from Columbia University in Brazil. Landes was to conduct research on Afro-Brazilians in Bahia, Brazil, while Walter Lipkind, Buell Quain, and Charles Wagley studied indigenous people in the Amazons. To prepare for her research, Landes was at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1937 and 1938 to consult with Robert Park and Donald Pierson and to use the university's library collections of African and African American materials. During that time, Landes also held a teaching position at Fisk and lived in the non-segregated women's residence on campus. Landes later wrote "Now, at Athens," an unpublished memoir containing fictional and true accounts of her experiences at Fisk.

From 1938 to 1939, Landes conducted fieldwork on the role of Afro-Brazilian women and homosexuals in the Candomblé religion in Bahia, Brazil. Unable to move freely by herself in Brazil as a single woman, Landes was accompanied by Edison Carneiro, a Bahian journalist and folklorist. With Carneiro as her companion, Landes was allowed access to rituals and people that would have been closed off to her otherwise. Due to her association with Carneiro, a member of the Brazilian Communist Party, Landes was suspected of being a communist and was forced to leave Bahia early. Publications from her research in Brazil include "A Cult Matriarchate and Male Homosexuality" (1940) and

City of Women

(1947). She returned to Brazil in 1966 to study the effects of urban development in Rio de Janeiro. In 1967, a Portuguese translation of

City of Women

was published, a project that Carneiro had commissioned as the first director of the Ministry of Education and Culture's Special National Agency for the Protection of Folklore.

Landes returned to New York in 1939, working briefly as a researcher for Gunnar Myrdal's study of African Americans. Unable to obtain a permanent position at a university, she worked in several other short term positions throughout most of her career. During World War II, Landes was a research director for the Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs (1941) and consultant for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practices Committee on African American and Mexican American cases (1941-44). In 1945, Landes directed a program created by Pearl S. Buck and a group of interdenominational clergy to analyze pending New York anti-discrimination legislation. She moved to California the following year to work for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Welfare Council on a study of race and youth gangs. After her contract ended, she moved back to New York and was hired as a contract researcher for the American Jewish Congress (1948-50). She also participated in Columbia University's Research in Contemporary Cultures (1949-51), studying Jewish families. She coauthored with Mark Zborowski, "Hypothesis concerning the Eastern European Jewish Family." From 1951 to 1952, Landes spent a year in London, funded by a Fulbright fellowship to study colored colonial immigrants and race relations in Great Britain.

After her fellowship ended, Landes returned to the United States and held short term appointments at several universities. She taught at the William Alanson White Psychiatric Institution in New York (1953-54), the New School for Social Research in New York (1953-55), University of Kansas (1957, 1964), University of Southern California (1957-62), Columbia University (1963), Los Angeles State College (1963), and Tulane University (1964). At Claremont Graduate School, Landes helped to develop and direct the Claremont Anthropology and Education Program (1959-62).

It was not until 1965 that Landes obtained a permanent faculty position at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario; she was recruited for the position by Richard Slobodin. Due to Ontario's age retirement law, Landes was forced to retire in 1973 at the age of 65. She continued to teach part-time until 1977, when she became professor emerita.

Landes passed away at the age of 82 on February 11, 1991.

Sources Consulted

Cole, Sally. 2003.

Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology

. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

Chronology

1908 October 8

Born Ruth Schlossberg in New York City

1928

B.A. in sociology, New York University

1929

M.S.W., New York School of Social Work, Columbia University

1929-1931

Social worker in Harlem

Married to Victor Landes

1929-1934

Studied Black Jews in Harlem

1931

Began graduate work in anthropology at Columbia University

1932-1936

Studied the Ojibwa in Ontario and Minnesota (in field periodically)

1933-1940

Research Fellow, Columbia University

1935 Summer-Fall

Studied the Santee Sioux (Dakota) in Minnesota

1935-1936

Studied the Potawatomi in Kansas

1935

Ph.D., Columbia University

1937

Instructor, Brooklyn College

1937-1938

Instructor, Fisk University

1938-1939

Studied Afro-Brazilians and Candomblé in Brazil, especially at Bahia

1939

Researcher on Gunnar Myrdal's study, "The Negro in America"

1941

Research Director, Office of Inter American Affairs, Washington, D.C.

1941-1945

Representative for Negro and Mexican American Affairs, Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), President Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration

1944

Interim Director, Committee Against Racial Discrimination, New York

1946-1947

Researcher, study of Mexican American youth, gangs, and families, Los Angeles Metropolitan Council

1948-1951

Researcher, American Jewish Congress, New York

1949-1951

Research consultant, study on Jewish families in New York for Research in Contemporary Cultures Project, Columbia University

1951-1952

Fulbright Scholar, to study colored colonial immigration into Great Britain

1953-1954

Lecturer, William Alanson White Psychiatric Institution, New York

1953-1955

Lecturer, New School for Social Research, New York

1956-1957

Married to Ignacio Lutero Lopez

1957 Summer

Visiting Professor, University of Kansas

1957-1958

Visiting Professor, University of Southern California

1957-1965

Consultant, California agencies (Department of Social Work, Bureau of Mental Hygiene, Department of Education, Public Health Department) and San Francisco Police Department

1958-1959

Director, Geriatrics Program, Los Angeles City Health Department

1959-1962

Visiting Professor and Director of Anthropology and Education Program, Claremont Graduate School

1962

Extension Lecturer, University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Berkeley

1963

Extension Lecturer, Columbia University

Extension Lecturer, Los Angeles State College

1963-1965

Consultant, International Business Machines (IBM)

1964 January-June

Visiting Professor, Tulane University

1964 Summer

Field work with Potawatomi in Kansas

Professor, University of Kansas

1965-1975

Professor at McMaster University

1966

Studied urban development in Rio de Janeiro

1968-1975

Studied bilingualism and biculturalism in Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, United States, and Canada (in Spain and the United States concentrated on Basques)

1975

Became part-time faculty member at McMaster University

1977

Professor Emerita, McMaster University

1978

Award of Merit from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay

1991 February 11

Died in Hamilton, Ontario

1991

Establishment of the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund at Research Institute for the Study of Man (RISM)

Administration

Author

John Glenn and Lorain Wang

Sponsor

The revision of this finding aid and digitization of portions of the collection were made possible through the financial support of the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

These papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Ruth Landes in 1991.

Processing Information

It is obvious that, once she had agreed to donate the materials to the National Anthropological Archives, Ruth Landes worked on her papers in preparing them for the archives. Many documents bear notes concerning contents, and some documents include interpretive and explanatory notes. Special care was used to preserve the latter type of comment, for they obviously are of interest to researchers.

Less useful was the arrangement which Landes had imposed on the papers. She had very roughly and loosely gathered materials into large entities that generally related to the various stages of her career as a researcher. Within these groups, the material was arranged into many, many small groups and encased in plastic bags. From the archivist's perspective, the groups were not adequately defined, and the arrangement was not sufficiently perfected - presumably because of too little time - to make them useful. In fact, the arrangement was regarded as an impediment to their use. As a result, the archivist found it necessary to devise an arrangement and to sort the entire collection into it.

In regard to the large amount of printed and processed material, Landes considered it an extension of her field materials. Thus, in spite of the fact that it was not usefully arranged by Landes, it has been retained and an arrangement - sometimes rather rough - has been imposed on it. The printed and processed materials, particularly the clippings, often form the bulk of the several series of research materials, and their presence often explains the wide date spans of those series.

From 2009-2010, the collection was reorganized and the finding aid revised and updated. While original groupings were maintained, some of the original series were consolidated and are now subseries within a broader series. Significant changes made include the combining of the multiple series of letters to form one series of correspondence; the consolidation of Landes's manuscripts, publications, and publishers' notices and reviews to form a single series of materials relating to her published and unpublished writings; the creation of a general research series composed of what were originally separate series of various research topics; and the combining of biographical materials, financial records, and miscellany into one series. A few folders were also moved to other series that seemed to fit better, subject-wise; notes have been added in the folder list to indicate the original location of those folders.

It is unclear whether all the folder titles were assigned by Landes or if some were assigned by the original archivist when the collection was first processed in 1992. When the current archivist found it necessary to create folder titles, she enclosed new titles within square brackets.

The revision of this finding aid and digitization of portions of the collection were made possible through the financial support of the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund.

Collection originally processed by John Glenn, 1992. Collection re-processed and finding aid updated by Lorain Wang, 2009-2010. Finding aid encoded by Katherine Madison, 2017.

Digital Content

See all digital content in NAA.1991-04

Using the Collection

Conditions Governing Access

The Ruth Landes papers are open for research. The nitrate negatives in this collection have been separated from the collection and stored offsite. Access to nitrate negatives is restricted due to preservation concerns.

Access to the Ruth Landes papers requires an appointment.

Conditions Governing Use

Contact the repository for terms of use.

Preferred Citation

Ruth Landes papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Related Materials

Correspondence from Ruth Landes can be found in the William Duncan Strong Papers, the Leonard Bloomfield Papers, and MS 7369. The Ruth Bunzel Papers contains a copy of a grant application by Landes.

More Information

Bibliography: Books

Bibliography: Books

1937.

Ojibwa Sociology

. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press. Reprinted in 1969 by AMS Press. 144p.

1938.

The Ojibwa Woman

. Introduction by Sally Cole. New York: Columbia University Press. Reprinted in 1971 by W.W. Norton, and in 1997 by University of Nebraska Press. 247p.

1947.

The City of Women

. Introduction by Sally Cole. New York: Macmillan. Reprinted in 1994 by University of New Mexico Press. 248p.

1965a.

Culture in American Education: Anthropological Approaches to Minority and Dominant Groups in the Schools

. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 330p.

1965b.

Latin Americans of the Southwest

. New York: McGraw-Hill. 104p.

1967.

A Cidade das Mulheres

. Translated by Maria Lúcia do Eirado Silva. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Revised edition published in 2002 by Editora Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro. 316p. In addition to the Portuguese translation of

The City of Women

(1947), this volume includes Eirado Silva's translations of Landes's articles "A cult matriarchate and male homosexuality" ("Matriarcado cultual e homossexualidade masculina") (1940a), "Fetish worship in Brazil" ("O culto fetichista no Brasil") (1940b), and "Negro slavery and female status" ("Escraridão negra e status feminine") (1953a).

1968a.

The Mystic Lake Sioux: Sociology of the Mdewakantonwan Santee

. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 232p.

1968b.

Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin

. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 250p.

1970.

The Prairie Potawatomi: Tradition and Ritual in the Twentieth Century

. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 420p.

Bibliography: Articles and Essays

Bibliography: Articles and Essays

1937a. "The Ojibwa of Canada." In

Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples

. Margaret Mead, ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 87–127.

1937b. "The personality of the Ojibwa."

Culture and Personality

6: 51–60.

1938. "The abnormal among the Ojibwa Indians."

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology

33: 14–33.

1940a. "A cult matriarchate and male homosexuality."

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology

35: 386–397.

1940b. "Fetish worship in Brazil."

Journal of American Folklore

53 (210): 261–270.

1943. "Outside looking in: A visitor gives her views on Louisiana's bayou people."

Louisiana Conservationist

2 (1): 4–6.

1945a. "A northerner views the South."

Social Forces

23: 375–379.

1945b. "What about this bureaucracy?"

The Nation

161: 365–366.

1950. With Mark Zborowski. "Hypotheses concerning the Eastern European Jewish Family."

Psychiatry

13: 447–464.

1952a. "A preliminary statement of a survey of Negro-White relationships in Britain."

Man

52: 133.

1952b. "Race and recognition: Ruth Landes on the attitude of the Negro in Britain."

The Listener

48 (1236): 751, 763.

1953a. "Negro slavery and female status."

African Affairs

52 (206): 54–57.

1953b. "Relationships of colour."

West Africa

1187: 367–368 (Part 1); 1188: 391–392(Part 2).

1955. "Biracialism in American society: a comparative view."

American Anthropologist

57 (6): 1253–1263.

1958. "Family patterns of the future."

Child Welfare

(November): 19–23.

1959a. "Dakota warfare."

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology

15 (1): 43–52.

1959b. "Minority groups and school social work."

Social Work

4 (3): 91–97.

1959c. "The values of the majority culture and the possible resulting bias that would limit the social worker's service to minority groups."

Proceedings: Workshop on Cultural Factors

, October 29–30, 1959, San Diego, California. San Diego Area Recruitment Committee for Minority Adoptive Homes. pp. 64–76.

1963a. "An anthropologist looks at school counseling."

Journal of Counseling Psychology

10 (1): 14–17.

1963b. "Cultural factors in counseling."

Journal of General Education

15 (1): 55–67.

1963c. "Potawatomi medicine."

Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science

66 (4): 553–599.

1967a. "Os deuses africanos" and "Mães e filhas-de-santo na Bahia." Translated by Maria Lúcia do Eirado Silva. In

Antologia do Negro Brasileiro

. Edison Carneiro, ed. Rio de Janeiro: Tecnoprint Gráfica. Reprinted in 2005 by Agir Editora Ltda. Excerpted reprints of "Matriarcado cultual e homossexualidade masculina" and "O culto fetichista no Brasil," originally published in

A Cidade das Mulheres

(1967).

1967b. "Negro Jews in Harlem."

Jewish Journal of Sociology

9 (2): 175–189.

1970. "A woman anthropologist in Brazil." In

Women in the Field

. Peggy Golde, ed. Chicago: Aldine. pp. 119–142.

1973. "Comment."

Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology

3 (3): 44–46. Comment on articles by Margaret Mead and Victor Goldkind concerning field work as an ideology.

1976. "Response."

American Anthropologist

78: 348–349. Response to Herbert Alexander's review of The Ojibwa Woman (in

American Anthropologist

77: 110).

1979. "On The Ojibwa Woman."

Current Anthropology

20 (1): 184–185.

1980. "Foreword." In

Anishinabe: 6 Studies of Modern Chippewa

. J. Anthony Paredes, ed. Tallahassee: University of Florida. Pp. vii–viii.

1982. "Comment on 'Windigo Psychosis: The Anatomy of an Emic-Etic Confusion' by Lou Marano."

Current Anthropology

23 (4): 401.

Bibliography: Book Reviews

Bibliography: Book Reviews

1935. Review of

Shadow of the Plantation

, by Charles S. Johnson.

The Journal of American Folklore

48 (188): 202.

1940. Review of

Black Folk: Then and Now

, by W. E. B. Dubois.

American Anthropologist

42 (3): 505–506.

1952. Review of

Navajo Grammar

, by Gladys A. Reichard.

Man

52: 125.

1954. Review of

Les Afro-Américains

(no. 27 of Mémoires de l'Institut d'Afrique Noire).

African Affairs

53 (211): 167–169.

1959. Review of

Minorities in the New World: Six Case Studies

, by Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris.

American Anthropologist

61 (4): 690–692.

1962. Review of

Eskimo Childhood and Interpersonal Relationships: Nunivak Biographies and Genealogies

, by Margaret Lantis.

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry

75 (4): 1973.

1963. Review of

The Southern Case for School Segregation

, by J. J. Kilpatrick.

Teachers College Record

64 (8): 734–735.

1971. Review of

Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives

, by John F. Szwed and Norman E. Whitten, Jr.

American Anthropologist

73 (6): 1306–1310.

1973a. Review of

Guests Never Leave Hungry

, by James P. Spradley;

Native Peoples

(vol. 1 of

Minority Canadians

), by Jean Leonard Elliott; and

Recollections of an Assiniboine Chief

, ed. by James R. Stevens.

Queen's Quarterly

80 (1): 116–118.

1973b. Review of

The Mexican-American People: The Nation's Second Largest Minority

, by Leo Grebler, Ralph C. Guzman, and Joan W. Moore.

American Anthropologist

75 (4): 1004–1006.

1974. Review of

Seven Arrows

, by Hyemeyohsts Storm;

The Gold of Ophir

, ed. by Edward Dahlberg; and

Great Leader of the Ojibway: Mis-quona-queb

, by James Redsky.

Queen's Quarterly

81 (1): 135–138.

1977. Review of

The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture, 1665–1965

by James A. Clifton.

Ethnohistory

24 (3): 304–306.

1984. Review of

Ruth Benedict: Patterns of a Life

, by Judith S. Modell.

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry

54 (2): 348–350.

Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.

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