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Definition: BENEDICT, RUTH (1887–1948) from Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements

Benedict was Margaret Mead's professor, mentor, and lover. She was the first woman to hold the rank of full professor of political science at Columbia University, where she taught cultural anthropology. Benedict and Mead wrote about deviancy in culture, trying to change how society conceived of abnormal behavior and traits. Benedict also worked for and wrote about racial equality. Her works include Patterns of Culture (1993) and The Races of Mankind (1943). Benedict also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anne Singleton.

Benedict, Ruth (1887–1948)

From Encyclopedia of Gender and Society
Ruth Fulton Benedict was one of the best-known American anthropologists of her generation. Her book Patterns of Culture (1934) made the ideas of anthropologists available to a wide general audience, and in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), she attempted to explain Japanese culture to Americans after World War II. Ruth was married to chemist Stanley Benedict, but both had affairs, she with other women as well as one man. After their divorce, Benedict’s relationships were all with other women. Lesbianism was seen in society as pathological then, but Benedict saw herself and her circle of friends as normal, and she explored this paradox twice in her scholarly work. In the 1930s, when most social scientists saw homosexuality as an abnormal and dysfunctional innate trait, Benedict pioneered the idea that homosexuality might instead be a cultural trait and that at certain times and in certain places, it had been considered normal. Benedict’s article “Anthropology and the Abnormal,” …
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Full text Article Benedict, [née Fulton] Ruth

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American anthropologist. Born in New York, the daughter of a surgeon, she graduated from Vassar in 1909 and taught English in a Pasadena girls’ school (1912-13). In 1914 she married the biochemist Stanley Benedict, wrote poetry and studied dance until 1918, when she became involved in the New School…
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Full text Article Benedict, Ruth (1887-1948)

From The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography
Place : United States of America Subject : biography, anthropology US anthropologist whose book Patterns of Culture (1934) had a major influence on the ‘culture and personality’ research tradition of the 1930s to 1950s. She claimed that cultures could be categorized on the same lines as…
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Ruth Fulton Benedict (The Library of Congress)
The American cultural anthropologist Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887–1948) originated the configurational approach to culture . Her work has provided a bridge between the humanities and anthropology, as well as background for all later culture-personality studies. Ruth Fulton was born in New York City, …
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Full text Article BENEDICT, RUTH (1887–1948)

From Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements
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Full text Article Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)

From The American Women's Almanac: 500 Years of Making History
Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
In 1922, Ruth Benedict taught the first anthropology course at New York's Barnard College. One of her students was Margaret Mead, and together, Benedict and Mead would become the most famous American anthropologists of the twentieth century. Benedict, regarded as America's first female…
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Full text Article Biographies

From The American Women's Almanac: 500 Years of Making History Full text Article Education
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Catherine Beecher (1800–1878) Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883–1961) Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) Phyllis Chesler (1940–) …
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Full text Article Benedict

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary Full text Article Biographical Names
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Full text Article Mead, Margaret (1901-1978)

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
A student of Franz Boas (1858-1942) and protégée of Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), Mead was an anthropologist of unrivaled international celebrity during her long and multifaceted career. She opposed cultures to races (see race and ethnicity ) and pointed to the diversity of practices of enculturation…
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Full text Article primitive society

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
In prototype, primitive society was an explicit object of philosophical speculation and natural-historical curiosity from the moment that the first European explorers returned from Africa and the Americas. By the middle of the nineteenth century and until the 1920s, it was the analytical preserve of…
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U.S. anthropologist Ruth Benedict studied native societies in North America and the South Pacific. Her theories had a profound influence on cultural anthropology, especially in the area of culture and personality. Benedict was born Ruth Fulton in New York City on June 5, 1887. She graduated from…
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