Mead’s vision and her achievement, as described by Peter Worseley in his introduction to Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy, “was to show that the findings of anthropologists about remote people were highly relevant to the concerns of Americans about their own society, and that the culture of the United States was only one among very many … Read more
*Reprinted with the permission of The Nation. The morning after I returned to Chicago from the recent Margaret Mead Legacy conference at Barnard College, honoring the centenary of the anthropologist’s birth, a newspaper columnist rang me at dawn with the demand that I explain “from a feminist perspective” why Tony Soprano is “this millennium’s first sex … Read more
This essay includes film clips that will be available for viewing soon. I want to depart from what Faye has talked about in terms of Margaret Mead as the producer of visual anthropology and media and shift to look at one of the major legacies of Mead’s work in this area: the Margaret Mead Film & … Read more
This article features video clips, shown with the permission of the Margaret Mead Estate. To view each clip, please click on the corresponding still image. At this time, ablility to download the video clips may be limited. Every year, I lecture on Margaret Mead’s and Gregory Bateson’s films in my graduate seminar on Culture and … Read more
In preparation for my talk today, I asked a number of my graduate students, particularly those who are African American women, what they thought of Margaret Mead, and I was quite surprised that they responded that she is an absolutely liberating force to them. My surprise was mainly because I was not aware, at least … Read more
*Reprinted with the permission of Duke University Press. Reading Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa was my introduction, not only to the concept of culture, but to the critique of culture – ours. Before 1961, when I read Coming of Age in an Introduction to Anthropology course at the University of Michigan, Mead had already done a great … Read more
I’m going to take us back in time and look at beginnings. What made Margaret Mead become, or establish herself, as the public intellectual we’ve been talking about today? I’ve been interested, as part of the book, Looking at Margaret Mead & the Media, in looking at four recurring media representations of Mead. First, Mead as … Read more
Margaret Mead Websites Bibliographies Library of Congress Mead Exhibit Margaret Mead Centennial Margaret Mead Film Festival Mead Archives Other Margaret Mead Websites Mead 1Mead 2Mead 3Mead 4 Audiotapes and Footage of Mead Interviews, Lectures, and Speeches Audio 1Audio 2 Contributors’ Websites Michaela di LeonardoMarcyliena Morgan Misc. American Anthropological AssociationSociety for Cultural AnthropologySociety of Lesbian and … Read more
Secondary Sources on Margaret Mead Cassidy, Robert. Margaret Mead: A Voice for the Century. New York: Universe Books, 1982. Foerstel, Lenora and Angela Gilliam. Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire, and the South Pacific. Philadelphia: Temple UP,1992 Freeman, Derek. The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1998. … Read more
“Cultural icon,” professional maven, “true public intellectual,” staff-toting “prophet,” and even, “Mother of the World” and “Grandmother to the Nation” – such are the phrases that have surfaced in descriptions of Margaret Mead. She was an “indomitable,” “controversial” and “revolutionary” woman in her personal style, her topical interests and her methodological concerns. She was opinionated, … Read more
