Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict

Writing Anthropologists,Sounding Primitives explores the poetry and scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict, revealing their shared interest in probing the representational potential of different media and forms of writing. Elisabeth Reichel's book offers a sustained study of this largely unexplored body of work, contributing to debates about the relations between media, sign systems, and modes of sense perception in literature and other media.

Format: Hardback
Length: 430 pages
Publication date: 01 August 2021
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Rewritten text:
Writing Anthropologists,Sounding Primitives delves into the rich tapestry of poetry and scholarship of three influential figures in the twentieth-century history of U.S.-American anthropology: Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. While their renowned contributions to Franz Boas' early twentieth-century school of cultural relativism are widely acknowledged, their lesser-known shared passion for exploring the representational potential of diverse media and forms of writing is a fascinating facet of their work. This dimension is evident in Sapir's critical writings on music and literature, as well as Mead's groundbreaking work with photography and film. Moreover, Sapir, Mead, and Benedict collaborated on over a thousand poems, which intricately negotiate their own media status and interplay with other forms of representation.

A. Elisabeth Reichel offers a groundbreaking exploration in her book, Writing Anthropologists,Sounding Primitives. This comprehensive study delves into the published and unpublished poetry of Sapir, Mead, and Benedict, shedding light on this largely unexplored body of work. In addition to expanding the boundaries of early twentieth-century literary canons, the book contributes to ongoing debates about the intricate relationships between different media, sign systems, and modes of sensory perception in literature and other media. Reichel makes a unique contribution to the field of anthropology by synthesizing insights from the history of writing, sound studies, and intermediality studies, applying them to the poetry and scholarship produced by these notable early twentieth-century U.S.-American cultural anthropologists.

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Weight: 788g
Dimension: 159 x 236 x 34 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496226082