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Of Cultural, Poetic, and Medial Alterity: The Scholarship, Poetry, Photographs, and Films of Edward Sapir, Ruth Fulton Benedict, and Margaret Mead

Research Project
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01.08.2014
 - 30.11.2017

"Of Cultural, Poetic, and Medial Alterity: The Scholarship, Poetry, Photographs, and Films of Edward Sapir, Ruth Fulton Benedict, and Margaret Mead" is a 3-year research project that brings together literary scholars and cultural anthropologists to explore convergences between three types of alterity: cultural alterity (the otherness of the cultures anthropologists study), poetic alterity (the use of poetry in anthropological investigation), and medial alterity (the use of then non-conventional media such as photographs and films in anthropological investigation) in the work of three preeminent cultural anthropologists: Sapir, Benedict, and Mead, who conceptualized 'culture' and 'cultural relativism,' two of the most influential concepts in the 20 th c. social sciences. Out of the three, it is Mead who has become famous for experimenting with media other than the standard ethnographic text already in the 1930s, particularly photography and film. What is less known is that, together, our three anthropologists wrote over 500 poems, dedicated poems to one another, and published a good number of them in renowned literary magazines such as The Dial and Poetry . This prolific, collaborative poetic output, much of which engages with the objects of the writers' anthropological investigations, makes them a unique group in the history of 20 th -century Cultural Anthropology: they were the only anthropologists of the era that left a sizeable (yet sorely understudied) body of poetry. Along with their ethnographic writings and relevant selections from Mead's ethnographic films and photographs, these texts and (audio)visual media form the corpus of our research project. To date, neither our anthropologists' poems nor Mead's photographs and films have been the subjects of a sustained study: previous literary scholarship has analyzed but a fraction of the poems, largely from biographical perspectives that are in danger of reducing the poems to their authors' personal lives, and most of Mead's photographs and films still linger unexamined in the Library of Congress (LoC). The current project proposes to close this gap by asking what difference it makes whether one evokes the cultural Other in standard expository ethnographic prose, in poetic language, or in (what used to be) non-conventional media of ethnographic representation such as celluloid and photographic prints. In tackling this question, we present the first sustained study of Sapir's, Benedict's, and Mead's poetic oeuvres; make an important, canon-revising intervention in the history of US modernism as well as the 20 th -century history of anthropology; and propose a reassessment of Mead's role in the development of visual anthropology that takes into account the aesthetic/aisthetic nature of her work.

Collaborations & Cooperations

2017 - Participation or Organization of Collaborations on a national level
Buergel, Roger M., Direktor, Johann Jacobs Museum, Research cooperation
2017 - Participation or Organization of Collaborations on an international level
Bendix, Regina, Prof. Dr., Institut für Kulturanthropologie/Europäische Ethnologie, Universität Göttingen, Research cooperation
2017 - Participation or Organization of Collaborations on an international level
Howes, Dawid, Prof. Dr., Professor of Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal and the Director of the Concordia Sensoria Research Team (CONSERT) Department of Sociology and Anthropology Concordia University Montréal, Québec Canada, Research cooperation
2017 - Participation or Organization of Collaborations on an international level
Soh Bejeng, Bonaventure, Dr., Artistic Director, Savvy Contemporary Berlin-Wedding, Research cooperation
2017 - Participation or Organization of Collaborations on an international level
Wolf, Nicole, Dr., Goldsmiths College, University of London, Research cooperation

Publications

Schweighauser, Philipp (2019) ‘Of Syncretisms, Foils, and Cautionary Examples: Ruth Fulton Benedict’s Poetic and Ethnographic Styles’, in Herrmann, Jasmin; Ingwersen, Moritz; Sonnenberg-Schrank, Björn; Tarapata, Olga Ludmila (ed.) Revisiting Style in Literary and Cultural Studies. Berlin: Peter Lang (Revisiting Style in Literary and Cultural Studies), pp. 193–205.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2018) ‘‘The World That Could Be’: Gender, Bildung, Zukunft und das Projekt einer Anticipatory Anthropology’, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 114(1), pp. 3–28. Available at: https://search.proquest.com/docview/2068009743/fulltextPDF/30759DE91A54FFAPQ/1?accountid=14616.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2018) ‘Ethnographic Art Worlds: The Creative Figuration of Art and Anthropology’, Amerikastudien, 63(4), pp. 489–515.

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Reichel, A. Elisabeth (2018) Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. . Translated by Schweighauser Philipp; Rippl Gabriele. Dissertation.

Schweighauser, Philipp (2018) ‘Ways of Knowing: The Aesthetics of Boasian Poetry’, Amerikastudien, 63(4), pp. 541–556. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/45341159.

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Schweighauser, Philipp (2018) ‘Faire du neuf, autrement: la poésie de Margaret Mead’, Fabula LHT, 21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.58282/lht.2207.

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Schweighauser, Philipp et al. (2018) Boasian Aesthetics: American Poetry, Visual Culture, and Cultural Anthropology, Amerikastudien/American Studies. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH (Amerikastudien/American Studies, 4). Available at: https://amst.winter-verlag.de/issue/AMST/2018/4.

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Schweighauser, Philipp et al. (2018) ‘Boasian Aesthetics: American Poetry, Visual Culture, and Cultural Anthropology’, Amerikastudien, 63(4), pp. 431–440.

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Schweighauser, Philipp (2018) ‘Text als Paradigma der Kulturwissenschaft’, in Simon, Ralf (ed.) Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft: Poetik und Poetizität. Tübingen: De Gruyter (Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft), pp. 445–459. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110410648-023.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2017) ‘The Concept of (Post)Identity in Queer and Migration Studies. Learning from Kira Kosnick’, Ethnologia Europaea, 47(1), pp. 65–68.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy, von Bose, Friedrich and Amelang, Katrin (2017) ‘Aisthetik - Ästhetik - Medialität: Ethnographische Zugänge zu Ordnungen der Sinnlichkeit’, in Braun, Karl; Dieterich, Claus-Marco; Hengartner, Thomas; Tschofen, Bernhard (ed.). Königshausen & Neumann: Königshausen & Neumann.

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Reichel, Elisabeth A. and Schweighauser, Philipp (2017) ‘Folk Communities in Translation: Salvage Primitivism and Edward Sapir’s French-Canadian Folk Songs’, in Etter, Lukas; Straub, Julia (ed.) American Communities: Between the Popular and the Political. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Francke Attempto (Spell), pp. 61–83.

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Schweighauser, Philipp (2017) ‘Playing Seriously with Genres: Sapir’s “Nootka” Texts and Mead’s Balinese Anthropology’, RANAM: Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines, 50, pp. 107–121.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2017) ‘“Sensitive Patterning” - Gesellschaft gestalten. Die frühe US-amerikanische Cultural Anthropology und ihre Kunst des Einfühlens’, in Braun, Karl; Dieterich, Claus-Marco; Hengartner, Thomas; Tschofen, Bernhard (ed.) Kulturen der Sinne. Zugänge zur Sensualität der sozialen Welt. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann (Kulturen der Sinne. Zugänge zur Sensualität der sozialen Welt), pp. 336–346.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2017) ‘Vom Schmuggeln’, in Kuhn, Konrad; Sontag, Katrin; Leimgruber, Walter (ed.) Lebenskunst. Erkundungen zu Biographie, Lebenswelt und Erinnerung. Festschrift für Jacques Picard. Köln: Böhlau (Lebenskunst. Erkundungen zu Biographie, Lebenswelt und Erinnerung. Festschrift für Jacques Picard), pp. 327–327. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7788/9783412510268.327.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2016) ‘Grenzgänger_innen. Von der kulturellen Maskerade bis zum ‘Going native’’, in Picard, Jacques; Chakkalakal, Silvy; Andris, Silke (ed.) Grenzen aus kultur­wissenschaftlichen Perspektiven. Berlin: Panama (Grenzen aus kultur­wissenschaftlichen Perspektiven), pp. 43–68.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2015) ‘Margaret Meads Anthropologie der Sinne : Ethnographie als ästhetische und aisthetische Praxis’, Berliner Blätter, H. 67 , S. 14-28, Ill.

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Chakkalakal, Silvy (2015) ‘Sensible Ethnographien - Modernistische Empfindsamkeit als Modus einer ethnographischen Ästhetik’, in Göbel, Hanna; Prinz, Sophia (ed.) Die Sinnlichkeit des Sozialen. Wahrnehmung und materielle Kultur. Bielefeld: transcript (Die Sinnlichkeit des Sozialen. Wahrnehmung und materielle Kultur), pp. 341–361. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839425565-017.

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Reichel, A. Elisabeth (2015) ‘Sonophilia / Sonophobia: Sonic Others in the Poetry of Edward Sapir’, in Askin, Ridvan; Schweighauser, Philipp (ed.) Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature (SPELL)), pp. 215–229. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5169/seals-583875.

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Rippl, Gabriele (2015) ‘Introduction’, in Rippl, Gabriele (ed.) Handbook of intermediality. literature - image - sound - music. Berlin: De Gruyter (Handbooks of English and American Studies), pp. 1–31.

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Eckholt, Matthias and Chakkalakal, Silvy (2013) ‘Der Todestag der amerikanischen Ethnologin Margaret Mead’, WDR 3 / WDR 5 / NDR. Switzerland (WDR 3 / WDR 5 / NDR). Available at: http://www.podcastpedia.org/podcasts/16/ZeitZeichen-im-WDR-Radio-zum-Mitnehmen/episodes/980/WDR-3WDR-5-ZeitZeichen-15-November-1978-Der-Todestag-der-amerikanischen-Ethnologin-Margaret-Mead.

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Schweighauser, Philipp (2006) ‘An Anthropologist at Work: Ruth Benedict’s Poetry’, in Rehder, Robert; Vincent, Patrick (ed.) American Poetry: Whitman to the Present. Tübingen: Gunter Narr (SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature), pp. 113–125.

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Members (5)

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Philipp Schweighauser

Principal Investigator
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Walter Leimgruber

Co-Investigator
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Gabriele Rippl

Co-Investigator
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Elisabeth A. Reichel

Project Member
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Silvy Chakkalakal

Project Member