Paul Radin

Paul Radin

Paul Radin
from American Anthropologist, 61 (1959)
Born April 2, 1883
Łódź, Russian Empire
Died February 21, 1959
New York City
Fields anthropology linguistics
Alma mater Columbia University
Doctoral advisor Franz Boas

Paul Radin (April 2, 1883 – February 21, 1959) was an American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century specializing in Native American languages and cultures.

Biography

The son of a rabbi, Paul Radin was born in the cosmopolitan Polish city of Łódź in 1883. In 1884 his family moved to Elmira, New York. He entered the public school system and graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1902. There, he became interested in studying history and came under the influence of James Harvey Robinson.[1]:ix

Between 1905 and 1907 Radin studied in Europe, first in Munich and then the University of Berlin. As a result, he became interested in anthropology. In 1907 he returned to the United States and became a student of Franz Boas at Columbia, where he counted Edward Sapir and Robert Lowie among his classmates. He engaged in years of productive fieldwork among the Winnebago (Hocąk) Indians, primarily from 1908-1912. Publications from this research include his doctoral dissertation, earned in 1911[2] and culminated in 1923 with the publication of his magnum opus, The Winnebago Tribe. In 1929, as a result of his fieldwork, he was able to publish a grammar of the nearly extinct language of the Wappo people of the San Francisco Bay area. Beginning in the 1940s, Radin was monitored by the FBI, who believed him to be a communist. This monitoring continued until his death.[3]:199–206 In 1952 Radin moved to Lugano, Switzerland, where he worked for the Bollingen Foundation. In 1956 he returned to the US to take a position at Brandeis, where he was chairman of the Department of Anthropology.[4]:167 Late in his career he edited several anthologies of folk tales from different continents. His most enduring publication to date is The Trickster (1956), which includes essays by the pioneering scholar of Greek mythology, Karl Kerényi, and the prominent psychoanalyst C. G. Jung.[5]

Radin taught at a number of colleges and universities, never staying at any one more than a few years. At various times he held appointments at University of California, Berkeley; Mills College, Fisk University, Black Mountain College, Kenyon College, and the University of Chicago. He concluded his career as chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis.

Sources and further reading

Books by Radin

Writings on Radin

References

  1. DuBois, Cora (1960). Paul Radin: An Appreciation ("Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin" edited by Stanley Diamond). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. ix–xvi.
  2. Radin, Paul (1911). The Ritual and Significance of the Winnebago Medicine Dance. Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia university.
  3. Price, David (2004). Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
  4. McGuire, William (1982). Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  5. Jonathan Boyarin. "Trickster's Children: Paul Radin, Stanley Diamond and Filiation in Anthropology A Lecture by Jonathan Boyarin University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Anthropology Colloquium, London School of Economics May 15," (PDF). London School of Economics. Retrieved 25 June 2012.

External links

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