Ruth Benedict, American Anthropologist

Benedict at Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, circa, 1920s. Ruth Benedict (born Ruth Fulton, June 5, 1887 - September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist. Franz Boas, her teacher and mentor, has been called the father of American anthropology and his teachings and point of view are clearly evident in Benedict's work. She became the first woman to be recognized as a prominent leader of a learned profession. She studied the relationships between personality, art, language and culture, insisting that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency, a theory which she championed in her 1934 Patterns of Culture. Benedict was among the leading cultural anthropologists who were recruited by the US Government for war-related research and consultation after US entry into World War II. Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict are considered to be the two most influential and famous women anthropologists of their time. After Benedict died of a heart attack in 1948, Mead kept the legacy of Benedict's work going by supervising projects that Benedict would have looked after, and editing and publishing notes from studies that Benedict had collected throughout her life

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Anthropologist Anthropology Benedict Folklorist Fulton

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