Product Description

Elsie Clews Parsons was a pioneering feminist, an eminent anthropologist, and an ardent social critic. In Elsie Clews Parsons, Desley Deacon reconstructs Parsons's efforts to overcome gender biases in both academia and society.

"Wonderfully illuminating. . . . Parsons's work resonates strikingly to current trends in anthropology."--George W. Stocking, Jr., Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"This is the biography of a woman so interesting and effective--a cross between Margaret Mead and Georgia O'Keeffe. . . . A nuanced portrait of this vivid woman."--Tanya Luhrmann, New York Times Book Review

"A marvelous new book about the life of Elsie Clews Parsons. . . . It's as though she is sitting on the next rock, a contemporary struggling with the same issues that confront women today: how to combine work, love and child-rearing into one life."--Abigail Trafford, Washington Post

"Parsons's splendid life and work continue to illuminate current puzzles about acculturation and diversity."--New Yorker

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2282400 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 538 pages

Amazon.com Review
Elsie Clews Parsons (1874-1941) was a pioneering anthropologist whose writings on the Pueblo Indians challenged American notions about racial and cultural purity. She was also a committed feminist whose unconventional marriage survived many infidelities and included an agreement to share childcare. In short, she was one of those remarkable individuals who live entirely by their own code and publicly urge society to grant everyone the same freedom they have seized for themselves. Vigorous prose and impeccable research distinguish this enthralling narrative of a thoroughly modern woman whose fierce independence seems only to have augmented her enormous charm.

From Library Journal
Deacon (American studies, Univ. of Texas) here chronicles the attempts of sociologist and anthropologist Parsons to change 19th-century American values. Parsons (1874-1941) attended graduate school before marrying and raised her children while working as a writer and field anthropologist. She developed new ideas about marriage, the family, and sexual identity that were popularized in her writing. Deacon reveals how Parsons combined her personal and professional lives to create a modernist woman's lifestyle. Relying on in-depth research, she quotes from many letters and other sources. This engaging study of an unusual woman is recommended for academic libraries.?Gwen Gregory, New Mexico State Univ. Lib., Las Cruces
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Despite the wade through Deacon's (American Studies/Univ. of Texas, Austin) dense writing and disheveled timeline, Elsie Clews Parsons's story shines through. A feminist and anthropologist active in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, she consistently challenged the prevailing ideas and prejudices of her time. Parsons, a well-educated member of New York's upper class, drew her feminist ideas from her extensive studies of sociology and anthropology. Deacons chronicles Parsons's professional career as a groundbreaking ethnographer, detailing her ``modernist'' theories, her fieldwork in the Southwest, and her impact on the anthropological community. Her numerous published papers focused on dissecting and revamping cultural norms, from marriage to sex and birth control, all with the aim of spurring social change for women. Her professional career was balanced by an equally active personal life full of adventures, children, and romances, though Parsons carefully kept this life separate from her professional labors. WW I served as a turning point for Parsons, sending her off into new areas of research. A pacifist appalled by the ``melting pot'' acculturation propaganda preached by Woodrow Wilson, and by the racial intolerance that increased with the onset of the war, she immersed herself in understanding the culture of the Pueblo people of the Southwest, where she at last found serenity. (She continued her trips to the Southwest for anthropological research until her death in 1941.) After the war ended, Parsons returned to New York, where she resumed teaching and publishing, and worked to encourage aspiring social scientists. While Parsons's story is a remarkable one, Deacon views her subject as a ``carrier of culture'' in the new modernist era and thus continually interrupts her narrative to cram in extensive, and rather dry, academic explanations of her subject's anthropological theories and her influences, making for an uneven portrait of a remarkable figure. (photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.