Elsie Clews Parsons

Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons (November 27, 1875 – December 19, 1941) was an American anthropologist, sociologist, folklorist, and feminist who studied Native American tribes—such as the Tewa and Hopi—in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. She helped found The New School.[2] She was associate editor for The Journal of American Folklore (1918–1941), president of the American Folklore Society (1919–1920), president of the American Ethnological Society (1923–1925), and was elected the first female president of the American Anthropological Association (1941) right before her death.[3][4][5]

Elsie Clews Parsons
Parsons aboard her schooner, the Malabar V.
Born
Elsie Worthington Clews

(1875-11-27)November 27, 1875
New York City
Died(1941-12-19)December 19, 1941
New York City
EducationPh.D. in Sociology, Columbia University (1899)
OccupationAnthropologist
Spouse(s)Herbert Parsons
ChildrenElsie ("Lissa", 1901)
John Edward (1903)
Herbert (1909)
Henry McIlvaine ("Mac", 1911)[1]
Parent(s)Henry Clews, Lucy Madison Worthington
RelativesJames Blanchard Clews (cousin)

She earned her bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1896.[6] She received her master’s degree (1897) and Ph.D. (1899) from Columbia University.[3]

Every other year, the American Ethnological Society awards the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize for the best graduate student essay, in her honor.[7][8]

Biography

Parsons was the daughter of Henry Clews, a wealthy New York banker, and Lucy Madison Worthington. Her brother, Henry Clews Jr., was an artist. On September 1, 1900, in Newport, Rhode Island,[9] she married future three-term progressive Republican congressman Herbert Parsons, an associate and political ally of President Teddy Roosevelt.[10] When her husband was a member of Congress, she published two then-controversial books under the pseudonym John Main.[11]

Parsons became interested in anthropology in 1910.[4] She believed that folklore was a key to understanding a culture and that anthropology could be a vehicle for social change.[12]

Her work Pueblo Indian Religion is considered a classic; here she gathered all her previous extensive work and that of other authors.[13] It is, however, marred by intrusive and deceptive research techniques.[14]

She is, however, pointed to by current critical scholars as an archetypical example of an "Antimodern Feminist" thinker, known for their infatuation with Native American Indians that often manifested as a desire to preserve a "traditional" and "pure" Indian identity, irrespective of how Native Peoples themselves approached issues of modernization or cultural change. Scholars Sandy Grande and Margaret D. Jacobs argue that her racist and objectivizing tendencies towards indigenous peoples of the Americas are evidenced, for example, by her willingness to change her name and appropriate a Hopi identity primarily to increase her access to research sites and participants.[15][16]

Feminist ideas

Parsons feminist beliefs were viewed as extremely radical for her time. She was a proponent of trial marriages, divorce by mutual consent and access to reliable contraception, which she wrote about in her book The Family (1906).[17] She also wrote about the effects society had on the growth of individuals, and more precisely the effect of gender role expectations and how they stifle individual growth for both women and men. The Family (1906) was met with such back-lash she published her second book Religious Chastity (1913) under the pseudonym "John Main" as to not affect her husband, Herbert Parsons political career. Her ideas where so far ahead that only after her death did they begin to be discussed. This has led to her becoming recognized as one of the early pioneers of the feminist movement. Her writings and her lifestyle challenged conventional gender roles at the time and helped spark the conversation for gender equality.

Works

Early works of sociology
  • The Family (1906)
  • Religious Chastity (1913)
  • The Old-Fashioned Woman (1913)
  • Fear and Conventionality (1914)
    • Parsons, Elsie Clews (1997). Fear and Conventionality. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-64746-3.
  • Social Freedom (1915)
  • Social Rule (1916)

Anthropology
  • The Social Organization of the Tewa of New Mexico (1929)
  • Hopi and Zuni Ceremonialism (1933)
  • Pueblo Indian Religion (1939)

Ethnographies
  • Mitla: Town of the Souls (1936)
  • Peguche (1945)

Research in folklore
  • Folk-Lore from the Cape Verde Islands (1923)
  • Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, S.C. (1924)
  • Micmac Folklore (1925)
  • Folk-Lore of the Antilles, French and English (3v., 1933–1943)

Reprints

See also

References
  1. "Behavioral Psychologist Henry McIlvaine Parsons, 92, Dies". The Washington Post. 2004-08-01.
  2. Spier, Leslie, and A. L. Kroeber. "Elsie Clews Parsons"], American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 2, Centenary of the American Ethnological Society (April-June 1943), pp. 244–255. JSTOR 663274.
  3. Del Monte, Kathleen; Karen Bachman; Catherine Klein; Bridget McCourt (1999-03-19). "Elsie Clews Parsons". Celebration of Women Anthropologists. University of South Florida. Archived from the original on 2007-06-07. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
  4. "Elsie Clews Parsons Papers". American Philosophical Society. Archived from the original on 2007-03-10. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
  5. Gladys E. Reichard. "Elsie Clews Parsons". The Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 56, No. 219, Elsie Clews Parsons Memorial Number (January-March 1943), pp. 45–48.
  6. Babcock, Barbara A.; Parezo, Nancy J. (1988). Daughters of the Desert: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest, 1880–1980. University of New Mexico Press. pp. 15. ISBN 978-0-8263-1087-3.
  7. "Elsie Clews Parsons Prize". AESonline.org. American Ethnological Society. 2012-02-01. Archived from the original on 2012-05-31. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
  8. "2007 Elsie Clews Parsons Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper". AESonline.org. American Ethnological Society. 2007-04-02. Archived from the original on 2007-06-25. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
  9. "Miss Clews is Married". The New York Times. Newport, Massachusetts. 1900-09-02. p. 5. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  10. Kennedy, Robert C. "Cartoon of the Day". HarpWeek. HarpWeek, LLC. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
  11. "Parsons, Elsie Clews". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
  12. "Revolt, They Said". www.andreageyer.info. Retrieved 2017-06-19.
  13. Gladys A. Reichard (June 20, 1950). The Elsie Clews Parsons collection Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society vol. 94, No. 3, Studies of Historical Documents in the Library of the American Philosophical Society. pp. 308–309.
  14. Strong, Pauline (2013). "Parsons, Elsie Clews". Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms. 2: 609–612.
  15. Grande, Sandy (2015). Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (10th anniversary [2nd] ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 190. ISBN 9781610489881.
  16. Jacobs, Margaret D. (1999). Engendered encounters: feminism and Pueblo cultures, 1879–1934. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 102. ISBN 978-0-8032-7609-3.
  17. Eby, Clare Virginia (2014). Until Choice Do Us Part. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. pp. preface. ISBN 978-0-226-08597-5.

Further reading
  • Poling-Kempes, Lesley (2015). Ladies of the Canyons A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest. University of Arizona Press. ISBN 978-0-8165-2494-5.
  • Adams, William Y. (2016-09-02). The Boasians: Founding Fathers and Mothers of American Anthropology. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7618-6803-3.
  • Deacon, Desley (1999). Elsie Clews Parsons: Inventing Modern Life. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-13908-1.
  • Hare, Peter H. (1985). A Woman's Quest for Science: A Portrait of Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0-87975-274-3.
  • Spier, Leslie; Kroeber, A. L. (1943). "Elsie Clews Parsons". American Anthropologist. 45 (2): 244–255. doi:10.1525/aa.1943.45.2.02a00090. ISSN 0002-7294. JSTOR 663274.
  • Zumwalt, Rosemary Lévy (1992). Wealth and Rebellion: Elsie Clews Parsons, Anthropologist and Folklorist. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-01909-8.
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