Du Bois, Cora

Cora Du Bois (1903-1991) was the first woman tenured in the Anthropology Department and the second woman ever to be tenured in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She held the Zemurray-Stone Chair from 1954 to 1970, taught in the departments of Anthropology and Social Relations, and conducted research in California, Netherlands East Indies, and India. As a cultural anthropologist she made important contributions to culture and personality studies, the use of photography in analyzing field data, and interdisciplinary team research.
Like many other women anthropologists of her generation, her Ph.D. dissertation,
which was concerned with girls' menstral rites in the New World, was based on
library research. After completing her Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1932, Du Bois was
unable to find an academic position, and worked as a teaching fellow and research
assistant for the head of the Berkeley department, Alfred Kroeber, from 1932-1935.
While working for Kroeber, Du Bois did salvage ethnography with the Wintu
Indians in northern California and published on the Ghost Dance of 1870.
In 1935, Du Bois received a National Research Council Fellowship to investigate
how psychiatric training might be used by professional anthropologists. With her
fellowship, Du Bois returned to the east coast, spending six months at what was
then the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, now the Murray Psychological Clinic, and
six months with Abram Kardiner at the New York Psychoanalytic Society. In
addition, Du Bois taught at Hunter College in 1936-1937 while formulating her
goals for field research in Alor.
From 1937-1939, Du Bois lived and conducted research on the remote island of
Alor, part of the Netherlands East Indies, now Indonesia. In keeping with her focus
on psychological anthropology, Du Bois administered Roscharch tests to the
Alorese in the hopes of using these data to make systematic comparisons between
cultures. Her research was designed to probe a basic Alorese personality structure,
which, she believed, could be correlated with specific cultural institutions. The
research resulted in a monograph, The People of Alor.
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Like many anthropologists, Du Bois's academic research was interrupted by
World War II. Du Bois joined the war effort as a member of the Office of Strategic
Services working in the Research and Analysis Branch as Chief of the Indonesia
section. In 1944 she moved from Washington, D.C., to Ceylon to head the
Southeast Asia Command, for which she received the Exceptional Civilian Service
Award in 1945. Among her duties were the runnings of resistance movements in
Southeast Asian countries under Japanese occupation.
Du Bois worked for the State Department and the World Health Organization
from 1946 until 19545 when she accepted the Zemurray-Stone Chair at Harvard
University. The Zemurray-Stone Chair, which was established in 1947 by Samuel
Zemurray in honor of his two children, Samuel, Jr. and Doris Zemurray-Stone, was
a Radcliffe Chair to be given to the female academic of Harvard's choosing. Du
Bois was the second recipient of the chair. While at Harvard Du Bois initiated a
long-term research project on the Indian temple city of Bhubaneswar. During this
research Du Bois oversaw the work and training of a number of Harvard graduate
students involved in the Bhubaneswar project. In 1970 at the age of 67 Du Bois
retired from Harvard, and from 1970-1975 took up a post as Professor-at-Large at
Cornell University.
Cora Du Bois was a kind of anthropologist sojouner for 43 years of her long 59
year career--doing research, teaching, and government service. Throughout her jobs
and travels, she also did anthropology: pioneering new approaches in
interdisciplinary methodologies and culture-personality studies. She is often
described as a formidable woman and a good friend--perhaps these designations
carry some of the pride and passion that made up Du Bois's character.
(Emilie Wellfelt)