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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that pays tribute to people of the past by

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Speaker 1: telling their stories. Today, I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode,

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Speaker 1: we're celebrating the life and trailblazing work of cultural anthropologist

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Speaker 1: Ruth Benedict. The day was June fifth, eighteen eighty seven.

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Speaker 1: American anthropologist Ruth Fulton Benedict was born in New York City.

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Speaker 1: Often regarded as America's first female anthropologist, she had to

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Speaker 1: contend with many obstacles in pursuit of her chosen vocation,

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Speaker 1: from societal barriers like opposition to women doing field work,

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Speaker 1: to personal challenges including a lifelong hearing, But at every

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Speaker 1: turn Benedict's keen intellect and dogged determination saw her through.

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Speaker 1: Her subversive theories on race, culture, and personality helped lay

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Speaker 1: the foundation for modern anthropology, and she's now recognized as

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Speaker 1: one of the most influential anthropologists of the twentieth century.

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Speaker 1: Ruth Benedict Nay Fulton was the daughter of Beatrice and

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Speaker 1: Frederick Fulton, a school teacher and surgeon, respectively. Her father

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Speaker 1: is believed to have contracted an infectious disease from one

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Speaker 1: of his patients, and subsequently died from it just a

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Speaker 1: few months shy of Ruth's second birthday and mere weeks

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Speaker 1: after the birth of her younger sister. Benedict herself also

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Speaker 1: grappled with a serious illness during childhood. It rendered her

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Speaker 1: partially deaf, but her condition wasn't discovered until after she

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Speaker 1: began attending school. A lack of understanding about hearing loss

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Speaker 1: created additional problems for the young girl, as several teachers

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Speaker 1: and other adults in her life chastised her for not

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Speaker 1: following directions. At the same time, Benedict's widowed mother, still

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Speaker 1: grief stricken from the loss of her husband, was struggling

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Speaker 1: to find a job that would pay her enough to

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Speaker 1: support her family. These early hardships led Benedict to consider

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Speaker 1: the ways in which society was structured to encourage and

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Speaker 1: reward certain traits and behaviors while marginalizing those who don't

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Speaker 1: adhere to the norm. This realization instilled in Benedict a

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Speaker 1: desire to defy societal expectations. She went on to attend

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Speaker 1: Vassar College, where she found an outlet for her observations

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Speaker 1: through writing poetry. She graduated in nineteen o nine with

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Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree in English literature, and then spent the

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Speaker 1: next year touring Europe and considering potential career paths. After

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Speaker 1: returning to the States, Benedict settled in California, where she

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Speaker 1: tried her hand at a variety of jobs, including social

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Speaker 1: work and teaching at an all girls school. The positions

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Speaker 1: left her feeling stifled and unfulfilled, but it was during

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Speaker 1: her tenure as a teacher that she developed an interest

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Speaker 1: in Asian culture, an area of study that would one

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Speaker 1: day lead her to anthropology. After spending a few restless

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Speaker 1: years in California, Benedict returned to her family's farm back

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Speaker 1: east to do some soul searching. During this time, she

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Speaker 1: met and ultimately married Stanley Benedict, a chemist and the

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Speaker 1: brother of a classmate from Vassar. Benedict soon began writing again,

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Speaker 1: and even published some of her poems under the pseudonym

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Speaker 1: Anne Singleton. She then enrolled in the New School for

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Speaker 1: Social Research in New York City in the hope of

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Speaker 1: finding a new career. The search led her to the

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Speaker 1: field of anthropology, the study of human behavior, culture, and society.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen nineteen, Benedict transferred to Columbia University, where she

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Speaker 1: studied under the pioneering German American anthropologist Franz Boas. She

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Speaker 1: earned her doctorate in anthropology in nineteen twenty three and

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Speaker 1: stayed on as a teacher at Columbia for many years.

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Speaker 1: One of her early students was none other than Margaret Meade,

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Speaker 1: another notable cultural anthropologist, with whom Benedict would develop a

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Speaker 1: close personal friendship and, according to some sources, a romance

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Speaker 1: as well. In nineteen thirty one, Ruth Benedict was promoted

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Speaker 1: to assistant professor at Columbia, making her the first woman

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Speaker 1: to become a full time faculty member at the school

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Speaker 1: and the only other full time member of the anthropology

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Speaker 1: department besides her former mentor Franz Boas. That same year,

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Speaker 1: Benedict divorced her husband after drifting apart, and although the

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Speaker 1: split took an emotional toll, it also allowed her to

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Speaker 1: draw a salary for the first time in her career

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Speaker 1: at Columbia. Prior to that, she had been a married

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Speaker 1: woman and was therefore expected to live off her husband's wages.

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Speaker 1: In her time at Columbia, both as a graduate student

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Speaker 1: and a professor, Benedict conducted extensive field work and research

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Speaker 1: on the religion and folklore of Native Americans, including that

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Speaker 1: of the Pueblo, Apache, Blackfoot, and Serrano peoples. Due to

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Speaker 1: her hearing loss, Benedict couldn't rely on audio recording devices

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Speaker 1: like other anthropologists did in the field. Instead, she developed

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Speaker 1: an observational method now known as visual anthropology, which employed

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Speaker 1: human perception, photography, and video recording to analyze different aspects

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Speaker 1: of a culture. Benedict published her findings in a number

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Speaker 1: of books and papers, such as nineteen thirty one's Tales

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Speaker 1: of the Kocheeti Indians and a nineteen thirty five two

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Speaker 1: volume collection on Zuni mythology. But perhaps her most notable

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Speaker 1: work on the subject is nineteen three thirty four's Patterns

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Speaker 1: of Culture, in which Benedict theorized that every culture is

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Speaker 1: essentially a distilled expression of that society's preferred personality type.

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Speaker 1: In other words, each society is defined by a cluster

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Speaker 1: of personality traits that are valued by and encouraged in

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Speaker 1: its individuals. Benedict argued that while this arrangement helps foster

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Speaker 1: a sense of kinship and community within most members of

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Speaker 1: a given society. It also results in the exclusion of

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Speaker 1: those with different personality traits and values. As a result,

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Speaker 1: only a small part of the range of possible human

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Speaker 1: behavior is deemed acceptable in any given culture. Six years later,

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Speaker 1: Benedict used her concept of cultural patterning to refute long

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Speaker 1: standing racist theories. In her book titled Race, Science and Politics.

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Speaker 1: She debunked myths regarding the alleged differences in brain size, intelligence,

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Speaker 1: and morality between races, and argued that the very concept

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Speaker 1: of racial superiority was just another cultural construct rather than

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Speaker 1: a scientific fact. Benedict continued her exploration of the relationship

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Speaker 1: between individual personality, race, and culture during World War II.

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Speaker 1: From nineteen forty three to nineteen forty five, she worked

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Speaker 1: as a special advisor to the Office of War Information.

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Speaker 1: Her primary task was to analyze the behavior of the

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Speaker 1: Japanese people and their emperor to help the US identify

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Speaker 1: the dominant traits of their culture and determine how best

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Speaker 1: to deal with them during and after the war. In

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Speaker 1: light of her findings, Benedict advised President Roosevelt that it

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Speaker 1: was vital that the emperor be allowed to remain on

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Speaker 1: the throne as part of any potential Japanese surrender, a

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Speaker 1: condition that was eventually upheld. After the war, Benedict published

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Speaker 1: her research on Japan in a book titled The Chrysanthemum

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Speaker 1: and the Sword Patterns of Japanese Culture. Like her earlier works,

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Speaker 1: the book challenged racist and ethnocentric viewpoints and argued that

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Speaker 1: cultural diversity was something to be respected and learned from,

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Speaker 1: rather than feared or ridiculed. Following the book's publication in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, Benedict returned to Columbia and was made

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Speaker 1: the chair of the anthropology department. The following year, she

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Speaker 1: was named the president of the American Anthropological Association, and

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight she became a full professor at

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Speaker 1: Columbia rather than an assistant or associate professor, once again

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Speaker 1: becoming the first woman to achieve that position. The appointment

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Speaker 1: was a long overdue acknowledgment of Benedict's outstanding contributions to

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Speaker 1: her field, but unfortunately she never got the chance to

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Speaker 1: assume the role. That summer, she embarked on a new

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Speaker 1: research project as director of a study of contemporary Uars,

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Speaker 1: European and Asian cultures, but after returning to New York

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Speaker 1: from Europe in the fall. She suddenly fell ill and

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Speaker 1: passed away on September seventeenth, nineteen forty eight, at the

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Speaker 1: age of sixty one. Benedict once said that she had

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Speaker 1: gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one

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Speaker 1: for herself and one for the world. Anyone who's ever

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Speaker 1: felt out of place or othered by their own society

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Speaker 1: should be glad that her gamble paid off, because, as

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Speaker 1: she once wrote, no man ever looks at the world

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Speaker 1: with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite

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Speaker 1: set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. And

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Speaker 1: the purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe

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Speaker 1: for human differences. I'm gay bluesiay, and hopefully you now

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Speaker 1: know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to keep up with the show and

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Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show,

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Speaker 1: and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free

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Speaker 1: to send them my way by writing to this day

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Speaker 1: at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to CASB. Bias for producing

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Speaker 1: the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see

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Speaker 1: you back here again tomorrow for another day in History

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Speaker 1: Class