Disruptive Voices and the Singularity of Histories

Histories of Anthropology Annual presents diverse perspectives on the discipline's history within a global context, with a goal of increasing awareness and use of historical approaches in teaching, learning, and conducting anthropology. The series includes critical, comparative, analytical, and narrative studies involving all aspects and subfields of anthropology.

Volume 13, Disruptive Voices and the Singularity of Histories, explores the interplay of identities and scholarship through the history of anthropology, with a special section examining fieldwork predecessors and indigenous communities in Native North America. Individual contributions explore the complexity of women's history, indigenous history, national traditions, and oral histories to juxtapose what we understand of the past with its present continuities. These contributions include Sharon Lindenburger's examination of Franz Boas and his navigation with Jewish identity, Kathy M'Closkey's documentation of Navajo weavers and their struggles with cultural identities and economic resources and demands, and Mindy Morgan's use of the text of Ruth Underhill's O'odham study to capture the voices of three generations of women ethnographers.

Because this work bridges anthropology and history, a richer and more varied view of the past emerges through the meticulous narratives of anthropologists and their unique fieldwork, ultimately providing competing points of access to social dynamics. This volume examines events at both macro and micro levels, documenting the impact large-scale historical events have had on particular individuals and challenging the uniqueness of a single interpretation of "the same facts."

About the Author: Regna Darnell is Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and First Nations Studies at the University of Western Ontario. She is coeditor of The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 1: Franz Boas as Public Intellectual--Theory, Ethnography, Activism (Nebraska, 2015) and general editor of the multivolume series The Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition. Frederic W. Gleach is a senior lecturer of anthropology and the curator of the Anthropology Collections at Cornell University. He is the author of Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Nebraska, 1997).