Martha Warren Beckwith

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Martha Warren Beckwith
Born(1871-01-19)January 19, 1871
Wellesley Heights, Massachusetts
DiedJanuary 18, 1959(1959-01-18) (aged 87)
Berkeley, California
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMount Holyoke College (BS)
Folkloristics
  • ethnography
    • InstitutionsVassar College
    Academic advisorsFranz Boas

    Martha Warren Beckwith (January 19, 1871 – January 28, 1959) was an American

    folklorist and ethnographer who was the first chair in folklore at any university or college in the U.S.[1]

    Early life and education

    Beckwith was born in Wellesley Heights, Massachusetts, to George Ely and Harriet Winslow (née Goodale) Beckwith, both schoolteachers, before the family moved to Maui, Hawaii, where they had relatives descended from early missionaries. There, Beckwith made friends with many locals including members of the wealthy Alexander family who later sponsored her folklore work, and she developed an early interest in Hawaiian folk dancing.

    Beckwith graduated from

    University of Halle.[2] She returned to the States and taught English at her alma mater.[3]

    Her formal education in anthropology did not begin till the 1900s, as her interests in Hawaiian folk customs and literature felt out of place in the English academic curriculum.

    Kwatiutl traditional dances.[4] She received her Doctor of Philosophy from the same institution in 1918.[5]

    Academic career

    In 1909, Beckwith first joined the faculty at Vassar College as an instructor in the English Department, recommended by William Witherle Lawrence.[2] She left Vassar in 1913 and returned to Hawaii, where she collected extensively on the islands' native folklore and mythology. In 1915, she took a position in the English Department at Smith College and began publishing on topics including hula and Tsimshian mythology. Her work was often in conversation with Boas' and hisTsimshian Mythology influenced her doctoral dissertation on the mythological figure Laieikawai.[2] While Boas encouraged Beckwith to remain at Smith, she approached her childhood friend and noted naturalist, Annie Alexander, with her concerns about the lack of academic positions in folklore research; Alexander responded by proposing and anonymously funding the Folklore Foundation at Vassar College.[5][6] In 1920, Beckwith was appointed as the chair of the Foundation, making her the first person to hold a chair in the field at any college or university in the United States. Under her direction, the Folklore Foundation published multiple monographs, often authored by alumnae, on Jamaican, Native American, and Hawaiian folkore. The Foundation also hosted lectures and meetings of the American Folklore Society. From 1932 to 1933, Beckwith served as the president of the American Folklore Society, and in 1934, was on the Committee for the National Folk Festival.[5][7] Beckwith became a full professor in 1929 at Vassar and retired in 1938.[1]

    Research and travel

    Jamaica Anansi Stories

    Beckwith conducted research in a variety of European and Middle Eastern countries but her most extensive research focused on Hawaii and Polynesia, Jamaica, and the Sioux tribes of North and South Dakota.

    Beckwith carried out fieldwork in Jamaica between 1919 and 1922.

    Ashanti".[5] Her work largely focused on cultural and historical influences on folklore, rather than the racial or mental characteristics of the groups she studied.[2]

    Beckwith also studied her own community while at Vassar, working to collect folk songs from the descendants of Dutch settlers in the Hudson Valley as well as the beliefs and traditions of modern college women.[2][10]

    In 1926, Beckwith gathered folktales at the

    Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota;[5] Beckwith was adopted into the Hidatsa's Prairie Chicken Clan for her work translating the tribes' traditional stories.[11][12][1] From 1926 to 1927, during a sabbatical year from Vassar, her fieldwork took her to Goa, where she worked among Portuguese settlers[5] as part of travels that also took place in Italy, Greece, Palestine and Syria.[1] These travels influenced her methodology and understanding of folklore studies as a discipline, which she outlined in Folklore in America (1931).[5]

    Beckwith's most recognised work was her studies of Hawaiian culture, including creation chants and myths and translations of 19th century Hawaiian writers such as Kepelino and Kamakau, on the later period of the Hawaiian monarchy. Her Hawaiian Mythology (1940) has been described as "representing more than thirty years of exhaustive research".[3]

    Later life

    Beckwith retired from Vassar in 1938 and relocated to Berkeley, California.[2] She continued to research and publish as an Honorary Research Associate at the Bishop Museum, moving to Hawaii after the end of World War II.[5] Her last years focused on work pertaining to Hawaiian herbal remedies, as well as translating the work of Hawaiian writers such as Kepelino and Samuel Kamakau.[3] At the age of 80, she published her final major work on the Kumulipo, and though she suffered a stroke in 1951, she remained an editor for the Journal of American Folklore until the mid-1950s.[2] Beckwith died on January 28, 1959, in Berkeley and is buried on Maui in Makawao Cemetery, which is also the final resting place of her parents, brother, sister, and childhood friend Annie Alexander.[3]

    Selected bibliography

    • Beckwith, Martha W. (1916). "The Hawaiian Hula-Dance". The Journal of American Folklore. 29 (113): 409–412.
      ISSN
       0021-8715.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1922). Folk-Games of Jamaica (with music recorded in the field by
      OCLC
      10555685.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1923). "Signs and Superstitions Collected from American College Girls". The Journal of American Folklore. 36 (139): 1–15.
      ISSN
       0021-8715.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1923). Christmas Mummings in Jamaica (with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts). Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College.
      OCLC
      47059596.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1923). Polynesian Analogues to the Celtic Other-World and Fairy Mistress Themes. New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press.
      OCLC
      16327978.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1924). Jamaica Anansi Stories (with music recorded in the field by Helen Roberts). New York: American Folklore Society.
      OCLC
      2322187.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1924). 'The English Ballad in Jamaica: A Note upon the Origin of the Ballad Form'. Publications of the Modern Language Association, 39(2), 455–483. https://doi.org/10.2307/457194
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1925). Jamaica Proverbs. Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College.
      OCLC
      4513341.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1927). Notes on Jamaican Ethnobotany. Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College.
      OCLC
      18484068.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1928). Jamaica Folk-Lore (with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts). New York: American Folk-Lore Society.
      OCLC
       312470569.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1929). Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
      OCLC
      870469911.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1930). Myths and Hunting Stories of the Mandan and Hidatsa Sioux. Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College.
      OCLC
       3371330.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1930). "Mythology of the Oglala Dakota". The Journal of American Folklore. 43 (170): 339–442.
      ISSN
       0021-8715.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1937). Mandan-Hidatsa Myths and Ceremonies. New York: American Folk-Lore Society.
      OCLC
      800851041.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1940). Hawaiian Mythology. New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 1940.
      OCLC
       316816993.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1948). "An Old Song". Western Folklore. 7 (2): 176–177.
      ISSN
       0043-373X.
    • Beckwith, Martha W. (1949). "Function and Meaning of the Kumulipo Birth Chant in Ancient Hawaii". The Journal of American Folklore. 62 (245): 290–293.
      ISSN
       0021-8715.
    • Beckwith, Martha Warren (1951). The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Chant. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
      OCLC
       898842854.

    References

    Wikisource has original works by or about:
    Martha Warren Beckwith
    1. ^ a b c d e "Martha Beckwith". vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu. Archived from the original on September 22, 2022.
    2. ^
      ISBN 978-0-87421-239-6
      .
    3. ^ a b c d e f Glazier, Stephen D. (1996). "Beckwith, Martha Warren". In Brunvand, Jan H. (ed.). American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. pp. 79–80.
    4. ISBN 978-0-8248-0514-2
      .
    5. ^
      JSTOR 538369
      .
    6. ^ "Folklore Foundation - Archives & Special Collections Library - Vassar College". www.vassar.edu. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
    7. ^ Smith, T. J. "Past AFS Presidents". The American Folklore Society. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
    8. JSTOR 534950
      .
    9. JSTOR 535844
      .
    10. ISSN 0003-0678
      .
    11. ^ Associated Press (September 15, 2003). "Professor gathered stories of the Mandan and Hidatsa". The Bismarck Tribune. Retrieved December 29, 2023.
    12. ^ "Unlikely savior: Vassar prof recorded tales of disappearing culture". InForum. September 14, 2003. Retrieved December 29, 2023.

    External links

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