{"id":477,"date":"2022-02-17T18:27:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T18:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/?p=477"},"modified":"2022-03-26T02:44:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-26T02:44:32","slug":"the-departments-origin-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/2022\/02\/17\/the-departments-origin-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Department&#8217;s Origin Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1960s, two noted anthropologists taught at Emory \u2014 Abram Kardiner in the Department of Psychiatry and Margaret Mead (for one quarter) in the Department of Sociology. In the late sixties, Anthropology became permanently represented by a single anthropologist housed in the Sociology and Anthropology department. In the early seventies, there were two anthropologists in the College and an undergraduate concentration was established. The first members of our current faculty arrived at Emory in the mid-seventies: Peggy Barlett in 1976, E.O. Smith in 1976, and Robert Paul (in the Institute of Liberal Arts) in 1977.<\/p>\n<p>In 1976\/77 one of the anthropologists in the Sociology and Anthropology Department, Gwen\u00a0Kennedy Neville, was denied tenure and challenged the legality of the decision. She won the\u00a0case (based on gender discrimination) and was given tenure in the School of Theology (she later took an endowed professorship at\u00a0Southwestern University). In the process of this dispute, the administration decided to\u00a0establish Anthropology as an independent department.\u00a0\u00a0Anthropology began an independent department at Emory in 1978 with one cultural\u00a0anthropologist (Peggy Barlett), one biological anthropologist (Neal Smith), and one\u00a0temporary lecturer (Peter Brown). The new department was housed in three offices in the\u00a0Physics building (now Callaway Hall); there were six undergraduate majors. For two years, the Dean of Emory College, John Palms, acted as chair, and for two years there were\u00a0unsuccessful searches for a chair of the new department. In 1979, the Robert Woodruff\u00a0Foundation made a single gift of $105 million to Emory University. At that time the gift was\u00a0the largest single philanthropic gift to an institution of higher learning in U.S. education\u00a0history. That unprecedented gift brought a sense of possibility and promise to the University;\u00a0 the plan for the Anthropology program expanded.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/anthropology.emory.edu\/images\/3by2-photograph\/callout-anthropology-bldg.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>Current Anthropology Building on Emory Atlanta Campus\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1960s, two noted anthropologists taught at Emory \u2014 Abram Kardiner in the Department of Psychiatry and Margaret Mead (for one quarter) in [&hellip;] <span class=\"read-more-link\"><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/2022\/02\/17\/the-departments-origin-story\/\">Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/bigtentmedant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}