Goldfrank, Esther S. (1896–1997)
Goldfrank, Esther S. (1896–1997)
American cultural anthropologist. Name variations: Esther Schiff Goldfrank. Born May 5, 1896, in New York, NY; died April 23, 1997, in Mamaroneck, NY; dau. of Herman J. Schiff and Matilda Metzger Schiff; Barnard, AB in economics, 1918; m. Walter S. Goldfrank (businessman, d. 1935); m. Karl August Wittfogel (historian and Sinologist), Mar 1940; children: (1st m.) 3 stepsons and 1 daughter.
Became secretary to Franz Boas at Columbia (1919); did fieldwork with Boas and Elsie Clews Parsons at Laguna Pueblo, NM (1921); returned to Laguna (1922) and worked with Boas in Cochiti, NM; wrote The Social and Ceremonial Organization of Cochiti (1927); conducted fieldwork at Isleta Pueblo (1924); was among a group of anthropologists who studied the Blackfoot (Blood) Indians of Alberta, Canada, under direction of Ruth Benedict (1939); contradicted Benedict in "Socialization, Personality, and the Structure of Pueblo Society" (1945), which initiated debate concerning configurational approach in anthropology; served as president of American Ethnological Society (1948). Other works include Changing Configurations in the Social Organization of a Blackfoot Tribe During the Reserve Period (1945), and Artist of "Isleta Paintings" in Pueblo Society (1967).
See also autobiography, Notes on an Undirected Life as One Anthropologist Tells It (1978).