ABOUT THIS BOOK

Paul Radin, famed ethnographer of the Winnebago, joined Fisk University in the late 1920s. During his three-year appointment, he and graduate student Andrew Polk
Watson collected autobiographies and religious conversion narratives from elderly African Americans. Their texts represent the first systematic record of slavery as told by
former slaves. That innovative, subject-centered research complemented like-minded scholarship by African American historians reacting against the disparaging portrayals of black people by white historians. Radin’s manuscript focusing on this research was never published. Utilizing the Fisk archives, the unpublished manuscript, and other archival and published sources, Anthropology and Radical Humanism revisits the Radin-Watson collection and allied research at Fisk. Radin regarded each narrative as the unimpeachable self-representation of a unique, thoughtful individual, precisely the perspective marking his earlier Winnebago work. As a radical humanist within Boasian anthropology, Radin was an outspoken critic of racial explanations of human affairs then pervading not only popular thinking but also historical and sociological scholarship. His research among African Americans and Native Americans thus places him in the vanguard of the anti-racist scholarship marking American anthropology. Anthropology and Radical Humanism sets Paul Radin’s findings within the broader context of his discipline, African American culture, and his career-defining work among the Winnebago.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

JACK GLAZIER is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Oberlin College. A former president of the Central States Anthropological Society, he is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the Royal Anthropological Institute. He collaborated with Arthur L. Helweg on the inaugural volume, Ethnicity in Michigan, of the series Discovering the Peoples of Michigan. His previous books include Been Coming Through Some Hard Times: Race, History and Memory in Western Kentucky and Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants Across America.

REVIEWS

This tour de force of detective work and interpretation discloses the rich intellectual and peculiarly alienating moral history of Paul Radin, a footloose, controversial, and mercurial maverick, and, from his little-known research at Fisk, the personal narratives of former slaves. It speaks profoundly from their times of racism and the rise of fascism to our own troubled times. As one of Paul’s last students, I felt deeply moved by Jack Glazier’s remarkable elucidation of my teacher’s radical humanism, his discerning approach to our shared human capacity for reflection and consciousness: it is as subversive as ever of much objectifying of our subjects in the social sciences.

— Richard Werbner, Professor Emeritus in African Anthropology, and Honorary Professor in Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester

Jack Glazier’s book is the first extensive account of Paul Radin’s scholarship and his radical humanistic understanding of human experience. It is a signal contribution to the understanding and appreciation of a major figure in the history of American anthropology. - Herbert S. Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

— Herbert S. Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Charming, erudite, erratically employed, Paul Radin advocated an end to racism as staunchly as his teacher Franz Boas. His genuine respect for Indians and African Americans supported his famous detailed Winnebago ethnography and also, less known, an extraordinarily moving collection of autobiographical narratives by men and women born into slavery. Here, Jack Glazier gives us the man and his work with these two peoples, showing how both projects focused on religious experiences central to so many human lives.

— Alice B. Kehoe, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Marquette University

Jack Glazier’s book is a most welcome addition to the history of Boasian anthropology. By focusing on the relationship between Paul Radin’s well-known Winnebago studies and his little-known work on autobiographical narratives of slavery in the US South, Glazier recovers Radin as an important contributor to anti-racist anthropology.

— Richard Handler, Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Note on Tribal Nomenclature

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Unsettled Career of a Radical Humanist

Chapter 2. Our Science and Its Wholesome Influence: Anthropology against Racism

Chapter 3. From Object to Subject: Centering African American Lives at Fisk University

Chapter 4. The Radin-Watson Collection: Narratives of Slavery and Transcendence

Chapter 5. The Winnebago Narrations: Tradition and Transformation

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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