A principle of
cultural anthropologists is to study, eat their food, speak their language, and
experience their lifestyle. They realize that they cannot simply observe it
completely understand another culture; they have to go through it.
Katherine Dunham
received a bachelor's and master's degree in social anthropology from the
University of Chicago in 1936, she received a Rosenwald travel scholarships,
which provide an opportunity for her to visits and further African ritual dance
of her nine-month study in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique Nick and
Haiti. During her visit to Haiti, she found a connection to the people and
cultures of the region. Dunham became so fascinated with this area, in 1937,
she made the focus of her master's thesis indigenous dance movements and the
people, "Haiti's dance: their social organization, classification, form
and function," the thesis It was first published and translated into
Spanish in 1947, France in 1950, and finally published in the United States in
1983. Dunham published a second book in 1969, Island Possessed, a more detailed
anthropological view of her association with Haiti.
Dunham's career as an anthropologist is in no way overshadowed by her work as a dancer/choreographer. It takes a lot of time and resources (and a little bit of luck) to get any sort of academic paper published, no less a book, and Dunham seemed to do both of these with ease, even while having her dance career.
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