36 Facts About Ruth Bunzel

Ruth Bunzel's doctoral dissertation, The Pueblo Potter was a study of the creative process of art in anthropology and Bunzel was one of the first anthropologists to study the creative process.

Ruth Leah Bunzel was born in New York City on April 18,1898, to Jonas and Hattie Bernheim.

Ruth Bunzel lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her parents and lived most of her life in Greenwich Village, only leaving New York for long periods of time when conducting fieldwork.

Ruth Bunzel's father passed away when she was ten, and she was raised by her mother.

Ruth Bunzel's mother encouraged her to study German at Barnard College because of her German and Czech heritage, but World War I inspired Ruth Bunzel to change her major to European history.

Ruth Bunzel received a Bachelor of Art in European History in 1918 from Barnard College.

Ruth Bunzel started her career as the secretary and editorial assistant to Franz Boas in 1922, founder of anthropology at Columbia University, after having taken one of his courses in college.

Ruth Bunzel replaced Esther Goldfrank, a friend of one of her sisters, who resigned the position to study anthropology at Columbia.

Ruth Bunzel planned to spend the summer of 1924 in western New Mexico and east-central Arizona, particularly in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico.

Ruth Bunzel planned to serve as secretary to Columbia University anthropologist Ruth Benedict, aiding in transcription and typing while Benedict was collecting Zuni mythology.

Boas encouraged Ruth Bunzel to pursue her own research while in Zuni Pueblo that summer and suggested that Ruth Bunzel study art and Zuni potters, instead of working on secretarial work.

Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons objected to the idea of Ruth Bunzel conducted research among the Zuni people since Ruth Bunzel lacked formal anthropological training, and Parsons threatened to remove her financial support of Benedict's research.

Ruth Bunzel was fascinated by the prominent role of women as potters in Zuni society.

Ruth Bunzel studied the Hopi, San Ildefonso, Acoma, and San Felipe Pueblo Indians of the southwestern United States as well.

Ruth Bunzel utilized this fieldwork for her dissertation, The Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art, which was published in 1929.

In 1925, after returning to New York, Ruth Bunzel resigned as Boaz's secretary, and just like Goldfrank, enrolled as a student at Columbia University to study anthropology.

Ruth Bunzel was part of the second cohort trained by Boas at Columbia University.

Ruth Bunzel completed her doctoral dissertation in 1927, but she was not fully awarded her PhD until 1929 when her book, The Pueblo Potter, was published.

Ruth Bunzel's book was the first anthropological study of individual creativity in art within overarching artistic boundaries.

Parsons, who initially objected to Ruth Bunzel travelling to study the Zuni, sponsored her second trip to study ceremonialism among the Zuni people as well as future trips and projects.

Ruth Bunzel published her research widely and contributed to publications by other prominent anthropologists.

Ruth Bunzel produced literature related to Zuni language and culture, providing material for Benedict's Zuni information in Patterns of Culture.

Ruth Bunzel became known as an authority on the Zuni people and learned the Zuni language [4] and actively incorporated her informant's views into her writing on the Katcina Cult, something that she did in her later monograph Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village.

Ruth Bunzel edited The Golden Age of American Anthropology with Margaret Mead and contributed to Boas and Benedict's General Anthropology.

Ruth Bunzel was given another Zuni name, Tsatitsa, by the former governor of the pueblo and one of her key informants, Nick Tumaka.

Ruth Bunzel returned to the Zuni people in 1939 to study Zuni child development.

Ruth Bunzel interviewed for a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Mexican culture but was redirected to study Guatemala, as little American anthropological research existed in this area at the time.

Ruth Bunzel studied the Santa Tomas Chichicastenango, a Highland Mayan Village, from 1930 to 1932, resulting in the completion in 1936 and publication in 1952 of her monograph Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village.

True to her prior plans, Ruth Bunzel conducted fieldwork in Chamula in Chiapas, Mexico from 1936 to 1937 as part of a comparative study on "The Role of Alcoholism in Two Central American Communities," in Chichicastenango and Chamula.

Ruth Bunzel argued that her primary consultant's insights were incomplete and could not therefore provide generalized information about the culture, rather viewing his or her contributions as partial and individual to that person or smaller groups of people.

Ruth Bunzel did not follow anthropological conventions of the time to study "pure," isolated cultures but instead chose to study centers of change, contact, and trade.

Ruth Bunzel juxtaposed her own interpretations of Guatemalan ritual events with those offered by her informants in her monograph Chichicastenango.

In 1951 and 1952, Ruth Bunzel developed interview techniques at the Bureau of Applied Social Research project until her appointment as an adjunct professor of anthropology at Columbia University in 1953.

From 1969 to 1987, Ruth Bunzel served as a senior research associate at Columbia University.

From 1972 to 1974, Ruth Bunzel worked as a visiting professor at Bennington College.

Ruth Bunzel had a heart attack on January 14,1990, and died at the age of 91 in St Vincent's-Roosevelt Hospital Center.