Melville J. Herskovits
| Melville J. Herskovits | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 10, 1895 Bellefontaine, Ohio |
| Died | February 25, 1963 (aged 67) Evanston, Illinois |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Anthropologist |
| Institutions | Northwestern University |
| Alma mater |
University of Chicago Columbia University |
| Doctoral advisor | Franz Boas |
| Doctoral students | William Bascom |
| Known for | African-American studies |
| Influences | Thorstein Veblen, Franz Boas |
| Influenced | Katherine Dunham, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Elsie Clews Parsons, Anténor Firmin |
| Spouse | Frances Shapiro |
Melville Jean Herskovits (September 10, 1895 – February 25, 1963) was an American anthropologist who firmly established African and African-American studies in American academia. He is known for exploring the cultural continuity from African cultures as expressed in African-American communities. He worked with his wife Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits, also an anthropologist, in the field in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. They jointly wrote several books and monographs together.
Born to Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1895, Herskovits attended local public schools. He served in the United States Army Medical Corps in France during World War I.
Afterward, he went to college, earning a Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1923. He went to New York City for graduate work, earning his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University under the guidance of the German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas. This subject was in its early decades of being developed as a formal field of study. His dissertation, titled The Cattle Complex in East Africa, investigated theories of power and authority in Africa as expressed in the ownership and raising of cattle. He studied how some aspects of African culture and traditions were expressed in African American culture in the 1900s.
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