Du Bois, Cora Alice, 1903-1991

Cora DuBois, (1903-1991). Born to Swiss immigrants in the United States, Cora DuBois grew up as an American but learned German and French during frequent family trips to Europe.

DuBois received an MA in history at Columbia, but was influenced by a course in anthropology with Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas to move to Berkley to pursue a PhD in anthropology with Robert Lowie and Alfred Kroeber. Unable to immediately get an academic position, DuBois stayed in Berkley as a teaching fellow and research assistant to Alfred Kroeber from 1932 to 1935. In these years, DuBois assisted with the, "salvage ethnography," conducted with the Wintu people of Northern California.

In 1935, DuBois received an NRC fellowship to investigate how professional anthropologists could benefit from the study of psychiatry. She interned at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and with Abram Kardiner at the New York Psychoanalytic Society. In this period, she began to formulate her plans for her upcoming projects in Alor, now Indonesia. From 1937 to 1939, DuBois recorded observations and ethnographies, and focused on psychological anthropology, such as the administration of Rorschach tests, with the hope that results would support comparisons between cultures. The resulting work, People of Alor: a social-psychological study of an East Indian Island, probes the basic Alores personality structure, which DuBois concluded was related to specific cultural institutions. DuBois pioneered the concept of, "modal personality structure," in which she modified Kardiner and Ralph Linton's notion of basic personality structure, theorizing that a certain personality structure occurs most frequently within each society, but that it is not necessarily common to all members of that society.

During World War II, DuBois set aside her own projects, and joined the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, as Chief of the Indonesia section, eventually accepting the Southeast Asia Command. She stayed in public service for the State Department and the World Health Organization, engaging in "applied anthropology," until 1954 when she accepted the Zemurray-Stone Chair at Harvard University. DuBois entered Harvard with tenure, and was the first woman to have that distinction in the Department of Anthropology.

Returning to intense field work between 1961 and 1972, DuBois directed PhD students in team field work regarding socio-cultural change in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India.

DuBois received many honors for both her government service and academic work. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1991.

Du Bois taught anthropology at Harvard and was honorary curator of South Asian ethnology.

Cora DuBois (1903-1991), Anthropologist. The Papers were compiled during the eleven years DuBois spent in India collecting information about socio-cultural change in Bhubaneswar, Orissa.

Cora Alice Du Bois (1903-1991) was an American anthropologist. She was the first woman to teach anthropology at Harvard University (1954-1969) and was an honorary curator of South Asian ethnology.

Cora Du Bois was born on October 26, 1903, in New York City, to Mattie Schreiber Du Bois and Jean Du Bois. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in her 88th year on April 7, 1991. Cora Du Bois was a first generation Swiss-American. Her father was stationed in South Africa during the early part of his career; during Cora Du Bois' childhood he was employed at a chemical company in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The Du Bois family lived in Perth Amboy from 1911 to 1921. After Jean's death in January 1922, Mattie moved to Red Bank, New Jersey. In 1926, she married Richard S. Bicknell, and eventually they settled in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mattie died in 1963 after a long illness; Richard died in 1965.

In 1921 Du Bois graduated from high school in Perth Amboy. In June 1923, she completed a one-year course in library science at the New York Public Library. Her BA (Barnard College, 1927) and MA (Columbia University, 1928) degrees were both in history. Her Columbia thesis was titled: "Change from Hellenic to Hellenistic Greece." (Subsequent to graduation in 1928, Du Bois spent six months in Europe.)

Du Bois' first course in anthropology was in 1926-1927, her last year at Barnard College, and was taught by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. In January 1927 she entered one of the few reputable ethnology departments at that time--the University of California, Berkeley--to study under Alfred L. Kroeber and Robert Lowie. Under their guidance, she began field work among the Wintu people of northern California in the spring of 1929.

From 1929 to World War II, Du Bois' interests were in ethnography, historical study of the early Ghost Dance, and psychoanalysis. She received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Berkeley (in 1932), and stayed on as a research associate for three years (to 1935). Academic positions for women were even scarcer than they were for men during this Depression period.

In 1935, the National Academy of Sciences granted Du Bois a year's fellowship to study the uses of psychiatry in anthropology. She spent a semester in Cambridge, Massachusetts, divided between Henry Murray's research clinic at Harvard, the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, and weekly seminars at the Boston Institute for Psychoanalysis. During the fall semester (1935-1936), she collaborated with Abram Kardiner, at the New York School of Psychoanalysis, on a joint seminar on psychoanalysis and culture.

From 1938 to 1939, Du Bois did pioneering fieldwork among the people of Alor, in order to pursue her interest in the field of personality and culture. Her work there was funded by the Social Science Research Council of Columbia. Her People of Alor (1944) is an early classic in that field. In Alor, she was confronted with a language which had not been previously studied and had no written form. She learned this language and named it "Abui" (or "Aboei").

After leaving Berkeley, Du Bois taught anthropology at Hunter College (1936) and at Sarah Lawrence (1939-1942), and also wrote her book on Alor. From 1942 to 1954, she was engaged in applied anthropology for the government (Office of Strategic Services, 1942-44 and State Department, 1945-1950) and later for the World Health Organization (1950-1951). She was granted a year's leave of absence from the government in order to do consulting for WHO (they sent her to their SE Asian regional office). She continued to publish during this period. For example, in April, 1947, while still employed by the State Department, she delivered three lectures at Smith College which appeared in 1949 under the title, Social Forces in Southeast Asia, based on her experiences there. In 1951 the Institute of International Education in Washington, D.C. employed Du Bois to establish a small research unit.

In 1950, Du Bois turned down a job offer at U. C. Berkeley to succeed Kroeber as head of the anthropology department. The sticking point was the California Loyalty Oath, which all faculty members of that time were required to sign. She returned to academic life in 1954 as Zemurray Professor of Anthropology at Harvard. With the joint appointment at Harvard and Radcliffe, she became the first woman to teach anthropology at Harvard; she remained there until her retirement in 1969. At Harvard, she offered upper-division lecture courses on Southeast Asia and India in the Department of Anthropology and graduate seminars on social change in the Department of Social Relations. In later years she taught at Cornell University (professor-at-large, 1971-1976) and at the University of California at San Diego (Spring seminar, 1974).

In 1961, Du Bois traveled to India to study the topic of value confrontations between traditional and modern life styles; the site of her study was the double town of Bhubaneswar -- both an old temple town and the new state capital of Orissa. She worked intermittently on the project over a six-year period (1961-1967). Although she chose not to publish the results of her India research, the material is available at the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago.

Du Bois received many awards and honors for her accomplishments. For example, she was given the Exceptional Civilian Award by the U.S. Army and the Order of the Crown of Thailand. She also received honorary doctorates from Mills College (LL.D, 1959) and Wheaton College (Ph.D, 1963).

Du Bois retired from teaching at Harvard in 1969, though she held a position as professor-at-large at Cornell University from 1971 to 1976. Despite three major operations between 1975 and 1981, she continued a steady stream of correspondence with her colleagues and friends. During these years she and her companion, Jeanne Taylor, enjoyed an active social life. In 1976, Du Bois participated in the conference "American Social and Cultural Anthropology: Past and Present," held at the Spring Hill Conference Center in Minnesota.