Spencer, Robert F.

Robert Francis Spencer was born in San Francisco, California in 1917. He received a B.A. from Berkeley in 1937, his M.A. from U. New Mexico in 1940, and returned to Berkeley for his Ph. D., which he received in 1946. After teaching a year at Reed College and another at the University of Oregon, Spencer became an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, where he stayed 39 years, serving as dept. chair three times, and also briefly chairing the Middle East Studies program. He retired in 1986 and died in 1992.

From the description of Papers, 1952-1967. (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). WorldCat record id: 63286122

Robert Francis Spencer, B.A. (1937), Ph.D. (1946) University of California - Berkeley; M.A. (1940) University of New Mexico. Professor and chair of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Cultural anthropologist who studied kinship, ethnography, linguistics, and nationalism, and was known for his publication The North Alaskan Eskimo: A Study in Ecology and Society .

R.F. Spencer was born in San Francisco, California on March 30, 1917. He received a B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1937 and a Ph.D. in 1946. He earned his master's in anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1940.

Spencer was an instructor of anthropology at Reed College (1946), and assistant professor the University of Oregon, Eugene (1947) before being appointed as assistant professor in 1948 at the University of Minnesota. He was promoted to associate professor in 1952 and professor and acting chairman of the anthropology department in 1956. Dr. Spencer served as department chair three times during his 39 years at Minnesota, and he also at one time chaired the program in Middle East Studies. Robert Spencer retired from the University in 1986 as professor emeritus and died on June 9, 1992 at the age of 75.

Spencer was a cultural anthropologist, with wide-ranging interests in cultural ecology, ethnography, linguistics, kinship, religions, folklore, nationalism, urbanization, and ethnopoetics. He was fluent in four languages and had a reading knowledge of more than ten others.

Spencer was well known for his field work, which began during his tenure at the University of New Mexico studying linguistic and ethnographics of the Keresan Indians (1938-1940). In addition, he spent time with Japanese-Americans in a relocation center in Arizona (1942-1943), studied the cultures of Turkey (1954), lived in a Burmese monastery (1954-1955), and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the poetry of Pakistan (1965-1966). From 1952-1953, Spencer lived among the North Alaskan Eskimos on a research contract from the Office of Naval Research and the Arctic Institute of North America to study ethnography and human ecology. Out of this field research came his monograph: The North Alaskan Eskimo: A Study in Ecology and Society, which was considered years ahead of its time. His other publications included studies of American Indian tribes and languages, religions and cultures in Asia, as well as studies of factory girls in South Korea. In 1989, former students and colleagues published a volume of essays in his honor.

Spencer was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) for whom he did visiting lectures, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Sigma Xi.

From the guide to the Robert Francis Spencer papers, 1950-1977, (University of Minnesota Libraries. University of Minnesota Archives [uarc])