Guide to the Sol Tax Papers 1923-1989
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Chicago Library Guide to the Sol Tax Papers 1923-1989 © 2006 University of Chicago Library Table of Contents Descriptive Summary 4 Information on Use 4 Access 4 Citation 4 Biographical Note 4 Scope Note 8 Related Resources 16 Subject Headings 17 INVENTORY 18 Series I: Personal Correspondence and Papers 18 Subseries 1: Biographical Materials and Personal Papers 18 Subseries 2 Community and Political Activities 19 Subseries 3: Student Papers 20 Subseries 4: Travel Files 24 Series II: General Files 26 Series III: Middle American Correspondence and Field Materials 63 Subseries 1: Correspondence 63 Subseries 2: Sol Tax Field Materials, Guatemala 75 Subseries 3: Sol Tax Field Materials, Mexico and Guatemala 82 Subseries 4: Middle American Field Materials by Others 86 Subseries 5: Notecards 88 Subseries 6: Human Rights Problems in Central America, 1980-1986 88 Series IV: North American Indian Files and Serials 88 Subseries 1: Correspondence 88 Subseries 2: North American Indian Serials 113 Series V: Professional Organizations and Institutional Affiliations 120 Subseries 1: Professional Organizations 120 Subseries 2: Institutional Affiliations 126 Sub-subseries 1: Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 126 Sub-subseries 2: Illinois State Museum 127 Sub-subseries 3: Smithsonian Institution 128 Sub-subseries 4: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research 137 Series VI: Conferences, Seminars and Lectures 137 Subseries 1: Invitations Accepted 137 Subseries 2: Invitations Declined 139 Subseries 3: Conferences 140 Series VII: University Teaching and Administration 153 Subseries 1: Course Materials 153 Subseries 2: Seminars and Workshops 160 Subseries 3: Lectures and Bibliographies 162 Subseries 4: Student Papers 162 Subseries 5: University of Chicago Administrative Materials 165 Series VIII: Writing 172 Subseries 1: Correspondence with Publishers 172 Subseries 2: Published and Unpublished Writings 174 Series IX: Microfilm, Audio and Video Tapes 198 Subseries I: Audio Tapes 198 Sub-subseries 1: Reel-to-reel Tapes 198 Sub-subseries 2: Cassette Tapes 200 Subseries 2: Videotape 201 Subseries 3: Microfilms 201 Series X: Photographs 202 Series XI: Prizes, Honors and Awards 203 Subseries 1: Diplomas 203 Subseries 2: Honorary Degrees 204 Subseries 3: Appointments, Memberships, Titles 204 Subseries 4: Prizes and Awards 205 Series XII: Restricted Materials 206 Subseries 1: Letters of Reference 206 Subseries 2: National Science Foundation Grant Proposals 210 Subseries 3: Correspondence with Department Heads and Institutions 212 Subseries 4: Sol Tax Financial Materials 212 Subseries 5: Additional Materials on NAES College, 1984-1988 213 Subseries 6: Additional Correspondence 214 Subseries 6: Additional Writings 214 Descriptive Summary Identifier ICU.SPCL.TAXSOL Title Tax, Sol. Papers Date 1923-1989 Size 147 linear ft. (307 boxes) Repository Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A. Abstract Sol Tax (1907-1995), Anthropologist. Papers include personal and professional correspondence, ethnographic field notes, published and unpublished articles, papers, and manuscripts, lecture notes and transcripts, student papers, audiotapes, photographs, and memorabilia. Documentation begins with Tax's youth in Milwaukee, continuing through his student years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and at the University of Chicago, his field research and writing on Middle American and North American Indians (1932-), teaching and administrative roles at the University of Chicago (1940-), and a wide range of professional activities. Information on Use Access Material in Series XII is restricted until 2019. The remainder of the collection is open for research. Citation When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Tax, Sol. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library Biographical Note Sol Tax was born in Chicago on October 30, 1907 to Morris Paul Tax and Kate (Hanwit) Tax. His family moved to Milwaukee, where Tax received his elementary and secondary education. As a teenager, he participated actively in The Newsboys' Republic, a Milwaukee labor organization for youth; he served as editor of the organization's newspaper, The Newsboys' World, and campaigned vigorously for the offices of President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Newsboy's' Republic, running on The Peoples' Party ticket. 4 Sol Tax began his undergraduate career at the University of Chicago, entering as a freshman in the spring of 1926; he later transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in his junior year at Wisconsin changed his major from economics to anthropology. At Madison, Tax studied closely with the anthropologist Ralph Linton, and in 1931 graduated with a Ph. B. degree in anthropology. While still an undergraduate, Tax joined an archaeological expedition sponsored by the Logan Museum, spending the spring of 1930 at a dig in Algeria, and the summer and fall touring prehistoric sites in Europe; his first publication, "An Algerian Passover," (The American Hebrew, April 1931), comes from this period. In the summer of 1931 Tax participated in a group fieldwork project at the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation (New Mexico), under the sponsorship of the Southwestern Laboratory of Anthropology. The project was directed by Ruth Benedict, with linguistic studies supervised by Harry Hoijer. Tax began graduate work at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1931; his M.A. thesis, " The Social Organization of the Fox Indians," was completed in 1932, and in 1935 Tax received the Ph.D. Tax's M.A. and PhD research were directed by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, the dominant figure in Social Anthropology at the time. While at Chicago, Tax also participated in Beardsley Ruml's " Dean's Seminar" with Mortimer Adler and Robert Redfield. It was with Redfield that Tax established a lasting professional association. Redfield guided Tax's ethnological work in Guatemala, starting in 1934, and the two soon became colleagues both in Middle American ethnology and in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Tax served as ethnologist for the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1934 to 1948, during the period of his intensive fieldwork in the Lake Atitlan region of Highland Guatemala. Over the years from 1934 to 1958, the year of Redfield's death, Sol Tax and Robert Redfield produced a voluminous correspondence, documenting a long and fruitful intellectual dialogue between the two men. In 1940, while still affiliated with the Carnegie Institution, Tax was appointed Research Associate at the University of Chicago. He became Associate Professor in 1944 and Professor in 1948, becoming Professor Emeritus of Anthropology in 1977. Tax held a number of administrative posts, including Associate Dean of the Social Sciences Division under Ralph W. Tyler (1948-1953), Chairman of the Committee on Education, Training and Research in Race Relations (1952-1955), Chairman of the Department of Anthropology (1955-1958), Member of the Board of University Publications (1949-1953), section leader of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division (1962-1963), Dean of University Extension (1963-1968), and Co-chairman of the concentration in Cultural Dimensions of Social Change in the Divisional Program in the Social Sciences (1975-1979). As chairman of the Committee to Reorganize Curriculum in Anthropology from 1945-1947, Tax played a major role in the development of Chicago's nationally prominent anthropology curriculum. Tax also chaired a course in the Scope, Methods, and Interrelations of the Social 5 Sciences (1946-1948), and was Director of the Ford Foundation Self-Study of the University's Behavioral Sciences (1953-1954). At the University of Chicago, Tax's teaching duties included Anthropology and Social Sciences core courses, North American and Middle American Indian Studies, and his consistently popular Workshop in Action Anthropology. He also served as visiting professor at the Escuela Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City (1942-1943), where he trained Mexican students in Social Anthropology field methods and at the University of California at Berkeley (summer 1950). Sol Tax conducted his first extended ethnological field work among the Algonquian-speaking Fox (or Mesquakie) Indians at Tama County, Iowa, in the 1930s. His intensive study of Fox kinship and social organization formed the basis for his M.A. and PhD theses, in which a variant of the Omaha-type kinship system is exhaustively described using groundbreaking methods of analysis. In the late fall of 1934, Tax began field work with the Maya Indians of Highland Guatemala and adjacent Mexico: in the Panajachel-Lake Atitlan region (1934-1944), in Chiapas, Mexico (1942-1943), and in northern Guatemala (1942-1944). His exhaustive study of Indian- Ladino economic organization in Panajachel resulted in the 1953 work Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy; related field research provided material for numerous articles on cultural pattering, Indian world view, acculturation, and social and ethnic relations in the Maya area. It was not until the late 1940s that Tax developed" action anthropology," the major theoretical approach for which he became known. Returning to the Fox Indians of Tama, Iowa in 1948 with a group of University of Chicago students, Tax and his students discovered that it would be impossible for them to remain detached, aloof observers