Other Grounds: Popular Genres and the Rhetoric of Anthropology, 1900-1940 Risa Applegarth A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Dr. Jane Danielewicz Dr. Erika Lindemann Dr. Jordynn Jack Dr. María DeGuzmán Dr. Valerie Lambert © 2009 Risa Applegarth ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii Abstract Other Grounds: Popular Genres and the Rhetoric of Anthropology, 1900-1940 Risa Applegarth (Under the direction of Dr. Jane Danielewicz) Other Grounds: Popular Genres and the Rhetoric of Anthropology, 1900-1940 , examines how gender, race, and genre interact in a discipline’s bid for scientific status. As anthropology professionalized early in the twentieth century, the ethnographic monograph became the primary site for legitimate scientific knowledge, and many practitioners—especially women and Native Americans—found their concerns and knowledge practices marginalized. These marginalized professionals responded creatively to the monograph’s ascendance by developing alternative genres flexible and capacious enough to accommodate their intellectual and rhetorical goals. This study recovers a proliferation of alternative genres, including field autobiographies, folklore collections, and ethnographic novels, that rhetors created in the early twentieth century to access rhetorical resources unavailable in the discipline’s privileged forms. I demonstrate that marginalized practitioners, including Gladys Reichard, Ruth Underhill, Ann Axtell Morris, Frank Applegate, Luther Standing Bear, and others, used these hybrid genres to influence professional practice and to intervene in broader debates taking place outside professional boundaries—debates, for instance, over indigenous land rights and federal Indian education policy. For scholars in rhetoric, this project offers a critical vocabulary for iii analyzing spatial-rhetorical practices, by (1) connecting contemporary genre theory with studies of spatial rhetorics, (2) analyzing a range of spatial tropes and topoi, and (3) introducing for critical use such terms as rhetorical scarcity , rhetorical trajectories , and rhetorical recruitment . Ultimately, this project critiques the power of spatial representations to naturalize relations of domination, and recovers inventive rhetorical strategies that use spatial representations to call for—and create—knowledge that demands ethical response and action. iv Dedication: To my mother Joy and to my partner Matthew v Acknowledgements Throughout this project I have benefited in immeasurable ways from the support of many people. First, to my advisor, Jane Danielewicz, I owe my deepest gratitude; her intellectual generosity, her unflagging mentorship, and her unwavering confidence in my work have made all the difference in my development as a scholar. I am also most grateful to Jordynn Jack for the intelligence and energy she brings to others’ work. I hope I can be as generous a mentor to my own students as Jane and Jordynn have been to me. I thank María DeGuzmán for stretching my thinking, from my first graduate course to my final dissertation defense. My interest in anthropology, as a discipline and a discourse, was crystallized in Valerie Lambert’s seminar on personhood, and she has shaped this project in important ways since that course. I thank Erika Lindemann for the good humor and good ideas she has shared with me throughout this undertaking. Finally, I thank Claudia Brown, my earliest mentor, and Carol Rutz, who pointed me in the direction of rhetoric and composition, which has turned out to be just the intellectual home I was looking for. This project was supported by a Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster, Jr. Fellowship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I thank the Roysters and the UNC Graduate School for providing me with dedicated time for research, encouraging me to find broader audiences for my work, and helping me to hone my ideas through exchange in the interdisciplinary environment of the Society of Fellows. vi Through several years of weekly meetings, the Rhet/Comp Writing Group at UNC has provided support, encouragement, insight, and critique, in such quantities and of such quality that I could not have completed this project without them. Sarah Hallenbeck, Heather Branstetter, Erin Branch, Stephanie Morgan, and Chelsea Redeker have been excellent readers, colleagues, and friends; they know my work as well as I do, and often articulate my arguments better than I do myself. I also thank Jillian Ball, Leslie Eager, Autumn Eakin, Daniel Lupton, and Kelly Ross, my dearest friends; by sharing meals, games, movies, and conversations over the years, they have ensured that my work has never become my only occupation. The most longstanding debts are owed to my remarkable family, without whose support I would never have had the opportunity to go to college, let alone earn a Ph.D. To all of my family I extend my sincere thanks. Particularly crucial has been the support of my mother, Joy Maxine Sparks, who has made so many things possible for me. She is my model in every way, and I can only hope to match her curiosity, creativity, and warmth. To Dakota, Chenoa, Robert, and Avery I extend my deepest gratitude, for their generosity, encouragement, and humor; I am so proud of them all, as I know they are of me. Finally, I happily thank Matthew Loyd, the best partner, scholar, and friend, who convinces me that anything is possible and helps me make it so. vii Table of Contents Chapter I. Introduction: Genre, Space, and Professional Discourse.............................. 1 II. Ethnographic Monographs: Genre Change and Rhetorical Scarcity...................................................................................... 33 Variation and Flexibility in Early Anthropological Discourse and Monographs, 1890-1920....................................................... 40 Malinowski Among the Anthropologists: Spatial- Rhetorical Strategies of Argonauts Reconsidered........................................... 59 Rhetorical Scarcity: Genre Constraints in a Rhetorical Ecosystem................ 82 III. ‘Essentially American’ Spaces: Rhetorical Space and Time in Native American Folklore Collections..................................................... 95 Native American Folklore Collections: Chronotopic Unconscious and Spatial Tropes.................................................................. 102 Ethical Alternatives in the Folklore Collection Genre...................................128 IV. Moving Homes: Indian Education in the Ethnographic Novel..................... 152 Exigencies: Indian Education and Professional Anthropology...................... 157 Hybrid Resources and Spatial Strategies...................................................... 166 Habitation, Movement, and Educational Trajectories.................................. 182 V. Negotiating Space: Rhetorical Recruitment and Disciplinary Critique in Field Autobiographies............................................................... 205 Professional Positions: Morris, Reichard, and Institutional Status................ 208 Field Autobiographies as a Genre............................................................... 213 Inhabiting the Field: Ethos and Rhetorical Recruitment in Digging in Yucatan and Digging in the Southwest .............................................. 220 viii Addressing a Profession: Space and Methodology in Spider-Woman .............. 231 Conclusion: Spatial Practices, Ethical Possibilities, and Gendered Institutions........... 249 References............................................................................................................... 260 ix Chapter One Introduction: Genre, Space, and Professional Discourse “Who may be an anthropologist? Every man, woman and child that has sense and patience to observe, and that can honestly record the thing observed.” --Otis Mason, “What is Anthropology?”, 1882 “In reviewing the work of the Society, it is noticeable that the majority of the papers represent the results of personal observation on the part of the authors. They are real contributions to knowledge.” --Anita Newcomb McGee, “Historical Sketch of the Women’s Anthropological Society of America,” 1889 In his 1882 address to the Anthropological Society of Washington, Otis T. Mason staked out “the extent and boundaries” of the newly-formed discipline of anthropology (25). Those boundaries determined which elements within several “vast territories of knowledge” (37) were distinctly anthropological, but delimited potential practitioners of anthropology only in the loosest terms. Anyone could be an anthropologist, Mason suggested, who “has sense and patience to observe” and the capacity to “honestly record the thing observed” (26). Although “the anthropologist prosecute[s] his work … by the most vigorous and exacting methods” (26), nevertheless, Mason assured his audience that anthropology was “a science in which there is no priesthood and laity, no sacred language; but one in which you are all both the investigator and the investigated” (42). In this portrayal, anthropology demands “scientific” descriptions of one’s observations; yet because the emerging science aimed at a full account of human history, all capable observers would be needed to contribute meaningfully to so vast an intellectual project. A deep tension between openness and rigor