The Margaret Lantis papers (dated 1871-2001, undated, 42.79 cubic feet, 56 boxes) consists of biographical information, correspondence, photographic prints, artifacts, slides, publications and journals, and research files, which document the career of prominant female anthropologist Margaret Lantis.
Descriptive Summary
Title
Margaret Lantis papers
Date
1871-2001, undated (inclusive)
1940-1979 (bulk)
Creator
Lantis, Margaret
Extent
42.79 Cubic Feet
Subjects
Anthropology.
Women anthropologists
Arrangement
Collection is arranged by format into eight series: Biographical, Family files, Research files, Correspondence, Teaching Materials, Professional Organizations, Publications, and Photographic Materials.
Finding Aid Author
Processed by Roda Ferraro, Amanda Hanner, and Sarah Coblentz
Preferred Citation
2001ua062: [identification of item], Margaret Lantis papers, 1871-2001, undated, University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.
Repository
University of Kentucky
Collection Overview
Biography / History
Margaret Lantis (1906-2006) was a professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky from 1965 until her retirement in 1974.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1906, Lantis was raised in the upper Midwest. She spent her summers on her grandparents' farm and her school years in the various cities where her father taught sociology. Margaret received her bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1930 with a double major in anthropology and Spanish. She studied under Robert Lowie and A. L. Kroeber at the University of California, Berkeley, and the program's emphasis on comparative ethnography and cultural relativism largely shaped Lantis’s dissertation on Alaskan Eskimo ceremonialism. She received her Ph.D. in 1939 and pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago in 1942 and at the Washington School of Psychiatry in 1947. The influence of each of her graduate programs is evident in Lantis's focus on culture-area trait classification, societal structures and functions, and culture and personality studies.
Like many women in her field, Lantis was limited by the meager options in academia, and this limitation impacted the early decades of her career. From 1940 through the mid-1960s, Lantis worked in a series of research fellowships, visiting faculty appointments, and public agency contracts including positions with the War Relocation Authority, the U.S. Public Health Service, The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Arctic Health Research Center, and the Arctic Institute of North America.
Her interest in the Arctic was prompted by an invitation from a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) teacher for assistance with the BIA school on Atka Island in the Aleutians. Lantis arrived on Atka in 1933, soon to be abandoned by the BIA teacher for a challenging year she would later describe as "rough, with tuberculosis and alcoholism and the Depression economy." Lantis returned to Alaska in 1939 to pursue fieldwork on Nunivak Island, a culture still largely resembling its pre-contact cultural and subsistence economy conditions. She stayed for a year and later returned in 1946, 1955, 1961 and 1972.
Lantis was a professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky from 1965 to 1974. Shaped by 25 years of field experience and varied applied anthropology contexts, she was described by students to exhibit "an impressive depth of perception" and to employ a "no-nonsense, realistic theoretical approach" in her research and writing.
Lantis held the presidency of the American Ethnological Society (1964-1965) and the Society for Applied Anthropology (1973-1974). Additionally, she held office in the Anthropology Society of Washington and served on the research committee for the Arctic Institute of North America (1959-62) and the Polar Research Committee of the National Academy of Sciences (1969-1972).
Lantis was awarded the Society for Applied Anthropology’s distinguished Bronislaw Malinowski Award in 1987, and the Alaska Anthropology Association recognized her with a Lifetime Contribution Award to Alaska Anthropology in 1993.
Scope and Content
The Margaret Lantis papers (dated 1871-2001, undated, 42.79 cubic feet, 56 boxes) consists of biographical information, correspondence, photographic prints, artifacts, slides, publications and journals, and research files, which document the career of prominant female anthropologist Margaret Lantis. The collection includes prominent locations such as Nunivak Island and Atka in Alaska; Minot, North Dakota; Berkeley, California; Arkansas, and Copenhagen. Biographical information showcases items from her life before academia; k-12 school work, personal diaries, and information about her immediate family. Correspondence includes personal and professional letters - professional letters include missives to anthropology foundations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Applied Anthropology Association; the University of Alaska, University of California, Berkeley, and fellow academics in the field of anthropology like Jim Van Stone. Photographic prints focus on Nunivak Island in Alaska, including images of Eskimo and Aleutian items and peoples in the area, additionally there are a great quantity of family photographs. Margaret Lantis’ research files span across multiple topics including: anthropology, art, behavioral science, ethnography, mental health and substance abuse, public health and public works, tuberculosis, and the War Relocation Authority. These research files include interview notes, journals, reports, and manuscripts focusing predominantly on circumpolar peoples; the War Relocation Authority interview notes come from Lantis’ time at relocation centers for Japanese-Americans during World War II in Arkansas and Idaho. Teaching notes consist of lecture materials for courses taught by Lantis at different universities.
Restrictions on Access and Use
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open to researchers by appointment.
Box 27 is restricted until 2060 due to the presence of Medical Personally Identifiable Information.
Before use of box 27 researchers must fill in and sign an access request form. Contact the Special Collections Research Services desk for further information and to obtain a copy of the form.
The identification of any names of patients or their place of residence in any manner is prohibited and no part of box 27 may be photocopied, microfilmed, digitized, or reproduced in any manner.
Use Restrictions
Property rights reside with the University of Kentucky. The University of Kentucky holds the copyright for materials created in the course of business by University of Kentucky employees. Copyright for all other materials has not been assigned to the University of Kentucky. For information about permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Special Collections Research Center.
Contents of the Collection
Biographical, 1920-1995, undated
Bequeath from will for donation of personal items, 1992-1995
