Barbara Myerhoff

Barbara Myerhoff (1978)

Barbara Gay Siegel Myerhoff (born February 16, 1935 in Cleveland , Ohio ; died January 7, 1985 ) was an American ethnologist and documentary filmmaker . She became known for her research on the Huicholes in Mexico , on Jewish communities in the Los Angeles area, and for her documentation of the Jewish religion from the perspective of women. She pioneered the approach in anthropology to explore one's own, rather than foreign, cultures. Her documentary Number Our Days won an Oscar .

life and work

Barbara Myerhoff grew up with her mother Florence Siegel and her stepfather Norman Siegel in Cleveland and Los Angeles. She studied sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles , where she received her bachelor's degree in 1958 . She received her master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1963 before returning to Los Angeles and doing a PhD in anthropology at the University of California. She concluded it in 1968 with her thesis on rituals of the Huicholes . In the same year she took a position at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California and taught there until her death. From 1976 to 1980 she headed the institute.

1974 Myerhoff published her work on the Huicholen as a book. It was recognized as outstanding research and was nominated for the National Book Award in 1976 . At the same time, criticism from indigenous groups inside and outside the USA of the anthropological approach that Myerhoff had also followed up to that point grew . Participation in the cultural life of ethnic minorities, in order to research them from the perspective of the majority society, is an intrusion into their culture and often has the consequence of exoticizing these population groups and thus pushing them further to the edge. Myerhoff took this criticism seriously. She realized that the central theme of her book - the role of rituals in the assertion of a minority culture - could also be applied to her own culture: the Jewish communities of large American cities. So she developed a research project on the elderly in a Jewish community center in the Venice district . Neither the American Jewry nor the elderly nor the urban population in general had hitherto been a popular research topic in anthropology. With the combination of all three groups, Myerhoff broke new ground in their field. She examined how the community used both traditional and newly invented rituals to gain recognition from the majority of American society.

Myerhoff made the documentary Number Our Days with director Lynne Littman about her work in the Jewish community center in Venice. It was named Best Best Documentary Short Film at the 1977 Academy Awards . Myerhoff's book, which appeared a year later under the same title, received attention both in the professional world and by a wider audience. The New York Times and Psychology Today included the book in their 1979 list of the Top Ten Social Science Books. One chapter of the book was awarded the Pushcart Prize . In 1980 the Jewish War Veterans of America Association honored Barbara Myerhoff as Woman of the Year . A play based on the book and film was performed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1981 .

Myerhoff's next research project also focused on the Jewish population of Los Angeles. This time she examined private aspects of the Jewish religion. In contrast to the previously known scientific considerations of Judaism, which were based on the “official”, male-dominated religious practices, Myerhoff placed Jewish women and their religious rituals within the family at the center. One focus of her study was again older Jews and Jewish migrants. Her research influenced Jewish feminism , which was developing around this time, and the women's movement in general.

Myerhoff next turned to studying the Jewish community in the Fairfax District in Los Angeles. At the University of Southern California, Myerhoff started a project on visual anthropology , from which the USC Center for Visual Anthropology emerged .

She produced a second documentary with Lynn Littman and Vikram Jayanti . The personal film documents Myerhoff's struggle with cancer during her research in the Fairfax District. Myerhoff was no longer able to complete the research project. She died shortly before her 50th birthday. Her last film was released under the title In Her Own Time . He was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival .

Barbara Myerhoff was married to Lee Myerhoff from 1954 to 1982. In 1968 their son Nicholas was born, and in 1971 their second son Matthew.

Fonts (selection)

• Malcolm W. Klein, Barbara G. Myerhoff (Eds.): Juvenile Gangs in Context. Theory, Research, and Action. Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs 1967.
• Peyote Hunt. The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1974.
• Sally Falk Moore, Barbara G. Myerhoff (Ed.): Symbol and Politics in Communal Ideology. Cases and Questions. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1975.
• Sally Falk Moore, Barbara G. Myerhoff (ed.): Secular Ritual. Van Gorcum, Assen 1977.
• Number our Days. Dutton, New York 1978.
• Bobbes and Zeydes. Old and New Roles for Elderly Jews. In: Judith Hoch-Smith, Anita Springs (Ed.): Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles. Plenum Press, New York 1978.
• Barbara G. Myerhoff, Andrei Simić (eds.): Life's Career - Aging. Cultural Variations on Growing Old. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills 1978.
• Virginia Tufte, Barbara G. Myerhoff (Ed.): Changing Images of the Family. Yale University Press, New Haven 1979.
• Elinor Lenz, Barbara G. Myerhoff (Eds.): The Feminization of America. How Women's Values ​​are Changing Our Public and Private Lives. St. Martin's Press, New York 1985.
• Barbara G. Myerhoff, Marc Kaminsky (eds.): Remembered Lives. The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1992.

Filmography

• 1976: Number Our Days (writer and producer)
• 1981: Odyssey: The Three Worlds of Bali (screenplay)
• 1985: In Her Own Time (producer)

literature

• Gelya Frank: The Ethnographic Films of Barbara G. Myerhoff. Anthropology, Feminism and the Politics of Jewish Identity . In: Ruth Behar, Deborah A. Gordon (Eds.): Women Writing Culture . University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1995, ISBN 978-0-520-20208-5 , pp. 208-232 .
• Marc Kaminsky: Myerhoff's "Third Voice": Ideology and Genre in Ethnographic Narrative . In: Social Text . No. 33 , 1992, pp. 124-144 .
• Riv-Ellen Prell: The Double Frame of Life History in the Work of Barbara Myerhoff. In: Joy Webster Barbre (Ed.): Interpreting Women's Lives. Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1989.

Web links

• Literature by and about Barbara Myerhoff in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Barbara Myerhoff in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Barbara Myerhoff in the Jewish Women's Archive (English)