Kathrine S. French

Kathrine Story French (born June 5, 1922 in Champaign (Illinois) , † June 14, 2006 ) was an American anthropologist . She was best known for her research into ceremonialism and the personal names of the Indian tribes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon .

Life

Kathrine McCullough Story was born in 1922 as the daughter of political scientist Russell M. Story . She studied philosophy and anthropology at Pomona College and graduated in 1942 with a Bachelor of Arts . Already during her studies she met the anthropologist David H. French . The couple married in 1943 and went to Columbia University in New York to do their PhD.

From 1943 to 1946, the Frenches worked for the War Relocation Authority . They advised the agency on the internment and relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. After David French accepted a position as a teacher at Reed College in Portland in 1947 , the couple spent the next several decades researching the Indian tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation intensively. While her husband focused on ethnobotany and language, she studied practices and ceremonies of the Sahaptin tribes, the Paiute and the Wasco and Chinook . In 1955, French received his PhD from Columbia University. Her unpublished dissertation is now regarded as significant work in the field of ceremonialism and the semiotic analysis of rituals in the region.

French was an associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University from 1959 to 1980 . She was particularly interested in pediatrics, gerontology and cultural anthropology. From 1981 until her death, she was an associate professor in the anthropology department at Reed College. In the 1980s and 1990s, French and Yvonne Hajda, a former student of David French, collaborated on a long-term study of the continuity and change in the Warm Springs Reservation ceremonies. Her late work is also shaped by the collaboration with her husband. For example, shortly after the death of her husband in 1994, French published a study of the personal names of the Indians. In addition to her work as a university lecturer, she also took care of advisory projects for Indian tribes and carried out research for the Archaeological Investigations Northwest on the lower Columbia River .

Fonts

• Culture Segments and Variation in Contemporary Social Ceremonialism on the Warm Springs Reservation, Oregon. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1955 New York
• Personal Names . In: Ives Goddard (Ed.) Handbook of North American Indians , Volume 17: Languages, pp. 200-221, Smithsonian Institution, Washington
• with David H. French: Wasco, Wishram, and Cascades . In: Deward Walker (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians , Volume 12. Plateau, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 1998
• with Yvonne Hajda, Robert Moore and David V. Ellis: An ethnographic study of the Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon . Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Portland 1995

literature

• Robert Brightman, Robert Moore, Michael Silverstein: Obituary for Kathrine Story French . In: Anthropology News , 2006, vol. 47, No. 6, p. 50
• Dell Hymes: Obituary for David H. French . In: Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages ​​of the Americas Newsletter, 1994, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-3
• Robert E. Moore: Self-Consciousness, Ceremonialism, and the Problem of the Present in the Anthropology of Native North America . In: New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations , 2006, pp. 185–208, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 2006
• Obituary for Kathrine S. French . In: Oregonian June 25, 2006
• In memoriam Kathrine (Kay) McCullough Story French . In: Reed Magazine , Summer 2006, p. 67 ( online )