Frederick Starr

Popularizer of Anthropology, Public Intellectual, and Genuine Eccentric

Donald McVicker

• Publisher: AltaMira Press
• Year: 2012
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780759120990
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This definitive, detail-packed biography is the first of Frederick Starr (1856-1933), a founding father of American anthropology at the University of Chicago. It presents a major reevaluation of Starr's place as the missionizer of anthropology, illuminates the consequences of the professionalization of anthropology, and yields a greater understanding of the United States as it moved into a position of global power. Donald McVicker considers Frederick Starr's colorful life in the context of the times. In many respects Starr's early career paralleled that of Franz Boas, "the architect of American anthropology." Nonetheless, as Boas led professional anthropology into the twentieth century in the United States, Starr, the popularizer, increasingly fell behind. Today, if Starr is remembered at all, he is usually described in terms of his intellectual, professional, and ethical failings. Yet his collections, publications, and photographic and paper archives provide a rich set of resources for archaeologists, ethnologists, folklorists, and historians. McVicker argues that Starr's mission to bring anthropology to the public and enlighten them was as valid a goal during his career as was Boas's goal to professionalize the field.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 “As the Branch Is Bent”
• 2 Becoming an Anthropologist (1884–1891)
• 3 On to Chicago (1892–1895)
• 4 The Notorious Professor Starr (1892–1900)
• 5 The Public Intellectual at a Research University
• 6 Exploring, Collecting, and Expeditioning (1894–1903)
• 7 Ethnographic “Reality” at the St. Louis Purchase Exposition: Capturing Ethnographic “Reality” on Film (1904)
• 8 Into the Heart of Darkness (1905–1906)
• 9 The Congo Aftermath (1907)
• 10 Academic Junket to the Philippines
• 11 From Manila to Mindanao and Return
• 12 Home and in Hot Water Again
• 13 Voyage to Japan (1909–1910)
• 14 From the Orient to the Occident
• 15 From Chicago to the Mexican Centennial (1910)
• 16 “Vacation” in Mexico (1911)
• 17 Off to Japan and Korea (1911)
• 18 Exploring Korea from West to East
• 19 Liberia at Last (1912)
• 20 The Death of Manuel
• 21 Japan and Korea Yet Again (1913)
• 22 Starr the Nipponophile
• 23 The Frenetic Starr: Chicago and the West (1914)
• 24 From the Mainstream to the Margins
• 25 Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author