Frederick Starr

Popularizer of Anthropology, Public Intellectual, and Genuine Eccentric

Donald McVicker

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.

AltaMira Press

Pages: 450 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7591-2097-6 • Hardback • November 2012 • $162.00 • (£125.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / General, Social Science / Anthropology / Physical

Frederick Starr

Popularizer of Anthropology, Public Intellectual, and Genuine Eccentric

Hardback

Summary

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.

Details

AltaMira Press

Pages: 450 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7591-2097-6 • Hardback • November 2012 • $162.00 • (£125.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / General, Social Science / Anthropology / Physical

Author

Donald McVicker is professor emeritus of anthropology at North Central College in Naperville, IL, and a research associate at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Table of Contents

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

Reviews

Before Margaret Mead, there was Frederick Starr. Who? Starr, often in the newspapers, adulated University of Chicago professor, popular lecturer to packed theaters, collector of thousands of Indian, Mexican, Asian and African museum objects, fervently believed everyone should learn about anthropology. Why do even anthropologists today hardly recognize the name of Frederick Starr? Chicago anthropologist Donald McVicker perceives that Starr's anthropology exploring "primitive" and "barbarian" peoples, a kind of human geography, conflicted with the sophisticated scientific research carried on by German-trained Franz Boas and his graduate students, including Mead. This book is a fascinating travelogue through much of the world a century ago, and a thought-provoking reflection on contrasting anthropologies of the time.

— Alice Beck Kehoe, professor of anthropology emeritus, Marquette University

After years of research in previously untouched archives McVicker has produced the first full-length biography of the maverick, largely forgotten University of Chicago anthropologist Frederick Starr. Undisciplined in so many respects—intellectually, institutionally, socially—Starr became the “anti-Boas” of the formative years of American anthropology: staunch evolutionist, inveterate popularizer, peripatetic world traveler, outrageous commentator. Over a thirty-year career Starr failed to build either department or museum at Chicago, but in his own fashion he brought awareness and appreciation of cultural differences to mass audiences. McVicker has done signal service in reminding us of the fascinating cast of characters, with all their warts, blemishes, dreams, and ambitions, who have crossed paths in making American social science.

— Curtis M. Hinsley, Northern Arizona University