Cultural Patterning of Human Development course sound recordings
Online Access
Available digital items: https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/collections/NS070227
Abstract
The collection consists of sound recordings documenting anthropologist Margaret Mead's continuing education course on human development, held at The New School the year prior to her death.
Dates
- 1977 October - November
Creator
- Mead, Margaret, 1901-1978 (Speaker, Person)
- New School for Social Research (New York, N.Y. : 1919-1997) (Host institution, Organization)
Extent
19 Analog Recordings (11 reels; 8 1/4 inch audio cassettes)
Language of Materials
English
Scope and Contents
The collection consists solely of audio recordings of The New School's Adult Division's course, Cultural Patterning of Human Development, a series of five lectures by noted anthropologist Margaret Mead. The course description indicates Mead used films to illustrate her lectures, but these moving images are not part of the collection and their current disposition is unknown.
Apart from the first audio reel, in which New School President John Everett introduces Mead to the audience, the recordings consist of Mead lecturing.
The lectures are recorded across two 1/4 inch open reel audio tapes. Typically, the first tape contains the bulk of a lecture, while the second tape contains a discussion period in which Mead responds to questions from the audience submitted to her on cards.
The audience-generated questions provide insight into the rapid changes in American society during the late 1960s and into the 1970s, with questions addressed to Mead concerning divorce, gender, affirmative action, and "the generation gap."
At some point, an unknown person or unit at The New School made audio cassette copies of the original tape reels, and The New School Archives staff retained these copies as part of the collection.
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research use. New School Archives staff digitized all reel to reel tapes. They are exclusively accessible through the Digital Collections database.
Conditions Governing Use
To publish material from this collection, permission must be obtained in writing from the New School Archives and Special Collections. Please contact: archivist@newschool.edu.
Historical note
The course, Cultural Patterning of Human Development, was listed in the "Short Courses and Special Lectures" section of the Fall 1977 New School Bulletin, the course catalog of The New School's Adult Division that focused on continuing education. It was cross-listed under Human Relations Center courses and Anthropology courses. This was a non-credit class for mature students. It was not a graduate-level course for students in the Graduate Faculty's Anthropology Department.
The catalog copy describes the course as a series of five lectures by anthropologist Margaret Mead that would include, "Descriptions and analyses of the ways different cultures treat maturation and aging, gender and temperament, gifts and deficits based on Dr. Mead's 50 years of field work in Oceania. The course is illustrated by films."
Biographical note
New School course catalogs first advertise anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978) as lecturing at The New School in the Spring 1942 semester, in a multi-lecturer course chaired by Erich Fromm, Society and Psychoanalysis. Her lecture was titled, "Application of Psychoanalytic Theory to the Study of Primitive Children." The course is listed in the Adult Division course catalog, not the Graduate Faculty course catalog. Therefore, it was a non-credit, continuing education course for mature students. She continued to periodically lecture at The New School in the Adult Division until the year prior to her death in 1978.
Arrangement
Arranged in chronological order.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The staff of The New School Archives and Special Collections assembled the recordings comprising this collection from a larger set of legacy recordings transferred from The New School's Raymond Fogelman Library following the establishment of The New School Archives, circa 2012.
Processing Information
New School Archives staff based description in this finding aid on container inscriptions, New School course catalogs, and digitized recordings. Staff used tape box inscriptions to title three of the five sessions. Formal titles for the remaining two sessions are unknown.
- Anthropology (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Child development (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Personality and culture (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Sound recordings (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- anthropologists (Occupation) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Title
- Guide to the Cultural Patterning of Human Development course sound recordings
- Status
- In Process
- Author
- Jason Adamo and Jenny Swadosh
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin