Eleanor Leacock Papers, 1915-1987 (majority within 1940-1970)

Summary

Abstract:

Eleanor Leacock was a prominant marxist/feminist anthropologist active from the 1940s to the late 1980s. Her area of focus was social and gender relations, feminist theory, and racism in American education. During her career she conducted multiple studies and field work, most prominantly the work she did with the Innu of Labrador Canada. Her collection includes materials related to her various studies and field work, publictions and teaching career, areas of research, and a small portion of family/personal materials. The collection ranges from 1915 to 1987, but most of the collection spans from the 1940s to the 1970s. Notable materials are the field notes and research materials from her field studies in Zambia, Labrador Canada, and Samoa.

Extent:

65 Linear Feet
147 hollinger boxes,2 cassette boxes, 2 small oversize boxes, 3 flat portfolios, 3 oversize folders.

Authors:

Finding aid created by Sarah Conrad using ArchivesSpace, 9/17/2024

Background

Scope and Content:

The majority of materials in this collection are manuscripts, field notes, research materials, correspondence, articles and papers. This collection includes materials directly related to Eleanor Leacock's career as an anthropologist, such as research notes, field materials, publications, drafts, teaching materials, and correspondence, as well as resources related to the anthropology field. Since Leacock was an anthropologist as well as a professor, many in the field would send Leacock papers and materials for her to review or annotate. These are included in the Professional Materials series. This series in particular will house a large portion of the collection since it includes Leacock's work on her own publications and textbooks as well as those she reviewed for others. The Subject/Research Files series is also very large because it includes notes and research that Leacock conducted throughout her career. There is very little arrangement or description in these folders beyond what was listed on original folder headings.

The most significant portions of this collection pertain to her field work for her various studies. Her most prominant study being the work she did with the Innu in Labrador. Because Leacock passed while in the field in Samoa, the materials in the Samoa series may be unfinished, as are the materials related to her "Levels of Integraion" book, which she had been working on when she passed.

Keeping with the original order of the collection, some topics will be interspersed throughout the collection. For example, some correspondence relating to articles or publications will be found in the Publications series rather than Correspondence, and field materials may be interfiled with other studies (a few Innu materials are found in the Samoa Study series).

Biographical / Historical:

Eleanor Burke Leacock (1922-1987) was a prominent Marxist-feminist cultural anthropologist active from the 1940s to the 1980s. She is particularly known for her studies of social and gender relations among the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi as they are referred to by Leacock) of Canada, her contributions to feminist theory, and her analyses of racism in American education. Leacock's papers extensively document her research, teaching, and professional life. A smaller amount of material relates to her personal life and family, including her father Kenneth Burke, an influential literary theorist; her first husband, filmmaker Richard Leacock; and her second husband James Haughton, founder of Fight Back (originally the Harlem Unemployment Center). Growing up in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood within a social circle of artists, writers, and political radicals, Eleanor Leacock's childhood was unusually free from gender stereotypes of the time. When one of her anthropology professors at Radcliffe College told his female students that "if they wanted to be anthropologists, they had better have independent means, because they would never get a job in anthropology," she recalled thinking smugly, "I'll show you!" for she firmly believed that demonstrating her intellectual capabilities would be enough to earn employment and respect. Leacock did, indeed, go on to make significant ethnographic and theoretical contributions to anthropology and earn a living doing so, but it was not a short or easy road.

When Eleanor transferred to Barnard College after marrying Richard Leacock in 1942, she again ran up against the limits of being female in mid-century academia. Despite receiving the only A in her drafting course at Columbia, she was denied an assistantship the next semester, because the faculty member in question refused to hire women. His only explanation was the trailing-off phrase, "You know how women are..."

In the late 1940s, Eleanor accompanied Richard Leacock to Europe, where he was shooting films on human geography. At this time, she began archival research in Paris on social changes relating to the fur trade among the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) people. In 1951, she received a departmental grant to conduct fieldwork in Labrador, which she did while accompanied by her one-year-old son. Leacock's ethnohistorical study challenged the thesis that private property was universal. Her obituary in Anthropology Newsletter later described this study as "pathbreaking in its analysis of the impact of commodity production on an egalitarian society."

Leacock received her doctorate from Columbia in 1952, but was told that her dissertation was "unpublishable," with no reason given, and she received no assistance with job hunting. Columbia had once provided crucial support for female anthropologists - Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Zora Neale Hurston were all students of Franz Boas at Columbia in the 1920s - but this support had flagged in later decades. Being not only a female, but a wife, the mother of four children, and a politically-engaged radical, Eleanor Leacock was several steps removed from the Academy's view of what a scholar should be.

It was eleven years before Eleanor Leacock obtained her first full-time job teaching anthropology. In the intervening time she worked for a variety of research and education projects, while continuing to write, publish, and speak as an anthropologist. Her work at the Bank Street College of Education Schools and Mental Health Project informed her research and writing on education, with particular attention to "ways that class and racial oppression are reproduced in the classroom." Her research in this area is extensively documented in the collection, which contains field notes, administrative files, correspondence, and reports for the Classroom Processes Study, later published as Teaching and Learning in City Schools (1969). The same kinds of materials are available for her research on decolonization efforts in primary school education in Zambia, which was closely modeled on the New York study. These are of particular interest because her fieldwork was conducted in 1970-1971, at a time when relatively few anthropologists were allowed into Zambia, due to perceived colonialist attitudes.

After a decade of part-time and guest lecturer positions, Leacock was hired in 1963 as an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social Sciences at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Nine years later, she became chair of the anthropology department at City College, CUNY, where she remained in various capacities from 1972 until her death in 1987 due to a stroke suffered during fieldwork in Western Samoa. Papers related to her Samoan research are also present in the collection. During the later years of her career, Leacock continued to make significant contributions to Marxist and feminist theory in anthropology, publishing more than eighty articles and reviews, as well as several books. At a practical level, Leacock was also known for her support of junior anthropologists, especially those marginally employed, and for her efforts to ensure that women and students from underrepresented backgrounds received the encouragement and financial support necessary to continue their studies.

Citations McLoone, Juli. (March 30, 2015). Eleanor Burke Leacock, Feminist Anthropologist.

Acquisition Information:

This collection was donated to Special Collections by Eleanor Leacock's children: Elspeth Leacock, Robert Leacock, David Leacock, and Claudia Dougherty in 1988.

Processing information:

This collection includes materials related to multiple indigenous groups. It is understood that this collection might include potentially outdated or harmful language to describe these indigenous groups. In order to preserve the original description used by Eleanor Leacock, this language has been left in the collection, with more inclusive language added when possible. We encourage researchers to contact Special Collections with any updates to this language to help make the collection as inclusive as possible.

The University of Michigan Library aims to describe its collections in a way that respects the people and communities who create, use, and are represented in them. We encourage you to contact us anonymously if you encounter harmful or problematic language in catalog records or finding aids. More information about our policies and practices is available at Remediation of Harmful Language.

Originally processed by Special Collection staff, 1992. Fully processed by Sarah Conrad, September, 2024. Some notes from the original processing have been maintained and updated to accurately describe the current arrangement.

Arrangement:

This collection had minimal order when it first arrived to Special Collections. What original order could be determined was best incorporated into the new arrangement of the materials.

Materials are arranged into nine series. Series one, Professional Materials, includes documents, papers, correspondence, articles, newsletters, and resources related to Eleanor Leacock's career as a cultural anthropologist. The series will be divided into six sub-series: Organizations, subject/research files, conferences, teaching materials, correspondence, and publications. Materials will be arranged alphabetically and topically.

Series two, Indian Files, will be divided into four sub-series: Research Materials, Publications/articles, correspondence, and newspapers/newsletters. Materials in this series focus on various indigenous tribes of North and South America and are arranged topically.

Series three, Labrador Study, includes materials from Eleanor Leacock's research study in Labrador Canada with the Innu people. There will be three sub-series: Administrative, Publications/Articles, and Field Materials. Items are arranged topically and alphabetically in some sub-series.

Series four, Zambia Study, includes research and materials from Eleanor Leacock's study of decolonization in primary schools in Zambia. Sub-series will include: Administrative/Grant Materials, Background Materials, Correspondence, Teaching Materials, and Field Materials. These will be arranged topically.

Series five, Samoa Study, will be divided into six sub-series: Administrative, Publications/Articles, Correspondence, Newspapers, Field Materials, and Research Materials. Materials include articles, papers, news clippings, correspodnence, and research materials related to Leacock's final study in Samoa. Materials are arranged alphabetically and topically.

Series six, Classroom Processes Study, includes research materials, classroom notes, interviews, reports and drafts of Leacock's research of classrooms that would later be used for her publication "Teaching and Learning in City Schools." Materials are divided into four sub-series: Background materials, publiations, classrooms, and interviews/observations. Items are arranged topically.

Series seven, Smaller Studies, contains research materials from Leacock's smaller, less intensive studies such as the Asian Flu Study, and the Teaneck NJ Study. Also included in this series is the W.C. Martin child raising study. Materials are arranged alphabetically by study name.

Series eight, Family Materials, includes personal and family related materials such as correspondence with Eleanor's father, Kenneth Burke, and sister Elspeth Hart. There are also writings and articles from and about Leacock's family members. Materials are arranged alphabetically by last name.

Series nine, Audio/visual, includes photographs, slides, negatives, audio reels and cassettes. These mostly pertain to the different studies Leacock conducted, but some also include family and personal materials. Materials are arranged by format and subject.

Rules or Conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Subjects

Click on terms below to find any related finding aids on this site.

Subjects:

Anthropology
Feminist anthropology
Marxist anthropology